A god damn shame: All-Star pitcher Jonny Venters blows out his pitching elbow for a fourth time, requiring a fourth Tommy John surgery or face retirement.
I haven’t followed baseball too fervently all season, but one thing that I have been keeping tabs on all season was the progress of Jonny Venters. Between 2010 and 2012, he was pretty much one of the best relief pitchers in all of baseball pitching for the Braves, and I was a super fan of this guy with a ridiculous power sinker from the left side, making All-Star sluggers look pedestrian and notching strikeouts and delivering in the clutch as easily as a mathematician reciting the times tables.
But in 2012, the dominance ride came to a crashing halt as Venters tore his UCL which is to say blowing out the elbow, which means the three letters that no professional athlete wants to ever hear: TJS, Tommy John Surgery. This would be the second time in Venters’ career that he would undergo the surgery, as he had his first one while climbing up the Braves’ minor league system.
TJS’s are no joke, since the rough summary is that the rehabilitation process usually requires months of painstakingly droll and monotonous rehab before actual strength and muscle training can even begin. The average timeline of TJS rehab ranges anywhere from 12-18 months, so it’s not only is it an invasive surgery, it removes players from the game for a lengthy time, chewing away at their already limited playing careers’ clocks and hampering earning potential.
The potential of Jonny Venters was great enough for the Braves to gamble on the lost service time due to rehab, and continued to keep him regardless of the fact that he was not going to even be capable of pitching at all in 2013, and banked on 2014 for a return. When I finally made my way to Braves Spring Training in March of 2014, I remember seeing Jonny Venters throwing on one of the backfields, excited at the idea of potentially seeing Venters suit up for the Braves again and mow down major leaguers.
Unfortunately, that never came to fruition because not long after I saw Venters in Orlando, he ended up tearing his UCL an unprecedented third time. His 2014 season was immediately over without throwing a pitch in a game, and he was faced with the decision of a third TJS, or retirement. The list of MLB pitchers to return who have undergone three TJS’s can be counted on one hand, but seeing as how Venters was still but 29 years old in 2014, he opted for surgery again.
However it was at this point that the Braves simply couldn’t justify a non-player taking up a roster spot, so they had no choice but to cut him. As a fan, this made me sad, but I understood from the business standpoint. I knew that I was going to support Venters’ career, regardless of where it took him next.
The Tampa Bay Rays took the next gamble on Venters, and signed him to a two-year minor league deal, fully understanding that they would essentially be getting no return on the first year as he’d be on rehabilitation again. I hoped that things would go better this time, and that I’d get to see Venters pitch for the Rays, a team that I have no qualms with.
Which brings us to present time. A month ago, Jonny Venters suited up for the Port Charlotte Stone Crabs, a low-level affiliate of the Rays. The plan was to ease him back into the professional game against lower competition, and see how the arm held up, before promoting to Triple-A, before ostensibly bringing him up to the Major League squad. He reportedly was hitting as high as 93 mph on his fastball. I texted a close friend of mine, a season-ticket holder for the Durham Bulls, the Rays’ Triple-A squad, to keep his eyes peeled for a guy named Jonny Venters, and extolled how he was once one of the best relief pitchers in baseball just a few years ago, and to expect some relief excellence soon.
But then career tragedy struck, and it turns out that Jonny Venters had torn his thrice-reconstructed UCL, for the fourth time. I noticed that there was quite some time between Venters’ last appearance in Port Charlotte, and I had wondered why he hadn’t been called up to Durham yet. I had been perusing the Gwinnett Braves’ schedule to see if Durham had any more trips to Georgia, and fathomed ways to go catch a Bulls game, so I could try to meet Jonny Venters again in the custom-printed Venters shirt that I’m probably the only one who has one outside of his family. But now, that’s not going to be possible anymore.
As the subject says, this fourth injury breaks my baseball heart for Jonny Venters, because pretty much nothing worse could happen to a career than fourth elbow blowout, much less the three prior ones. To my understanding, nobody has overcome four Tommy John surgeries, so what lies ahead for Jonny Venters is either retirement, or attempting to do something that nobody in the history of the game has done before.
Even if he opts for surgery again, he’s likely to miss all of 2017. Even if he opts for surgery again, he’ll likely be 33 years old when he’s even remotely close to being cleared for any throwing program, much less integration into professional baseball. Even if he opts for surgery again, it’s a question whether or not there’s even a tendon left in Jonny Venters’ body that can be used to reconstruct the elbow, a fourth time; if he does it, he might actually have to use the tendon from a cadaver, which is a very legitimate, albeit it seemingly morbid-sounding option.
And even if he opts for surgery again, it’s going to be an extremely hard sell for his agent to try and sell a 33 year old Jonny Venters with a history of four TJS’s to any team; the old adage is that lefty pitchers can be employed forever, but in today’s even stingier-becoming game, analysis will dictate on whether or not Jonny Venters will be worth a flyer.
I’m sad for Jonny Venters that his career has taken yet another horrible setback. He was undoubtedly one of the best pitchers in baseball for a brief time, and it’s a crime in itself that the game is denied such a talent, because The Arm is such a mysterious anomaly when it comes to the unpredictable durability or fragility of it.
Personally, I’d want Venters to opt for surgery, and attempt to not only do the impossible, and become the only guy to recover from four Tommy John Surgeries and then become a bullpen monster again, but given what I’ve learned about the mentally taxing rehabilitation process of TJS, I can’t say I’d be surprised if this is really the end of Jonny Venters.
