Boston Red Sox starter Steven Wright will undergo left knee surgery and will miss the rest of the season.
Wright is scheduled to have the surgery on Monday.
"It's at the point they're basically going to put new cartilage in there," Wright explained Thursday. "It's not as serious as it sounds. It's just the problem is it takes a long time to heal. But once it heals ... the success rate's really high."
Wright has struggled in five starts this season, going 1-3 with an 8.25 ERA and giving up at least four runs in all but one start. Against the Chicago Cubs on Saturday, Wright gave up five runs on seven hits and pitched into the seventh inning.
"It's definitely frustrating knowing it's the beginning of the season and my season's over," Wright said Thursday. "It's one of those things, we tried to do whatever we could to get through it, and it just got to the point where it was just unbearable."
Wright said an initial tear to his cartilage happened in spring training and it got progressively worse as the season went on.
"The injury that he had with his cartilage, which was small in spring training, was significantly larger," Red Sox general manager Dave Dombrowski said Thursday. "And the doctor doesn't really know why. Normally, there would be a specific incident that would cause that. When we asked Steve if he had anything specific, he said not really. He said I'm not really sure what took place. So it's a hard one to understand totally."
The right-handed knuckleballer had been placed on the 10-day disabled list with a knee sprain suffered in his start against the Cubs.
Last season, Wright was 13-6 with a 3.33 ERA in 24 starts and was selected to pitch in the All-Star Game. But his season came to an abrupt end in August after he injured a shoulder diving back into second base as a pinch runner during a game in Los Angeles against the Dodgers.
Information from ESPN's Scott Lauber contributed to this report.