PHILADELPHIA – The whole thing is absurd, but this is Bryce Harper and everything about his career has defied convention. There’s never been a recovery from Tommy John surgery like this because instead of spending it in isolation like most, Harper has stayed on with the Phillies. His recovery process is public—not in the back fields of a faraway training complex. Every move he makes is filmed. He flew through all checkpoints faster than club officials expected.
This really happens. Harper achieves one of the fastest results in reconstructive elbow surgery of all time. He has a doctor’s appointment in Los Angeles in early May when the Phillies are there for the back half of a six-game road trip.
“If we get clearance from the doctor, we’ll see when he can start DHing,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said Thursday. “But it shouldn’t be too far after that.”
It’s possible Harper could be in the lineup the first weekend in May — or shortly thereafter — once the Phillies return home from California. As long as the doctor clears him. The Phillies are operating, team sources said, as if that were a plausible scenario.
Unwrap the details and it’s even more absurd. Harper underwent surgery on November 23. He was able to return less than six months after reconstruction of his right (throwing) elbow. He would do it without playing in minor league rehab games. He would beat the vague timeline — “sometime until the All-Star break” set by the Phillies on the day of his surgery — by more than two months.
But the Phillies have always said they would move at Harper’s pace — as long as the doctors, athletic trainers, and strength coaches approved. Team officials remained open to Harper’s return date but were surprised by the pace.
Harper completed his first on-field batting practice on April 5 at Yankee Stadium. In the 15 days since, Harper has spent a lot of time learning first base. But his main focus has been his hitting as he is fully cleared to swing with no restrictions at the moment.
Bryce Harper plays groundballs at first base before a game last week. (Rich Schultz/Getty Images)
Harper played catch from 60 feet on Thursday — the first time since last year. That was a milestone. But it has nothing to do with his timetable for returning as DH. There is no indication of when he might play on the field. The final caveat Harper needs to clear for DH: full-intensity slides, including dives back to first base on a pickoff. For example, even if he slides feet-first into second base, his elbow may touch the ground. The reconstructed elbow is at risk of rupture for a certain time after the operation.
In Los Angeles, Harper becomes Dr. Visit Neal ElAttrache, an orthopedic surgeon who has become baseball’s most famous doctor. He performed the surgery on Harper and is the doctor of choice for Harper’s agent Scott Boras. If the Phillies had pushed Harper to the point of risk, Boras would have stepped in.
Instead, the process continued until that consistent doctor’s appointment.
“I think the plan really is that we cover whatever we need to cover beforehand,” Thomson said. “And then we’ll talk to the doctor and find out when is the best time to start DHing.”
Harper chose to rehab with the Phillies because it was the most comfortable environment for him. He spent hours beating trainer Kevin Long to regain his momentum. He takes on rehabilitating big league pitchers Ranger Suárez and Nick Nelson. He received immediate feedback from Paul Buchheit, the club’s head athletic coach, who oversees everything.
But there’s no precedent for what Harper is trying to do.
A 2018 study of position players undergoing Tommy John surgery, published in the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery, found that the average time it took a player to return to their previous professional level was 382 days or It was 12.5 months – more than twice as long as Harper’s projected return.
The study, authored by a team of orthopedic surgeons and athletic trainers, looked at 168 Tommy John surgeries on position players from 1984 to 2015. The fastest return the study identified was 154 days. This was accomplished by an infielder, and it is unknown if he returned to the majors or minors. Second baseman Tony Womack had the fastest recorded return of any Big League; He didn’t miss a game and it took him just 182 days to return to the pitch in 2004.
When Harper returns against the Red Sox at Citizens Bank Park on May 5, it will be 163 days since he had Tommy John surgery.
The study divided positional players into three categories: catchers, infielders, and outfielders. There was no specific designation for someone just returning as a hitter, which Harper does. The closest comparison is Shohei Ohtani, who returned to the Angels in 2019 as DH just 218 days after his Tommy John surgery.
One of the study’s authors, Stan Conte, told The Athletic that a best-case scenario for a position player returning solely as a designated batsman after Tommy John’s surgery typically takes six months — and nine to 11 months to complete to play field as before.
Conte, who spent decades working in baseball for the Giants, Dodgers and Marlins and now leads Conte Injury Analytics, has led the sport’s research efforts to better understand the causes of Tommy John surgeries and their recovery. He didn’t treat Harper. He expressed concern about a player rushing his return from reconstructive elbow surgery and skipping rehab games.
“You know, I’ve never met him. I never spoke to him,” said Conte. “But he is a confident player. So trust me They’ll talk about it (he doesn’t slide upside down). And in the beginning he can slip feet first a few times. But then he relaxes and goes headfirst when he’s used to it. But those are the risks that come with everything. I mean you could wait 12 months for him and he could still do something to break the tape. We saw it.”
But in Harper’s case, Conte noted that a left batter who had right elbow surgery is a favorable scenario because there’s more stress on the left elbow when Harper scores.
Harper tested this theory with his hitting on the field. They look like the distinctive, violent Harper swings. The Phillies called on Victor Vargas, a 22-year-old right-hander who played in the A-ball last year, to pitch at Harper Thursday afternoon. They turned on the pitch clock to simulate a real bat at Citizens Bank Park. There were no cages or screens — just one behind Harper that acted as a backstop, protecting a Trackman device and a Phillies employee who monitored the swings from an iPad. At one point, Harper took a seat and turned to ask if the tracking software thought she was in the zone for a strike.
Harper hit some of Vargas’ pitches wide. The unknown in all of this is what Harper can do against big-league pitching upon his return, but the Phillies are convinced at-bats in the minors won’t do much for him.
“It doesn’t look like he’s going to be in rehab,” Thomson said. “We’ve got all the stuff that we do here – we bring in pitchers to simulate bats, we have this new projection machine downstairs where you can put every pitcher on video on the planet and replicate his stuff – so he’s down there on the bats get close. So we think as far as DHing goes, we’ve got all the bases covered.”
The Phillies had braced themselves for the realities of this trial. There are often setbacks. Harper has felt pain as he increased his activity. But it wasn’t enough to stop his progress. His body responded better than anyone ever expected.
A boom-or-bust Phillies offense, shut out for the third time in six games Thursday, would look very different with Harper in the middle of the batting order. The Phillies have insisted they would not rush their star’s return based on how the team played in April. There are bigger priorities.
But they won’t get in the way if the doctor says it’s okay.
“We are encouraged by his progress,” said Thomson. “He’s coming with me.”
GO DEEPER
In Bryce Harper’s At-Bat Forever: The Phillies star watches again, reliving the swing of his life
— Jayson Stark of The Athletic contributed to this report.
(Top Photo: Rich Schultz/Getty Images)