Jameson Taillon was among the 43,326 fans in Minute Park for Game 7 of the 2019 World Series, his arm in a brace following his second Tommy John surgery as he watched former Pittsburgh Pirates teammate Daniel Hudson, a fellow two-time Tommy John survivor, nail down the final three outs for the Washington Nationals.
“That was a little emotional for me to see him chuck his glove up in the air and save the World Series,” Taillon, now a Chicago Cubs right-hander, said of Hudson, who struck out Houston slugger Michael Brantley to close a 6-2 victory over the Astros and seal the Nationals’ only championship.
“I’m sitting there in a brace and I don’t know if I’ll ever do this again. Then you see a success story, and it does matter.”
There have been 2,555 major league pitchers who had Tommy John surgery, according to a list compiled by baseball analyst Jon Roegele, beginning with the first elbow ligament replacement procedure that Dr. Frank Jobe performed on John, the former Dodgers left-hander, on Sept. 25, 1974.
Of those pitchers, 162 had a second Tommy John surgery — many of them a hybrid procedure, introduced in 2013, in which the ulnar collateral ligament is reinforced with an internal brace, providing extra stability and support and allowing for faster recovery times than the 12 to 18 months for traditional surgeries.
Dodgers two-way star Shohei Ohtani is a member of the latter club, the three-time most valuable player undergoing his first Tommy John surgery with the Angels in 2018 and his second — a revision procedure with an internal brace — in his final month with the team in September 2023.
Ohtani couldn’t pitch last year, but his 54-homer, 130-RBI, 59-stolen-base season helped the Dodgers win the championship. Now back on the mound, he completed his fourth bullpen session of the spring Tuesday.
The 30-year-old right-hander with a 97-mph fastball and at least six breaking balls and offspeed pitches is on track to join the rotation by May, if not sooner, and the Dodgers are confident he will regain his 2021-23 form, when he went 34-16 with a 2.84 earned-run average in 74 starts.
“I think the velocity will be there, he’ll have a feel for his pitches,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I’ve really never seen anyone as competitive as Shohei, so I would expect him to be the same pitcher, as he’s expecting himself to be the pitcher he was when he was healthy.”
But there are no guarantees, as the Dodgers witnessed last season, when Walker Buehler went 1-6 with a 5.38 ERA in 16 extremely choppy starts in his return from a second Tommy John before rebounding to throw 10 scoreless innings in the National League Championship Series and World Series.
A first Tommy John is considered routine and is usually effective, with about 90% returning to competitive pitching, according to the American Medical Assn., but the success rate for two-time Tommy John patients is not as high.
According to Roegele, only 99 of the 162 pitchers to undergo a second surgery returned to competitive action (61%), while 38 (24%) did not return, and 25 (15%) are listed as “not yet back.”
And only two starters — Taillon and Texas Rangers right-hander Nathan Eovaldi — are known to have returned to their previous performance levels after a second elbow reconstruction.
Taillon is 42-29 with a 4.06 ERA in 118 starts in four years since his second surgery in 2021, an average of 29.5 starts a year. Eovaldi, meanwhile, is 53-35 with a 3.94 ERA in 148 starts in seven years since a second procedure in 2018 — including 106 starts, an average of 26.5 a year, since 2021.
“Having one Tommy John surgery is tough,” said the 35-year-old Eovaldi, who won World Series rings with the Boston Red Sox in 2018 and Rangers in 2023. “Going through it twice is not easy.”
Eovaldi’s success after his second surgery with the New York Yankees in 2016 — he had his first as a high school junior in 2007 — helped light the path for Taillon, who had surgeries as a minor leaguer in 2014 and with the Pirates in 2019.
Pittsburgh general manager Ben Cherington, a former Red Sox executive, gave Taillon Eovaldi’s phone number, and the two struck up a relationship, chatting during batting practice before Yankees-Red Sox games and often playing video games together.
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“I talked to Evo about rehab and what worked for him, what things he changed, but honestly, it was just nice to have a friend who understood,” said Taillon, 33. “In baseball, there’s a lot of machismo. Guys don’t want their feelings to be known. But for me, it was really scary. There aren’t many success stories. But Evo had been through it, and that was always a reminder for me, of like, ‘I can do this.’ ”
Taillon revamped his delivery after his second surgery, using more leg thrust and shortening his arm path in an effort to ease pressure on his elbow.
“You have a second Tommy John, clearly your body is telling you something, that it doesn’t like the way things are going,” Taillon said. “I knew I had mechanical flaws to clean up. My arm action was really long. My body was smart enough to put itself in a position to throw hard, but not in a healthy way.”
Eovaldi also shortened his arm path a bit after his second surgery, eliminating the part of his delivery in which he would extend his throwing arm behind his back “and kind of get stuck with the ball back there,” he said. “I think it’s just mechanics and putting yourself in a good position to execute pitches.”
Ohtani does not appear to have made any drastic mechanical changes to his delivery, but after pitching exclusively out of the stretch for much of his time with the Angels, he’s been experimenting with a full windup this spring.
“It wasn’t something that I necessarily brought to the table; it was something that he did,” Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior said. “I like when guys have some athleticism and rhythm in their delivery. I think it can help with guys’ sequencing and timing, and ultimately will take some stress off of an arm.”
With the grueling rehabilitation process behind him and the season ahead, Taillon said it will be important for Ohtani to monitor his workload on the practice field this spring and between starts during the season and to tailor his strength-and-conditioning and arm-care programs to the needs of a two-time Tommy John surgery patient.
Taillon wears an upper body harness that tracks how many throws he makes in a day and, like Ohtani, uses a pocket radar to monitor how hard he’s throwing. Ohtani also has been seen sporting a performance-tracking harness this spring.
“That stuff is really important coming off a second Tommy John, being diligent in-season, making sure you monitor every throw and that everything you’re doing in the weight room and the training room has a purpose,” said Taillon, who also overcame testicular cancer in 2017.
“I used to just work out lower body, upper body, throw my bullpens and pitch. But when I had my second surgery, it was like, ‘OK, now I have a laundry list of things. I need to make sure my pronation and supination and range of motion is all on point so I’m not unnecessarily stressing something up the chain.’ ”
Now that he’s on the verge of a return, are there any flashing-red warning signs Ohtani should be on the lookout for?
“You can come up with a perfect scenario of what your routine looks like and how the games are gonna go, but until you’re actually knocking out starts and getting into that routine and rhythm, you don’t know,” Taillon said.
“That first year back, it took me a month or two to be like, ‘OK, this is what I do now. This is what I feel like now. This is my pitch package.’ Some of my pitch metrics changed. My fastball got more carry. My curveball had less depth. I had to adjust to that.
“For him, I think the big challenge will be just knocking out turns in the rotation every sixth day, making sure he’s in the right spot to pitch.”
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Since his second surgery, Eovaldi said he has learned the difference between pain and tightness, when to push through discomfort and when to alert the team’s medical staff and back off. He warms up a little more before games than he did before.
“I try to tell guys it’s like climbing a ladder right to the top,” Eovaldi said. “You want to make sure you hit every step so you don’t have to slide down and re-start anywhere along the way.”
Of course, Ohtani’s climb back to the mound after his second Tommy John will be unlike that of any other pitcher. He’s also recovering from offseason surgery on his left shoulder and he’s one of baseball’s most prolific sluggers, who will hit on the nights he pitches and serve as the designated hitter between starts.
“I’m really curious to see if he can get close to his previous level on the mound,” Taillon said. “Obviously with someone like that, you never doubt or bet against a unicorn.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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