Twins Jason Castro out for season

Jason Castro’s meniscus in his right knee was more damaged than surgeons expected, and the repair was more extensive than planned. As a result, the Twins’ catcher will miss the rest of the season, the Twins announced Wednesday.

Castro, undergoing surgery at the Steadman Clinic in Vail, Colo., expected to have a small part of the meniscus removed in order to relieve nagging pain that had bothered him for the past few weeks. But “things did not go as well as hoped,” Twins manager Paul Molitor said. “The [magnetic resonance imaging] didn’t give us a clear picture of what was going on in there. The tear was a little bit more significant. … They had to go ahead and fully repair that meniscus, to try to keep what he had left.”

Castro, who underwent a full medial collateral ligament repair on the same knee in 2011, had been briefed on the possibility, and “he was on board,” Molitor said. “He wanted to protect his future.”

That future involves several weeks of recovery, and then several months of rehabilitation before he can return to the baseball field. The Twins are optimistic he will be ready to play at the start of 2019, the final season on the three-year contract he signed during the winter of 2016.

Twins chief baseball officer Derek Falvey said Castro's rehabilitation will take five to six months, putting the 30-year-old on track to be ready for spring training. Castro had surgery to repair the ACL and meniscus in 2011 and had a cyst removed from the knee in 2013.

The news comes at a bad time as both the Twins and their starting pitching staff seem to be turning things around after suffering through a losing skid earlier in May. Second-year catcher Mitch Garver and veteran Bobby Wilson will handle the catching chores in his absence.