Looking like Padgett needs Tommy John surgery....

[CadaverDawg]

Baseball team isn't catching many breaks as of late. Bummer. I hate it for the kid.

[MafiaDawg]

Have we ever had a pitcher come back from a tommy john injury while in college to have success while still in college?

[Todd4State]

It does suck short term but at least we can redshirt him this year and actually it will soften the blow of losing Mitchell Miller long term. He'll need a year to recover but by the time he is a redshirt junior he should be able to compete for a rotation spot with Ashcraft, Self, Noah Hughes, and Parker Ford.

[Todd4State]

Have we ever had a pitcher come back from a tommy john injury while in college to have success while still in college?

Not that I can recall. It's mainly because by the time they recover it's time to get drafted or graduate. We haven't really had to deal with a lot of Tommy John injuries as well.

[Bothrops]

I couldn't handle coaching college baseball.

[HSVDawg]

Baseball team isn't catching many breaks as of late. Bummer. I hate it for the kid.

I hate it for him too. But early in the summer is not a bad time for this to happen. He should be ready to roll next fall and should be a factor hopefully in 2018. The thing about these types of injuries is that its mileage on the arm that cause them (usually from overzealous high school coaches). That type of wear and tear affects some guys early in college and some guys not at all. Problem is, there is no way to tell when that ligament is gonna pop (or whose is going to pop) until its too late. If it didn't happen in summer ball, it would have happened in the fall practices or early February at the latest. But there's nothing our coaching staff or Padgett could have done differently to avoid it.

[whosyourdawgy]

What surgery did R Humphrey have? And don't we already have a true freshman from.last season coming off of Tommy John surgery this year? I may be talking out of my ass because I am most definitely no baseball expert.

[Todd4State]

What surgery did R Humphrey have? And don't we already have a true freshman from.last season coming off of Tommy John surgery this year? I may be talking out of my ass because I am most definitely no baseball expert.

Reid did have Tommy John in high school. And that's the difference because he essentially spend his rehab year his senior year in high school. So, we were able to get production out of him moreso than we would have had he had the surgery in college.

I mentioned Ford and Hughes above. Ford rehabbed this year and I suppose he still is. This year will be his recovery year but after that he should be good to go. Hughes had his injury on a pick off move of all things. He will spend this year rehabbing and my guess is we will most likely redshirt him this upcoming season. I could see him pitching summer ball possibly next year though.

[BB30]

Getting kind of off topic, and not that this has anything to do with his UCL tearing. But, for parents out there with kids playing 100 games a summer and playing on into the fall at 8-12 yrs old you may want to think a little harder about that. A 8-14 yr old kid shouldn't be logging 70-80 ip in 4-5 months. Then on top of that pitching lessons in the fall and winter and then start over. And the funny thing is yes they will be much more fundamental at baseball but you either have the raw talent to play college baseball/Pro ball or you don't at least at a high level. Kids get drafted all of the time that baseball wasn't their number 1 growing up. You are either going to be blessed with the raw tools to continue to play or you aren't. Playing the other sports helps develop complimentary muscles and athleticism. Sorry for the rant I know it has very little to do with the topic it's just sad seeing 13-14 yr olds having TJ. Alot of these organizations are making a lot of money off these kids. And I'm not talking about Sophs, JRs, and SR's in highschool playing summer ball as it is a great way to get looked at and there are organizations out there that are very careful with players. Again, sorry for the rant.

[BrunswickDawg]

Getting kind of off topic, and not that this has anything to do with his UCL tearing. But, for parents out there with kids playing 100 games a summer and playing on into the fall at 8-12 yrs old you may want to think a little harder about that. A 8-14 yr old kid shouldn't be logging 70-80 ip in 4-5 months. Then on top of that pitching lessons in the fall and winter and then start over. And the funny thing is yes they will be much more fundamental at baseball but you either have the raw talent to play college baseball/Pro ball or you don't at least at a high level. Kids get drafted all of the time that baseball wasn't their number 1 growing up. You are either going to be blessed with the raw tools to continue to play or you aren't. Playing the other sports helps develop complimentary muscles and athleticism. Sorry for the rant I know it has very little to do with the topic it's just sad seeing 13-14 yr olds having TJ. Alot of these organizations are making a lot of money off these kids. And I'm not talking about Sophs, JRs, and SR's in highschool playing summer ball as it is a great way to get looked at and there are organizations out there that are very careful with players. Again, sorry for the rant.

No - you speak the truth. In Metro Atlanta in the late 80s/early 90s, "travel ball" meant that you played on a high school summer league team and traveled around your area playing the guys you played HS ball against. 25 - 30 high school games (Feb - April, unless you made playoffs), 20-25 summer ball games (May-June), then tournament ball (based on what league affiliation you were in) in July anywhere from 6 to 20 games depending if your team got bounced and when. Most I ever played was 70 games over 6 months. And we would be all be dog tired in tournament ball and be thankful that we had a week or two before fall football camp started 2 a days.

Besides the year-round inning wear, another big issue is a lot of these kids are playing 3-6 games a weekend at these travel tournaments. Its insane. As much as I love baseball, I'm glad my kids chose band.

[Bama_Dawg]

I know kids want to get better and it gives them a competitive advantage, but is is really worth it to play so much?

Dr. James Andrews doesn't think so:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/os-james-andrews-florida-hospital-orlando-20160316-story.html

[Johnson85]

Getting kind of off topic, and not that this has anything to do with his UCL tearing. But, for parents out there with kids playing 100 games a summer and playing on into the fall at 8-12 yrs old you may want to think a little harder about that. A 8-14 yr old kid shouldn't be logging 70-80 ip in 4-5 months. Then on top of that pitching lessons in the fall and winter and then start over. And the funny thing is yes they will be much more fundamental at baseball but you either have the raw talent to play college baseball/Pro ball or you don't at least at a high level.

I'm not sure how prevalent it was, but I read an article by one orthopaedic surgeon (it may have been the semi-famous guy out of Birmingham) that talked about how he was running into an attitude among parents of, if he's going to have tommy john surgery, better to have it early, because they had noticed that a lot of kids coming off of tommy john rehab had picked up some velocity, and he actually had to explain in the article that the velocity increase was because of how hard the rehab was, and if they wanted to pay someone to force their kid to do the rehab, the surgery was unnecessary, they'd get the strength without it. Pretty unreal that he thought he actually needed to put that out there.

[ETDawg]

There can be several reasons for TJ surgery. In no particular order:

1) Genetics
2) Living in smaller towns have a tendency to lead to lack of qualified pitching instructors
3) Invincible syndrome
4) Not wanting to let the team/coach down
5) Pitching when tired
6) Improper mechanics ...see #2 & #5
7) Overuse
8) And sometime sh&t happens

Some of these are interrelated and i'm sure that there are others that I didn't mention

Added: 9) high velocity pitcher

[CadaverDawg]

There can be several reasons for TJ surgery. In no particular order:

1) Genetics
2) Living in smaller towns have a tendency to lead to lack of qualified pitching instructors
3) Invincible syndrome
4) Not wanting to let the team/coach down
5) Pitching when tired
6) Improper mechanics ...see #2 & #5
7) Overuse
8) And sometime sh&t happens

Some of these are interrelated and i'm sure that there are others that I didn't mention

Spot on

[Todd4State]

No - you speak the truth. In Metro Atlanta in the late 80s/early 90s, "travel ball" meant that you played on a high school summer league team and traveled around your area playing the guys you played HS ball against. 25 - 30 high school games (Feb - April, unless you made playoffs), 20-25 summer ball games (May-June), then tournament ball (based on what league affiliation you were in) in July anywhere from 6 to 20 games depending if your team got bounced and when. Most I ever played was 70 games over 6 months. And we would be all be dog tired in tournament ball and be thankful that we had a week or two before fall football camp started 2 a days.

Besides the year-round inning wear, another big issue is a lot of these kids are playing 3-6 games a weekend at these travel tournaments. Its insane. As much as I love baseball, I'm glad my kids chose band.

I think it should be you play your high school season and then summer ball should be limited to 13 games per team and each pitcher can throw no more than 5 IP in a game or 75 pitches in a one week span.

I have no idea how to police that. I think what I might do if I was MLB is have Perfect Game be the mecca where all of these summer teams play and just try to do away with all of the random splinter tournaments. That or have satellite PG sites in each state where the teams compete. Obviously a very rough idea and there would have to be some things done like splitting up California, Texas, Florida while Wyoming would only have one satellite camp.

[Todd4State]

They are just now starting to look at all of this Tommy John research and everything that has been said in this thread has been spot on. But I don't know that we will see the benefits of the report for another 2-3 years and that will be interesting to watch and see if Tommy John does indeed decrease.