HOUSTON – The Houston Astros were dealt a crushing blow to their pitching rotation in the early portion of the summer, as the team announced starting pitchers Cristian Javier and Jose Urquidy were both ruled out for the remainder of the 2024 season.
Urquidy returned to Houston early during Spring Training with complaints of “forearm stiffness.” He made several rehab starts in the minors, but never suited up for the Astros this season.
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Javier made seven starts for the ‘Stros in the 2024 season, but had been out since May 27, also citing forearm discomfort.
RHP Cristian Javier and RHP José Urquidy scheduled to undergo elbow surgery. pic.twitter.com/l2j8NRGYoo
— Houston Astros (@astros) June 5, 2024
Despite losing Urquidy and Brown along with starting the season with a dismal 7-19 record, the Astros have bounced back and captured first place in the competitive AL West with a 55-51 record. Houston has relied on other pitchers in starting roles, like Spencer Arrighetti and Jake Bloss, both of whom made their major league debuts this season. Bloss was later traded to the Toronto Blue Jays as part of the package to acquire starting pitcher Yusei Kikuchi.
While the Astros were initially reluctant to identify the pitchers’ surgeries as “Tommy John”—the informal name for reconstructive surgery to the ulnar collateral ligament—MLB writer Brian McTaggart finally confirmed that the pitchers both had Tommy John surgeries in June.
This will be Javier’s first UCL repair, but Urquidy already had Tommy John surgery once before while he was in the minors, and this will be his second operation.
The recommended recovery time for UCL surgery is anywhere from 12-18 months, so both pitchers will miss the remainder of the 2024 season, and likely a portion of the 2025 season as well.
The recovery and difference in performance after having Tommy John surgery vary case-by-case, so it is difficult to determine if Urquidy and Javier will be back to full strength next year, or how long it will take them to get there.
Dr. David Lintner, a former president of Major League Baseball’s Team Physician Association, spoke to KPRC 2 about the overall procedure of a Tommy John surgery and why it has a recovery timeline that can be difficult to predict.
“The surgery involves repairing the torn ligament and reinforcing it with a piece of tendon, usually from the wrist,” Dr. Lintner said. “It takes months and months for that tendon to mature. Regardless of technology, the human body just takes a certain amount of time to mature. That’s where the one year [recovery time], give or take a couple months, comes in.”
Even with the uncertainty of such an intense operation, modern medicine has progressed to make full recoveries from Tommy John surgery much more common than they once were. However, that does not mean the procedure should be taken lightly.
Dean Doxakis, a Houston-based pitching performance coach and Vice President of Tom House Sports, said that while the majority of pitchers can mostly return to form after UCL operations, it is far from a perfect science.
“There’s a good chance that [recovery] can happen,” Doxakis said. “But what you don’t hear about is the 20 or 30 percent that don’t. And so that’s a good chunk of people’s dreams that go down the toilet because they were not handled or trained properly.
The Astros have an example of a success story post-Tommy John surgery, and they don’t have to look back very far to find it.
Star pitcher Justin Verlander went down with a forearm strain during the 2020 season, and it was later confirmed that he needed Tommy John surgery. After taking 2021 off to recover, Verlander returned in 2022. Not only was he able to bounce back, but he was stellar.
In his first season back on the bump, he took home the 2022 AL Cy Young Award and led the Astros to their second World Series title in franchise history.
It’s unclear how much of Verlander’s success can be attributed to his UCL recovery, but a takeaway for many is that it certainly played a major role. If Urquidy and Javier take similar approaches to their rehabilitation, Astros fans should be cautiously optimistic about a productive return to baseball.
At 6 p.m. tonight, KPRC 2 Investigates will break down how major arm injuries are impacting young athletes in the Houston community, creating a rise in Tommy John surgeries among teens.