When it comes to baseball’s best young pitchers, fans need to adopt a simple motto:Â Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
On Monday, 21-year-old Marlins ace Jose Fernandez was placed on the 15-day disabled list with a sprained right elbow. On Tuesday, he reportedly was diagnosed with a torn ulnar collateral ligament and recommended for Tommy John surgery.
Fernandez, who won the NL Rookie of the Year award last season, was off to another incredible start, with a 4-2 record, 2.44 ERA and major league-best 70 strikeouts. His 12.19 strikeouts per nine innings ranks as the second-best rate ever in a single season for a pitcher younger than 24.
It’s another terrible blow for baseball, which will potentially lose one of the game’s fastest-rising stars for 12 to 18 months, just the latest exhilarating arm to succumb to this troubling trend.
Starting with Tommy John’s surgery in 1974, the Major Leagues had never had more than four players undergo the procedure through 1995. Since 2000, at least 25 players have had the surgery. Already this season, 33 players have decided to have the surgery, according to multiple lists which track the surgery’s history.
Here is a look back at some of the players who were on the fast track to the Cy Young and wound up having Tommy John:
Matt Harvey
The wound is still fresh for Mets fans, who likely won’t see their ace pitch all season. After a 10-game preview in 2012, Harvey took over New York — and baseball — in his first full season of 2013, starting the All-Star Game at Citi Field. An elbow injury ended Harvey’s season in August, having gone 9-5 with a 2.27 ERA and 191 strikeouts in 27 starts, earning him a fourth-place finish in Cy Young voting.
Kerry Wood
As a rookie with the Cubs in 1998, the 20-year-old earned instant attention by tying the Major League record with 20 strikeouts in a single game. Wood, who would go on to win the NL Rookie of the Year award, went 13-6 with a 3.40 ERA and posted 12.58 strikeouts per nine innings, the third-greatest single-season mark in baseball history. He would undergo the surgery before the next season. Despite a solid 14-year career, Wood never won more than 14 games in a season and never received a Cy Young vote.
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Stephen Strasburg
The Nationals’ uber-hyped No. 1 overall pick in 2009 exceeded expectations by striking out 14 batters in his first major league game, in June 2010. By August, the flame-throwing phenom’s season was done after 10 starts, having suffered the arm injury that would keep him out for all but five games the next season. Strasburg’s 2.91 ERA as a rookie was accompanied by 12.18 strikeouts per nine innings, the third-best single-season mark in history for pitchers younger than 24.
Francisco Liriano
In a season when Johan Santana won a Cy Young Award with the Twins, he was upstaged by his 22-year-old teammate. In 2006, Liriano pitched his first full season, making the All-Star team and looking like a frontrunner for the Cy Young and Rookie of the Year awards before an arm injury cut the southpaw’s season short in August — and cost him the 2007 season. Liriano finished the season 12-3 with a 2.16 ERA and 10.7 strikeouts per nine innings, each mark better than Santana’s. Liriano won 16 games with a 3.02 ERA last season for the Pirates, his best campaign since going under the knife.
Josh Johnson
Seven seasons before Fernandez’s injury, the Marlins lost 23-year-old ace Josh Johnson to Tommy John surgery. In his rookie season in 2006, Johnson finished fourth in the Rookie of the Year voting, after going 12-7 with a 3.10 ERA. He has averaged fewer than 20 starts from 2007 to 2013 as he coped with a variety of arm woes, and had his second career TJ procedure this spring after signing with the Padres.
Matt Moore
Tampa Bay’s latest young arm made two starts this year before having season-ending surgery. Moore, an All-Star in 2013, finished his sophomore season with a 17-4 record and 3.29 ERA. He had opened the season 8-0, becoming the first southpaw under the age of 23 to do so since Babe Ruth in 1917.
Kris Medlen
After two seasons as a reliever and one Tommy John surgery, Medlen became a starter for the Braves in 2012, going 10-1 with a 1.57 ERA. In 2013, he posted 15 wins and a 3.11 ERA, but this March had his second Tommy John surgery.
Adam Wainwright
The Cardinals ace had cemented himself as one of the game’s best pitchers, finishing third in Cy Young voting in 2009 and second in 2010, but Wainwright would miss the entire 2011 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery. After an inconsistent 2012, Wainwright’s dominance was back on display last season, as he went 19-9 with a 2.94 ERA to finish second in Cy Young voting.
Edinson Volquez
Following being traded for Josh Hamilton, Volquez went 17-6 with a 3.21 ERA as a 24-year-old in his first season in Cincinnati in 2008. After an All-Star appearance and a fourth-place finish in the Rookie of the Year voting, Volquez was sidelined the next season. He has never posted an ERA below four since that breakout season, leading the National League in walks in 2012 and earned runs allowed in 2013.
Jason Isringhausen
The most successful member of “Generation K” never had the career many envisioned. In 1998, after parts of three subpar seasons with the Mets, Isringhausen had the first of three Tommy John surgeries in his career. The Mets traded him the following year, beginning his successful relief career, in which he recorded 300 saves.