THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Thanks, M

"Tommy John surgery, as the ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction has come to be known, does not make a pitcher better or faster. .....

Imagine taking a healthy pitcher and giving him a year off to do nothing but work out and get stronger. I’d imagine most of them would see an increase in velocity that is often pinned to the surgery. “

Regardless of the reason, some pitchers do come back better and faster after TJ surgery.  It certainly has a much better prognosis than labrum and/or rotator cuff surgery.

PFT: No, no, and no again.

There is no evidence that a pitcher comes back better. The faster is an illusion. If I tell you to run a mile with a rock in your shoe, then take it out, which one is going to be faster? The “better faster” myth has been knocked down by everyone, yet it persists ... which means either you didn’t read the article or the article wasn’t written well enough to convince you.

Will, well he did say “some,” which is true (of just about anything) of course, just by chance alone!

Anyway, I’m not sure what you mean by the rock in shoe example.  Do you mean that the pitcher does not come back better or faster from before the injury that precipitated the surgery, but that he might come back faster and better compared to when he was pitching while injured just before the surgery?  If the answer to your question is, “You will run faster without the rock than with it,” which I assume it is, why are you using that example to refute his claim?  If that example is analogous to TJ surgery, then his claim is true, no?

In most cases or on the average (or however you want to word it) pitchers get worse and lose velocity with age anyway.