FG on Fox: Projecting the Returning Pitchers From Tommy John Surgery

Out of context, throwing a baseball for a living is not a particularly dangerous job. There are hundreds of other occupations that provide a greater threat to health on a daily basis than standing on a pitcher’s mound. In the context of the game of baseball, however, pitching is a dangerous occupation. Besides the threat of a comebacker or awkward play at first base in which the pitcher has to cover, every pitch thrown during a game is a risk. Every pitcher in baseball is dealing with damage to their elbow in varying levels of severity, and as there’s no telling how healthy a given pitcher’s elbow is, the one pitch that could lead to serious injury is what makes the craft, in a word, totally unpredictable.

The success rate of Tommy John surgery is now so high that many fans take it for granted when an injury does occur, even going so far as to view it as some sort of rite of passage that every young pitcher must go through. But not everyone makes it back to the mound, and those that do are more likely to need another Tommy John at some point. We also know a lot more about how pitchers come back from Tommy John surgery than we used to, and it debunks a lot of previously-held beliefs.

On average, pitchers don’t gain velocity, don’t improve performance compared to their pre-injury numbers, and they’re more likely to go on the disabled list with an injury to their throwing arm than a pitcher that didn’t have surgery. While there is some evidence that TJ surgery might allow pitchers to not suffer as much age-related depreciation as those that have their original ligament, it’s clear that this is a major surgery, and not something to be taken for granted.

With that said, there are a number of All-Star-caliber pitchers who are likely to make their return in 2016 (if all goes well), and they should be included in any analysis of the ongoing offseason transactions around baseball. 2015 was a particularly difficult year in terms of the talent of pitchers requiring Tommy John surgery, as a number of current and potential future aces had to undergo the procedure.

To help visualize the talent of the pitchers who had the procedure last year and could possibly return this coming season, I’ve plotted the average Wins Above Replacement in the year prior to pitchers undergoing surgery (I’ve set the lower cutoff at the year 2000, as it was the first year in which the number of surgeries was in the double digits). In other words, how collectively good were each year’s Tommy John patients the year before they had surgery? Take a look:

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