You may have missed it, but this past Thursday Cesar Carrillo made his major league debut for the Padres. Carrillo was San Diego’s first round pick in the 2005 draft, the 18th player selected.
Carrillo’s debut was inauspicious: 2.1 innings of work, 8 earned runs, 3 homers allowed. The key, however, was that Carrillo had Tommy John surgery in 2007 and missed most of last season. Despite the lack of movement on his fastball, he threw consistently in the low-to-mid 90’s. I doubt the Padres will write him off after one start.
I use Carrillo as an example in light of the recent news that Washington rookie righthander Jordan Zimmermann is likely headed under the knife for his own TJ procedure. The gnashing of Nats fans’ teeth can already be heard inside the Beltway.
It’s understandable, since the prospect of any kind of surgery is daunting. I dug out an old press release from the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Sports Medical Center from the early spring of 2007 which paints a far more optimistic picture, however.
The title, “Ulnar Collateral Ligament Reconstruction in Major League Baseball Pitchers,” was a study of pitching performance following the procedure. Drs. Brett W. Gibson, David Webner, G. Russell Huffman and Brian J. Sennett, began with a hypothesis that performance returns to normal by the second season after the procedure.
They compiled data from 68 hurlers who pitched at least one big league game before having the operation between 1998 and 2003. They looked at innings pitched, ERA, and WHIP (walks & hits per inning pitched).
Of the 68 pitchers, 56 returned to their baseline numbers roughly 18-and-a-half months later. That’s 82 percent, a figure that bodes well for Zimmermann and the ballclub. I’m not aware of any other study that takes into account the seasons since 2003, but it may well be a higher percentage by now.
A couple of the study’s other findings are interesting as well, though almost in a head-scratching way. The doctors concluded that more experienced pitchers, and those with a higher ERA, were less likely to require TJ surgery. Tommy John himself was 32 when he had the operation, having completed 12 big league campaigns; he’d go on to pitch 14 more seasons. Someone’s going to have to explain the “higher ERA” thing to me.
Jordan Zimmermann is an integral part of the Nationals’ future. He’s also a smart young man who will, no doubt, keep his eye on the prize when it’s time to rehab that elbow. His absence will hurt, no doubt, but it’s not the end of the world.
Phil Wood is a contributor to Nats Xtra on MASN. Contact him at philwood@
washingtonexaminer.com.
