LF Carl Crawford will undergo surgery Thursday to fix a tendon problem in his right hand and likely - though not absolutely - miss the rest of the regular season, Rays executive VP Andrew Friedman said Tuesday.

"If every single thing went extremely well I'd say that there is a chance he could play in a regular-season game,'' Friedman said. "There's just such a small window that I wouldn't say it's likely, but there is definitely a chance.''

Six weeks from Thursday is Sept. 25; the Rays would have four games remaining from that point.

Crawford faces a six-eight week recovery until he is ready to play again in the majors, Friedman said, after what is considered "a fairly simple procedure.''

"We're fairly optimistic that he'll be able to return in six weeks but we'll know a lot more after he is a couple weeks into the recovery,'' Friedman said.

Crawford's problem is that the tendon that runs along his right middle finger is out of the groove because of damage to the tissue band that holds it in place.

Crawford will have the surgery done in Arizona by Dr. Donald Sheridan, a hand specialist that his agents have "a familiarity with" rather than by team doctor Dr. Doug Carlan. Sheridan, who Friedman said is one of the best wrist and hand doctors in the country, was one of the doctors consulted on the case.
"I think it was a comfort thing,'' Friedman said. "We were fine with Dr. Carlan, we were fine with Dr. Sheridan, it's just the way it went.''

Friedman said the other option was to splint and try to rehab the finger and "see if it would stabilize, but it's just not that practical. We consulted a number of different doctors and got a lot of different opinions and went through it and to a man it was something that just didn't seem like the prudent thing to do. ... It was deemed that it was pretty unlikely that it would fix it, that it would reoccur, and if it did there was a chance he hurts it worse and it's a much more involved surgery.''