Tommy John Research Paper

1140 Words3 Pages

Tommy John surgery is a surgery common in the MLB for pitchers who have hurt their arm. Injury to the UCL occur when a player, commonly pitchers, throw a baseball repeatedly. Unfortunately, Baseball is a repetitive game especially for pitchers. When a pitcher gains muscles that help him throw harder, the ligaments and tendons are often left out. Pitching presses the body to its limits and with all the stress eventually, the tendons and ligaments will not be able to take it. Properly known as ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction (or UCL), is a surgical operation in which a ligament in the medial elbow is replaced with a tendon from elsewhere in the body, often the forearm or hamstring of the patient. Since the first patient, with the name …show more content…

If you ask a pitcher in the MLB or anywhere for that matter if they would like an added 5 MPH on their fastball, I will guarantee that they would not turn it down. Probably the biggest reason behind getting this surgery before injury is that it seems to be inevitable at this point that a pitcher trying to make a career out of baseball is going to need the surgery anyway and some players think it’s better to get it out of the way rather than in the middle of their careers. This may be true for many pitchers who have had to sit out a year in their prime time of their career wishing they had done it when they were 20. Overall, there is no convenient time for this surgery, but it would be better in the offseason of your younger years than right before the playoffs when you are in the prime of your career where you would miss the post season and all of the next season’s regular season. Some notable successful Tommy John surgeries include A.J. Burnett, Francisco Liriano, Chris Carpenter, Joe Nathan, Brian Wilson, Billy Wagner, Stephen Strasburg, David Wells, Tim Hudson, John Smoltz, and Matt …show more content…

Yes that is a good percentage when used after injury to the UCL and Tommy John is the only hope, but as an uninjured player are you willing to risk your career on that eighty percent? What about those twenty percent of surgeries that are unsuccessful? Their careers are done, imagine getting the surgery at age twenty and having it fail and end your career, can you imagine the regret? Yes, the extra-added speed would be nice but statistics show more people lose velocity on their pitches after the surgery. There are hundreds of studies being done on this topic but there do not seem to be two of the same results, they are all different. That being said, Tommy John has never been done optimistically, its always been a last resort after injury which could change the whole recovery process. The recovery time for Tommy Johns is different with every patient but often takes a full calendar year for a pitcher to see the mound again. Of those twelve months, four of them are no lift, followed by two more months of light weight rehab. At about the six month mark is when patients are allowed to pick up a baseball again. They often do not get to actually “air it out” until the ten-month mark where they then progress based on the result of soreness etc. This process could raise problems for young optimistic minds who would get the surgery preinjury. Being out that long

More about Tommy John Research Paper

Open Document