MINNEAPOLIS -- Minnesota Twins star Byron Buxton had arthroscopic surgery Friday on his troublesome right knee with the goal of alleviating the irritation related to patellar tendinitis and returning to center field next season.
"That's his focus," president of baseball operations Derek Falvey said Friday. "That's what he wants, and that's what we all want. So that'll be our mission through the offseason, to get him there."
The recovery timeline for Buxton is projected to be much shorter than after the cleanup procedure he had on the knee last year, Falvey said in a season-ending interview with reporters.
"The hope here is in just a few short weeks he's getting moving around again and starting to go through physical therapy in the offseason," Falvey said. "We're hopeful that this will get him on track. It obviously wasn't the season Byron wanted from a physical standpoint. We did all we could throughout the course of the year to try to put him in the best position to be successful. He worked really hard."
Buxton was brought along slowly during spring training and started the regular season as the designated hitter. His knee failed to improve enough for the Twins to feel comfortable putting him in the outfield. He last played Aug. 1, when he was sidelined by a strained right hamstring. The Twins added him to the roster during the AL Division Series against Houston this week as an injury replacement for first baseman Alex Kirilloff, and he made an appearance Wednesday as a pinch hitter in the Game 4 loss.
Buxton, who turns 30 on Nov. 29, has five years left on the $100 million contract he signed prior to the 2022 season. The second overall pick in the 2012 amateur draft made his major league debut in 2015 and has not gotten through a full season without landing on the injured list.
The closest he came to a complete season was in 2017, when he missed two weeks with a strained right groin muscle. He played in 140 games and won a Gold Glove that year, the only time in his career he has topped 92 games. In 85 games in 2023, Buxton batted .207 with 17 home runs and 42 RBIs.
Kirilloff has been scheduled for surgery on Oct. 24 to repair a torn labrum in his non-throwing (right) shoulder, Falvey said. He was sidelined from July 30 to Sept. 7 and rehabilitated his way to the point where he was comfortable enough to play, but the pain worsened during the postseason and shut him down.