TommyJohnTracker
A recovery-focused companion for baseball families and fans tracking pitchers coming back from UCL (Tommy John) surgery, with rehab-appearance logs and return-to-velocity signals.
Parents of high-school and college pitchers, plus fans following MLB pitcher comebacks
- Per-pitcher rehab timeline with expected return windows based on surgery date
- Velocity and spin-rate trend tracker from rehab appearances
- Plain-language explanations of what each rehab outing milestone means
- Family-friendly checklist for at-home arm-care routines during a teen pitcher's recovery
Chad Dallas's 2024 Tommy John surgery and 2026 return is one of countless active pitcher comebacks; families and fans need a dedicated follow-along tool that mainstream scoreboards ignore.
Tommy John surgeries are widespread (36% of active MLB pitchers per Pottsmerc 2024; ~53 projected for 2024 alone) and an existing community-curated Google Sheet (MLBPlayerAnalys) plus the Track-A-Pitch Tommy John Tracker page show real follow-along interest, but the Chad Dallas search volume and niche parent/fan crossover is modest — not blockbuster demand.Baseball Injury Prevention: Why is Tommy John Surgery on the Rise? ↗Track-A-Pitch: Pitch Counter - Tommy John Tracker ↗
Track-A-Pitch already ships a 'Tommy John Tracker' dashboard (count by year, state, level, top surgeons) and MLBPlayerAnalys maintains a free public Google Sheet of surgeries — so the rehab/return tracker niche is partially occupied rather than wide open.Track-A-Pitch: Pitch Counter - Tommy John Tracker ↗Tommy John Surgery List (@MLBPlayerAnalys) - Google Sheets ↗
Baseball parents do pay for pitch-count/coaching tools (GameChanger, PitchKount, Track-A-Pitch), but Tommy John rehab is a transient 12–18 month need for a small subset; no evidence yet of users paying for a dedicated recovery tracker, and the broader MLB-fan audience largely consumes this content free via MLB.com injury pages.Home - PitchKount ↗GameChanger Baseball - g.c ↗
UCL tears have structurally risen since 2012 (avg doubled from 2.7 to 6.2 per leanblog analysis) and are accelerating with the pitch clock, giving the topic multi-year tailwind; 36% of active MLB pitchers have had the procedure.Analyzing MLB Tommy John Surgeries: Data Insights and Trends from 2000-2024 ↗MLB Pitch Clock Causing Rise In Injuries & Tommy John Surgeries ↗
An MVP aggregating public surgery lists (MLBPlayerAnalys), team injury feeds (MLB.com transaction pages), and velocity stats from Baseball Savant is straightforward to build — Track-A-Pitch already proves the data pipeline exists; rehab-appearance logs would require light crowdsourcing.Blue Jays injuries and roster moves - MLB.com ↗Track-A-Pitch: Pitch Counter - Tommy John Tracker ↗