Phillies expect J.T. Realmuto to miss about a month after knee surgery

BOSTON — Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto will undergo knee surgery and is expected to miss about a month, president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said on Tuesday.

Realmuto was placed on the 10-day injured list on Tuesday with right knee pain. He is scheduled to have meniscectomy surgery on Wednesday in Philadelphia. The Phillies are planning to factor in the All-Star break as some extra recovery time for Realmuto.

“It should be about a month that he’ll be out,” Dombrowski said. “And I’d rather it get done now — as he would — get it taken care of, and then know that he’s coming back, rather than it’s later in the year and you have to do it at an inopportune time, right down the stretch.”

When asked whether this would impact the Phillies’ trade deadline needs, Dombrowski said, “Not as this moment.”

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Realmuto first began to experience knee pain in May, when the Phillies were in San Francisco. An MRI exam revealed a small tear in his meniscus, but both the team and Realmuto were confident that he’d be able to play through it.

Things changed in recent weeks. Realmuto began to experience more “persistent pain,” in Dombrowski’s words, and they decided before the London series that he would undergo surgery when he returned to the United States.

“It started to bother him more,” Dombrowski said. “You could see the other day, he got pinch-ran for on Sunday, that doesn’t happen too often for him. And if you watched him — I watched probably a little closer — you could see his run to first base was not quite as hard because it was bothering him.”

Manager Rob Thomson could see it, too.

“He would never say anything to me, but I knew he was fighting through it, just because I could see him wince every once in a while, on a certain block or something behind the plate,” Thomson said. “He’s a tough guy, and he’s not going to admit to anything. But there were certain days he would say it was a little more sore than normal but it felt like he would always play through it.”

To fill his spot on the active roster, Rafael Marchán was recalled from triple-A Lehigh Valley. He joins Garrett Stubbs as the two catchers on the 26-man roster. Thomson said that both Stubbs and Marchán will get a sizable amount of playing time, and he will try to keep them matched up with the same starting pitchers.

“We’re all comfortable with Stubby and Marchán, and I think for the outset it’s probably going to be back and forth, day on, day off, day on, day off,” Thomson said. “But I’m comfortable with it. We’ve won a lot of games with Stubby, and Marchán has always been a really good catcher and can handle a staff, as long as he stays healthy.”

Marchán, 25, also has a lengthy injury history. He was activated off the 10-day injured list on May 27. Since then, he has hit .219/.350/.344 for Lehigh Valley with a .694 OPS and one home run. He has hit .264/.337/.343 in his eight-year minor league career.

He made his MLB debut in September 2020. He has 23 games of big league experience, between the 2020 and 2021 seasons. Marchán has hit .267/.323/.417 over that span. He was in the Phillies clubhouse on Tuesday afternoon, before the game against the Red Sox, and described the scenario as a bit surreal.

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He is grateful for the opportunity but does not like that it is at the expense of a mentor.

“It’s not the best way to get here, but I’m glad to be here again and just try to help the team,” Marchán said.

The Phillies signed Marchán to a minor-league contract in 2015. He said that after the team acquired Realmuto in 2019, the Phillies catcher took him under his wing.

“He gives me advice all the time,” Marchán said. “I ask him questions about catching, about setups, about the different pitchers. We talk about the way the pitchers work, the way they attack the hitters. How he makes them comfortable. Where he sets up on the plate.

“Especially with the starters, like with [Zack] Wheeler, the way he likes to put the glove behind the plate. He likes his target up. Things like that. A lot of good advice. It’s helped me for whenever I get the chance to catch them, so I can be ready.”

It’s a big jump for a player who was recently activated off the injured list, and has spent most of the last few years in the minor leagues. But Marchán has been working hard, and the Phillies are confident in him.

“He can really receive,” Thomson said. “And for the last couple of days, we kind of knew this was going to happen, he’s been doing a lot of book work with Caleb [Cotham, the Phillies’ pitching coach,] and looking at different statistics and all of the game planning that we do. He’s really done a lot of studying. He’s very good at that. He can really catch, he can really throw, really block. And he’s swung the bat very well. He just hasn’t been healthy for an entire year since he’s been with us. So we’ll try to keep him as healthy as possible.”

Brandon Marsh (right hamstring strain) is with double-A Reading. Thomson said he is doing all non-baseball activities. He should get in some rehab games this week. … Trea Turner (left hamstring strain) is “coming along,” according to Thomson. “They’re going to extend him out a little bit today,” the manager said. “A little bit more tomorrow. His timeline — I’m not really sure if he’ll be here during the weekend, but probably next week sometime.”