No. This is the most persistent myth in baseball medicine, and it is not true. Tommy John surgery replaces a torn ligament so that an elbow can tolerate throwing again. It does not add velocity. The largest study of fastball speed before and after the operation in Major League pitchers found velocity slightly lower afterward, not higher. I get asked this question constantly, and the honest answer matters, because believing otherwise has led families to ask for surgery on elbows that do not need it.
What the velocity data actually shows
The most direct study of this question looked at 80 Major League pitchers and compared their pitch speeds before and after UCL reconstruction. Average fastball velocity went from 91.3 mph before surgery to 90.6 mph after — a decrease of 0.7 mph, and a statistically significant one. Curveball, changeup and slider velocities showed no meaningful change.
Breaking it down by age is more revealing than the overall average:
- Under 25: no significant change (91.2 to 91.7 mph).
- Ages 25 to 29: a significant decrease (91.8 to 91.0 mph).
- Ages 30 to 34: no significant change (90.4 to 90.3 mph).
- Age 35 and older: a decrease of 2.9 mph (91.7 to 88.8 mph), the largest drop in the study.
So the best case, in the youngest group, is that velocity comes back to roughly where it was. It does not go up because of the operation.
Being honest about a conflicting study
I want to give you the full picture rather than only the data that supports my point.
A 2025 analysis of 43 Major League pitchers who had surgery between 2017 and 2021, compared against 86 age-matched uninjured pitchers, did find fastball velocity higher after surgery than before. Two things are worth knowing about that finding. First, leaguewide fastball velocity climbed steadily across exactly those years, so some of that rise reflects the era rather than the operation. Second, the same study found that overall performance declined significantly in the first season after surgery and only returned to baseline in the second.
That is the pattern across the literature as a whole: pitchers who return generally get back to where they were. They do not arrive somewhere better.
Why so many people believe the opposite
This belief is widespread and measurable. When researchers surveyed players, parents and coaches, 28 percent of players and 20 percent of coaches believed that performance improves after the surgery. The American Sports Medicine Institute has put the figure believing surgery increases velocity at 25 to 50 percent of amateur players, parents and coaches, and states plainly that it is not true.
There are four reasons the myth survives, and each one is a real effect being misread:
- The comparison is rigged by the injury. Most pitchers who end up needing reconstruction spent months throwing on a failing ligament, losing velocity and command the whole time. When they come back healthy and throw harder than they did in that final compromised season, it looks like the surgery made them better. It did not. It returned them to their own baseline after a period when they were pitching hurt.
- The rehabilitation is the real intervention. Recovery involves twelve to eighteen months of supervised, individualized strength and conditioning — often the most rigorous training of the athlete's life, and frequently the first time anyone has addressed their hips, core, scapular control and mechanics. ASMI attributes post-surgical gains to exactly this: the surgeon fixing the problem, followed by the athlete working intensely with a support staff. An athlete who did that program without surgery would also throw harder.
- Young athletes grow during the year off. A sixteen-year-old who has surgery and returns at eighteen is taller, heavier and stronger. That is maturation. It would have happened anyway.
- You only hear about the ones who came back. Roughly 10 to 20 percent of pitchers never return to their previous level. Those players do not generate stories about how surgery transformed them.
There is no mechanism for it to work
Set the statistics aside for a moment and think about what the operation does. A tendon graft is passed through bone tunnels to restore stability to a joint that had become unstable. Velocity is produced by the kinetic chain — legs, hips, trunk, shoulder — with the elbow transmitting force rather than generating it. A ligament's job is to keep the joint together while that happens. Making it stable does not make it a bigger engine.
This is borne out in the biomechanics. A study conducted jointly by Major League Baseball and the American Sports Medicine Institute found no differences in pitching biomechanics between professional pitchers with a history of Tommy John surgery and professional pitchers with no history of injury. The reconstructed arm does not throw differently. It throws the same.
The part that concerns me
This myth has a consequence, and it is the reason I take the question seriously rather than brushing it off.
In the same survey research, 51 percent of high school athletes, 37 percent of parents, 30 percent of coaches and 26 percent of collegiate athletes said they would support ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction in a player who had no injury at all — as a way to improve performance.
I will not do that operation, and no responsible surgeon will. Performing reconstruction on a healthy elbow means accepting the risk of nerve injury, stiffness, infection and graft failure, giving up a year or more of playing time, and replacing a normal ligament with a graft — in exchange for no benefit whatsoever. It is not a performance procedure. It is a repair for something that is broken.
If a parent comes to me asking whether surgery will help their healthy son throw harder, the answer is no, and the better conversation is about workload, mechanics, rest and physical preparation — the things that actually build velocity and that actually protect an elbow.
What the surgery does deliver
None of this means the operation does not work. It works well when it is indicated.
Published series report that roughly 83 percent of Major League pitchers return to pitch in the Major Leagues after reconstruction, and only about 3 percent fail to return to either the Major or minor leagues. Pitchers generally perform comparably to their pre-injury selves, with some series reporting lower ERA and WHIP after surgery than before.
That is the honest promise of Tommy John surgery: it can give you your career back. It cannot give you a career you did not already have.
The bottom line
Tommy John surgery does not make pitchers throw harder. The largest direct study of velocity found a small decrease overall, with the sharpest drop in pitchers over 35 and no significant gain at any age. What people mistake for a velocity boost is a combination of comparing against a season spent pitching injured, the effect of a year of elite rehabilitation, normal growth in young athletes, and only hearing about the players who made it back. The operation restores a damaged elbow. It does not upgrade a healthy one, and it should never be performed on one.
References — publish at the bottom of the page, smaller type
- Lansdown DA, Feeley BT. The effect of ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction on pitch velocity in Major League Baseball pitchers. Orthop J Sports Med. 2014;2(2):2325967114522592.
- Ahmad CS, Grantham WJ, Greiwe RM. Public perceptions of Tommy John surgery. Phys Sportsmed. 2012;40(2):64-72.
- Erickson BJ, Chalmers PN, Bush-Joseph CA, Romeo AA. The epidemic of Tommy John surgery: the role of the orthopedic surgeon. Am J Orthop. 2015;44(1):E36-E37.
- Quinn M, Ge J, Ham J, Ahn B, Wu A, Milner JD, Lemme NJ, Owens BD, Verma NN. Effect of ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction on performance in Major League Baseball pitchers: a 2-year analysis of advanced pitching statistics, velocity, and spin rate. Am J Sports Med. 2025;53(6).
- American Sports Medicine Institute. Position statement for Tommy John injuries in baseball pitchers. asmi.org.
