Tommy John Surgery - Misconceptions

Misconceptions

In some cases baseball pitchers throw harder after the procedure than they did beforehand. As a result, orthopedic surgeons have reported that increasing numbers of parents are coming to them and asking them to perform the procedure on their un-injured sons in the hope that this will increase their performance. However, many people — including Dr. Frank Jobe, the doctor who invented the procedure — believe most post-surgical increases in performance are generally due to two factors. The first is pitchers' increased attention to conditioning. The second is that in many cases it can take several years for the UCL to deteriorate. Over these years the pitcher's velocity will gradually decrease. As a result, it is likely that the procedure simply allows the pitcher to throw at the velocity he could before his UCL started to degrade.