The Marlins placed Robby Snelling on the 15-day injured list Wednesday with a sprain of the ulnar collateral ligament in his left elbow, a setback that landed just days after his major league debut. Pete Fairbanks was reinstated from the injured list in a corresponding move, and Braxton Garrett was recalled to start Thursday.
Snelling had been scheduled to take the ball Thursday, but the club pulled him after he felt discomfort following a between-starts bullpen session. Manager Clayton McCullough said Snelling will undergo more testing, leaving the team to sort through a rotation change almost as soon as it had handed the young left-hander a place in it.
The injury matters because UCL sprains are often warning signs of bigger trouble, including Tommy John surgery. Snelling does not have that diagnosis yet, but the kind of testing McCullough described will determine whether the Marlins are dealing with a brief interruption or something more serious.
Snelling’s first taste of the majors came Friday, when he allowed three earned runs over five innings. He started the 2026 season in the minors before the Marlins altered their rotation and promoted him to replace Chris Paddack’s spot, a move that quickly gave one of the game’s top pitching prospects a chance to show he could help right away.
Garrett’s return adds a familiar arm for the Marlins, who have already seen how fragile his path can be. In 2023, his best season brought 159 2/3 innings, a 3.66 ERA, a 23.7% strikeout rate, a 4.4% walk rate and a 49.1% ground-ball rate. Shoulder and forearm injuries limited him to seven starts in 2024, and UCL surgery wiped out his entire 2025 season before the team optioned him to Triple-A Jacksonville at the end of spring training in 2026.
For Snelling, the timing is especially harsh because the injury came after his promotion, which means he will collect major league pay and service time while on the injured list. That is small consolation if the testing points to a longer recovery, one that could erase most of his 2026 season and some of 2027. For now, the Marlins have lost the arm they just called up, and the next turn in their rotation is already in motion.
