Mets News from the Minors: Tommy John Surgery claims Matt Allan

I don’t think you can be successful in today’s baseball world without underdoing Tommy John Surgery, can you? It seems like a rite of passage for all successful big league pitchers. Look no further than the New York Mets.

Jacob deGrom underwent the career-saving surgery back in 2010 long before we knew what a stud he would be. A year later, Carlos Carrasco, underwent it, too. The whole reason we’re not seeing Noah Syndergaard every fifth day is—yes you guessed it—because of Tommy John Surgery.

So to learn that Mets pitching prospect Matt Allan is undergoing the same, it doesn’t catch me off guard.

Matt Allan is just one of many on a list of Mets pitchers who overcame Tommy John Surgery

Taijuan Walker! He’s another current Mets pitcher who had the surgery. Seriously. Should this be a requirement to pitch in the big leagues?

Back to Allan, who at some point dropped the “thew” from the end of his first name. He’s Matt Allan now just as Peter Alonso became Pete Alonso.

This news about Allan might sting those excited to see him pitch a full year down in the minors. I know I was excited to see what the freshly-turned-20-year-old could do.

Fortunately, Allan is a very young man. The 2021 season will be a wash and there’s a good chance he won’t get many starts at all in 2022. If all goes well, he’ll return to playing regularly in 2023 when he’s still a fresh-faced 22-year-old. That’s the benefit of drafting high school kids as opposed to ones coming out of college. A major setback like this isn’t so much a setback as it is a temporary delay.

Now minus Allan, the top pitching prospect the Mets have is J.T. Ginn—a guy who has yet to pitch a professional game because of, well, Tommy John Surgery.

Exclude him and Thomas Szapucki might be the best young arm on the farm. Want to know which surgery he has on his resume? If you guessed TJS, you win!

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I don’t think this injury to Allan has much to do with missing all of 2020 because of the pandemic. As we can see, Tommy John Surgery has been claiming pitchers for many years now. Throwing is an unnatural motion and thanks to Dr. Frank Jobe, the first to perform the surgery, pitchers are able to return and look sometimes supernatural.