A year ago today, Sean Johnson was confined to his couch with a blood hose coming out of his elbow and his arm wrapped up in gauze, stabilized by a sling. It was not an ideal place for a guy expected to anchor the back end of the Ole Miss weekend rotation in 2015. Johnson was a day removed from the most significant elbow operation a baseball player can have: Tommy John surgery.
Tommy John surgery is every pitcher’s worst nightmare. It involves replacing the ulnar collateral ligament in the patient’s elbow with another tendon extracted elsewhere in the body.