Jamie Moyer, who pitched for 8 Major League Baseball (MLB) teams over a 25-year career set the record for longevity when he retired at the age of 49 years old in 2012.
Fast-ball pitcher Bartolo Colon who is in his 20th year at 42 years old holds the active pitcher record for longevity.
The average tenure for a major league pitcher is about six years. Yet, a few pitchers seem to have almost preternatural longevity. Indeed, pitchers seem more likely than catchers, infielders or outfielders to last more than a decade.
Notably, Jamie Moyer had Tommy John surgery and credits it for extending his playing career. Bartolo Colon had stem cell treatments and famously credited them with helping him avoid Tommy John surgery.
When Major League Baseball (MLB) pitchers experience the inevitable pain of their profession, they think about recovery, getting back on the field as quickly as possible, but also the longer-term effect of the injury and whether it could lead to subsequent surgeries and a shorter career.
Tommy John surgery, otherwise known as Ulnar Collateral Ligament Reconstruction (UCLR), is arguably the most popular surgery among pitchers. Some say that it has extended their playing career. Recent studies have found that pitchers who had the surgery were able to play for approximately another 3.9 ± 2.84 seasons before retiring.
Little, however, is known about the role of injury and, by extension, surgery in the timing of MLB pitchers retiring.
One study, “Reasons for Retirement Following Ulnar Collateral Ligament Reconstruction Among Major League Baseball Pitchers,” published in the December, 2017 issue of Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine, sought to determine the answers to those questions.
Brandon J. Erickson, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon in the division of sports and shoulder at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, and corresponding author of the study told OTW, “The most surprising, but encouraging result of the study was that pitchers who had a history of a UCLR were no more likely to retire from shoulder or elbow issue than pitchers with no history of a UCLR.”
Understanding Why Pitchers Retire
For this study, Erickson and colleagues wanted to determine why and when MLB pitchers who underwent UCLR retired from baseball and then compare the answers to those of pitchers who never underwent the surgery. Brandon and colleagues hoped that by identifying any common reasons they could possibly increase the length of a pitcher’s career by preventing its occurrence.
Erickson and colleagues identified all MLB pitchers who underwent UCLR through publicly available data and then they were matched based on sex, age, draft year and draft round to a cohort of pitchers who didn’t have the surgery. Then reasons for retirement were determined for those pitchers who no longer pitch in the MLB.
According to the data, 153 MLB pitchers underwent UCLR between 1974 and 2015 and are currently retired. The mean ±SD (Standard Deviations) time to retirement was 4.4 ±4.7 years (range, 0-26 years) after the index year in the control groups and 4.4 ± 3.5 years (range, 0-15 years) after surgery in the UCLR group (p = .388).
In addition, shoulder injury as a reason for retirement was more common in the control group than the UCLR group (p = .011). Elbow injury as a reason for retirement was not more common in either group (p =.379), and leg injury as a reason for retirement was more common in the control group (p = .013). Also, performance as a reason for retirement was more common in the UCLR group than the control group (p < .001).
