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Tommy John spent 26 seasons pitching in the majors from 1963–74 and then 1976–89, more than any player besides Nolan Ryan, but his level of fame – and indeed, his contribution to the game — stems as much from the year that cleaves that span as it does from his work on the mound. As the first recipient of the most famous sports medicine procedure of all time, the elbow ligament replacement surgery performed by Dr. Frank Jobe in late 1974 that now bears his name, John endured an arduous year-long rehab process before returning to pitch as well as ever. His recovery gave hope to generations of injured pitchers whose careers might otherwise have ended.

By the count of analyst Jon Roegele, keeper of the Tommy John Surgery List, over 2,700 professional players have undergone some variant of Jobe’s pioneering surgery on John during either their amateur or professional careers. That list ranges from Brent Strom — who did not make it back to the majors after becoming the second recipient of Jobe’s ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction technique but went on to become a successful pitching coach — to Hunter Greene, who just underwent his second Tommy John last week. So far, only three are in the Hall of Fame, namely Paul Molitor (the first position player to undergo the surgery), John Smoltz, and Billy Wagner, but Justin Verlander, Chris Sale, and Shohei Ohtani will almost certainly follow in their wake, with more to come. By Roegele’s accounting, over 39% of all major league pitchers in 2025 had undergone Tommy John surgery.

On the mound, John was the epitome of the “crafty lefty,” so good at his vocation that he arrived on the major league scene at age 20 and made his final appearance three days after his 46th birthday. His 700 starts and 288 wins are both more than any other 20th- or 21st-century pitcher outside the Hall of Fame except Roger Clemens, but John’s longevity, his more dominant cohorts — including six 300-game winners — and the surgery that bears his name have overshadowed the rest of his on-field accomplishments. Between going 0-for-15 on BBWAA ballots (where he topped out at 31.7%) and 0-for-5 on Era Committee ballots (where he peaked at 43.8% on the 2025 Classic Baseball ballot), he never came particularly close to election, though in 2013, he got a share of the spotlight when the Hall honored Jobe.

Alas, if John is to be inducted into the Hall, it will be posthumously, as he passed away on Saturday at the age of 83 at his home in Lakewood Ranch, Florida. He had recently entered hospice care after undergoing treatment for a recurrence of bladder cancer, for which he was previously treated in 2024. On August 8, in conjunction with the Yankees holding their annual Old Timers’ Day, he released a farewell statement:

On this 78th Old-Timers’ Day, Tommy John shares a message to his fans, former teammates, and the Yankees organization as he battles health issues from his home in Bradenton, Florida. pic.twitter.com/3lKUWHoaw0

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) August 8, 2026

Current Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole, who returned from March 2025 Tommy John surgery in May, aptly summarized John’s impact in the wake of his death:

“I think the first thing that comes to mind is just how much of a trailblazer he was, and what great perseverance he had, venturing into the unknown with the surgery, and really writing the book, writing the script for how to push through it and overcome it, and ultimately have success afterwards. In Tommy’s instance, it extended his career and gave him a second half, and I’m a beneficiary of that. Other pitchers have been a beneficiary of that, late in your career, get a second bite at the apple, and what a blessing it is that we get to see these great players continue on such a great path, and it’s because of Tommy John and Dr. [Frank] Jobe.”

A sinkerballer who relied upon his command and control to limit hard contact, John didn’t overpower hitters. According to the radar guns that became popular in the 1970s, his fastball generally sat in the 85–87 mph range, but between that pitch’s downward fade and his ability to vary the break on his curveball by changing speeds, he routinely missed barrels and generated a ton of groundballs. Based on data that goes back to 1910 — and thus doesn’t include the full careers of Cy Young or any 19th-century pitchers — the 604 double plays John generated are by far the most of any pitcher in that span; former teammate Jim Kaat (462) is a distant second.

John was also exceptional at avoiding both walks and homers, posting one of his league’s 10 lowest rates (per nine innings) a dozen times in each category; he had his league’s lowest home run rate three times and its lowest walk rate once. Adjusted for his park and league environments via our indexed Plus Stats — where 100 is league average — his 70 HR/9+ ranks 29th among pitchers with at least 2,000 innings since 1901, while his 73 BB/9+ ranks 88th. In addition to ranking eighth all-time in starts, John ranks 18th in batters faced (19,692), 19th in losses (231), 20th in innings (4,710.1), and 26th in both wins and shutouts (46). He’s 65th in strikeouts (2,245), which is respectable but far short of the 3,000 that has generally punched a ticket to Cooperstown for pitchers short of 300 wins.

John was selected to four All-Star teams, and twice finished as the runner-up in the Cy Young voting. He was a key starter on five clubs that reached the postseason and three that won pennants, though he wound up on the losing end of the World Series each time. All of that, save for his 1968 American League All-Star selection, happened after his surgery.

Thomas Edward John Jr. was born on May 22, 1943 in Terre Haute, Indiana to parents Thomas Sr. — a lineman for Public Service Indiana, a local power company — and Ruth John. As a boy, the younger John collected empty Coca Cola bottles, and saved enough refunded deposits to purchase Bob Feller’s How to Pitch. The book recommended using strings to create a strike zone target, which Tommy and his father built in their backyard, and which helped the budding young pitcher hone his command — a skill every bit as important to a finesse-oriented lefty as it was to an overpowering righty such as Rapid Robert.

John cut his teeth playing sandlot ball and more organized games at Terre Haute’s Spencer F. Ball Park, a three-block square with about 10 baseball diamonds used for everything from pickup games to those of two rival high schools, Garfield and Gerstmeyer, the latter of which he attended.

“We played at Spencer constantly. Summers were the best,” recalled John in 2013, when a softball diamond was dedicated as Tommy John Field. “You could find games going on all the time. I’d ride my bike down to Spencer in the morning and get in a game. Even if my team wasn’t scheduled to play, I’d hang around, because somebody would invariably come up short. You’d always be in a game. You may not be playing the position you’d normally play, but you were playing baseball. To me, that was all that mattered.”

At Gerstmeyer, John excelled in basketball as well as baseball, so much so that the rangy, 6-foot-3 teenager was recruited by legendary Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp, and had over 50 basketball scholarship offers but just one for baseball (few colleges gave those out in those days). When Rupp paid a visit to their household, the senior John told the coach that his son would probably bypass college to pursue professional baseball. As the pitcher recalled in 2015:

Rupp said, “Well, we have a pretty good baseball team down in Kentucky, and your son might even be able to make our team.” My dad never liked Rupp, but that really made him mad. He told Coach Rupp, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.” Rupp was furious. His assistant came in and tried to smooth things over, but it didn’t matter.

On the mound, John lacked a top-notch fastball but had a major league-caliber curveball that he learned from former Phillies minor leaguer Arley Andrews, a friend of his father. He pitched to a 28-2 record in high school, and while the Cleveland scout who signed him, John Schulte, expressed concern about his inability to overpower hitters, he nonetheless signed him for a hefty $40,000 bonus in June 1961, two weeks after John graduated high school and four years before the introduction of the amateur draft.

Speaking of graduation, John excelled academically and was named the valedictorian of his class, but because he had a stutter, school administrators prevented him from delivering a valedictory address at the graduation ceremony. Fifty-three years later, another Terre Haute high school (North Vigo, not Gerstmeyer), invited him to give a valedictory address at its ceremony, during which he recounted the advice he received from legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden during his rehab: “I tell my basketball players we gain strength through adversity… You’ve got to have adversity in your life to be a tougher, stronger person.”

John began his professional career at Cleveland’s Class-D Dubuque affiliate, going 10-4 with a 3.17 ERA in 99 innings in 1961. He split the next two seasons between Charleston — which itself jumped from Single-A to Double-A for 1963 — and Triple-A Jacksonville, and was rewarded with a late-season call-up. He debuted in the majors on September 6, 1963, with an inning against the Senators, allowing an unearned run on a Don Zimmer single. Eight days later, he made his first start, against the Angels, allowing four runs (one earned) in 6.2 innings and taking the loss. With Cleveland already well-stocked with young hurlers, including 23-year-old Luis Tiant and 21-year-old Sam McDowell, John split his 1964 season between the minors and the majors. He pitched far better than his 2-9 record indicated, suffering due to a lack of offensive support. During one six-start span in June and July, his team scored a total of nine runs for him. He also struggled to incorporate a slider taught to him by pitching coach (and future Hall of Famer) Early Wynn, which compromised his mechanics.

The following January, John was traded to the White Sox as part of a three-team, eight-player deal that sent slugger Rocky Colavito from the Kansas City A’s back to Cleveland. Still just 22 years old, John quickly emerged as a solid mid-rotation starter on the South Side, going 14-7 with a 3.09 ERA (102 ERA+) in 1965. That kicked off a seven-year stretch with the White Sox, during which he pitched to a 2.95 ERA (117 ERA+) and 3.20 FIP while averaging 213 innings and 3.4 WAR (the Baseball Reference version, as are all such figures cited here). In 1966, he posted a 2.62 ERA (121 ERA+) with five shutouts, tied for the AL lead with Tiant and McDowell, then followed that up with a 2.47 ERA (122 ERA+) with six shutouts, tied for the league lead with four other pitchers, including the Tigers’ Mickey Lolich. In 1968, the Year of the Pitcher, he posted a 1.98 ERA (also good for fifth in the league, and for a career-best 161 ERA+) with 5.6 WAR (sixth) and made his first All-Star team — his only one prior to surgery. His season ended on August 22, however, when Tigers second baseman Dick McAuliffe charged the mound after a couple of errant pitches. In the scuffle, McAuliffe kneed John in his left shoulder, separating it and tearing ligaments; he drew a five-game suspension.

John returned without much trouble, shutting out Oakland on four hits in his 1969 debut. He topped 5.0 WAR and placed in the league’s top 10 in that category both in that season and 1970, but by ’71, he was clashing with another pitching coach who pushed him to integrate a slider, the great Johnny Sain. According to Jon Weisman’s Brothers in Arms, John endured 12 weeks of frustration while trying to integrate the pitch before reconnecting with Sain’s predecessor, Ray Berres, who told him, “Stick that slider up your ass… You don’t add a pitch if it takes away from your other pitches.”

In his 1991 autobiography, TJ: My Twenty-Six Years in Baseball (co-written with Dan Valenti), John elaborated on Berres’ impact:

“I was blessed in that my ball naturally broke down. The sinkerball was my meal ticket. But I also learned the mechanics that added to my natural ball movement. I learned them when I was with the White Sox. Ray Berres, the pitching coach there, taught me to throw with my hand position going from straight up to straight down. It takes effort and a lot of practice to throw the ball that way, since the uncorrected tendency is to keep your hand positioned at an angle. It’s called throwing high-to-low, and that’s the way I pitched, driving the ball down with my hand and fingers.”

In December 1971, after a subpar campaign (13-16, 3.61 ERA), John and infielder Steve Huntz were traded to the Dodgers in exchange for slugger Dick Allen, who had spent just one year in Los Angeles and would go on to win AL MVP honors in his first year in Chicago. The trade was hardly one-sided, as John found a sympathetic collaborator in Dodgers pitching coach Red Adams, who told him to emphasize his sinker, which had plenty of movement to compensate for its lack of velocity.

In his first three seasons in Dodger blue, John pitched to a 2.89 ERA (119 ERA+) and 2.94 FIP. But on July 17, 1974, at a time that he led the National League with 13 wins for a team that would go on to win the pennant, the 31-year-old southpaw’s left arm went dead while throwing a pitch to the Expos’ Hal Breeden. “Right at the point where I put force on the pitch, the point where my arm is back and bent, something happened,” he later told Sports Illustrated’s Ron Fimrite. “It felt as if I had left my arm someplace else. It was as if my body continued to go forward and my left arm had just flown out to right field, independent of the rest of me.”

Dr. Jobe, who had removed bone chips from John’s elbow after the 1972 season, initially could not determine how damaged the pitcher’s elbow was. Rest and physical therapy proved inadequate; in an attempt to throw batting practice in August, John couldn’t even get the ball to home plate.

John asked Jobe to operate to alleviate what the doctor called “Overuse Syndrome.” The surgery to replace a ruptured elbow ligament had never been tried on a pitcher, and in general, surgical procedures on athletes were often seen as last resorts. This one truly was, but Jobe had learned a technique from Dr. Jacquelin Perry, a pioneering orthopedic surgeon who used grafts of palmeris longus tendons harvested from patients’ wrists to stabilize the ankles of polio patients. He believed something similar could work for an elbow.

“Would [the tendon] stay there? Would it receive blood vessels? Would it become part of his elbow? We didn’t know,” Jobe told MLB.com’s Doug Miller in 2013. “That’s why I told him he had about a one in 100 chance.”

For Jeff Passan’s 2016 book The Arm, Jobe confided, “I thought it had a ninety percent chance to work,” adding that he offered longer odds to avoid giving the pitcher false hope. John figured that his alternative to playing baseball was working for a friend’s car dealership back in Terre Haute, so he had nothing to lose. He told Passan that the doctor’s admission of fallibility won him over: “I knew he wasn’t bullshitting me… He’s a friend first, a doctor second. But when a doctor admits he’s not a god, a deity, and he can fuck up, that sold me.”

So on September 25, 1974, during a four-hour procedure, Jobe replaced John’s ruptured ulnar collateral ligament, drilling holes in his humerus and ulna, threading the palmaris longus tendon taken from John’s right wrist through them in a figure-eight pattern, and transposing the ulnar nerve. The initial surgery left John’s left hand as something of a useless claw, as he lacked sensation in his pinky and ring fingers, with his other three suffering from occasional discomfort as well. Three months later, Jobe operated again to reroute the ulnar nerve, which restored feeling to the hand.

John went to spring training with the Dodgers in 1975, undertaking a rehab for which there was no road map. “I worked hard seven days a week, on exercises Dr. Jobe gave me to strengthen the arm,” he told Valenti. “I worked as hard as I possibly could on my rehabilitation. I never wanted to look back and say: ‘Son of a gun, maybe if I’d worked a little harder in 1975, I might have come back.’”

Unable to throw yet and still struggling to regain full sensation in his fingers, John resorted to taping his damaged digits to his working ones to help him grip the ball. In June, finally, he could uncurl his fingers; in July, he could throw bullpens. On September 29, 1975, he finally got to pitch in a game situation, throwing three perfect innings in an Arizona Instructional League game, the first of five he worked.

Suffice it to say that the operation and the rehab worked. John’s tenacity on the latter front led the surgeon to defer to the pitcher when it came to naming the surgery: “The man himself did the hard work. He developed a rehabilitation program that stood the test of time.” Jobe often suggested that with better timing, Sandy Koufax — who retired after the 1966 season — might have benefited from his UCL reconstruction technique as well, saying, “If I was smart enough to do this 10 years before, it might be called the Koufax surgery.”

John returned to the Dodgers in fine form in 1976, throwing 207 innings with a 3.09 ERA (109 ERA+) and a 3.08 FIP. He won The Sporting News’ NL Comeback Player of the Year award as well as the Hutch Award, given annually to an active player “who best exemplifies the fighting spirit and competitive desire of Fred Hutchinson.” In 1977, he began a true career renaissance, winning 20 games for the first time, placing fifth in the league with a 2.78 ERA (138 ERA+), throwing a one-run complete game on three days of rest in the NLCS clincher against the Phillies, and finishing second behind Steve Carlton in the NL Cy Young race.

John made his first of three straight All-Star teams while helping the Dodgers to another pennant in 1978. He threw a four-hit shutout against the Phillies in the NLCS and then won the World Series opener against the Yankees, but New York prevailed in that series as they had the year before.

In the aftermath of the World Series, contract negotiations between the Dodgers and John — which had dragged on all season — broke down. “They made up my mind for me,” John told the Long Beach Press-Telegram’s Gordon Verrell. “They made an offer (on October 30), we made a counter offer which they rejected. We asked them if they would make any other offer and they said no.”

Thus, the 35-year-old John became a free agent. He initially had his sights set on the Reds, the Dodgers’ NL West rivals and one of the closest teams to his home in Terre Haute. In the re-entry draft — a now-bygone step that gave teams the right to negotiate with a free agent — John was one of five players selected by the maximum of 13 teams; the Dodgers were not among them. In the end, the Yankees signed him to a three-year, $1.2 million deal, with an option for the fourth year as well as a 20-year post-retirement contract to serve as a special assignment scout.

“I expect to pitch for six or seven more years,” said John at the time of the signing, adding, “My arm is only four years old.”

John made 36 starts in each of his first two seasons in pinstripes, totaling a whopping 541.2 innings while going 21-9 in 1979, and 22-9 in ’80, and making the All-Star team in both seasons. His 2.96 ERA ranked second in the AL in 1979, and his 5.5 WAR seventh. He again finished as the runner-up in the Cy Young race, this time to Mike Flanagan. On June 6, 1980, he threw a two-hit shutout against the Mariners in Seattle for his 200th career victory.

The Yankees missed the playoffs in 1979, and despite winning 103 games the following year, they were swept in the ALCS by the Royals. John departed Game 3 with the Yankees ahead 2-1 with two outs and the tying run on second base, but fireman Rich Gossage allowed a single to U L Washington and then a three-run homer to George Brett to put the Royals ahead for good.

The Yankees returned to the World Series in 1981 to face the Dodgers, that after John went 9-8 with a 2.63 ERA (136 ERA+) during the strike-shortened season. But for as strong as those numbers were, off the field John and his family were enduring difficult times. On August 13, 1981, just three days after the season resumed following the seven-week strike, his two-year-old son Travis fell through the screen of a third-story window and bounced off the front fender of a station wagon, fracturing his skull but probably saving his life. He spent nearly two weeks in a coma; during that time, his father took his turn in the rotation when the Yankees were at home and remained with his family when the team traveled. Thankfully, Travis recovered; by the time of his father’s start in Game 3 of the Division Series against the Brewers, he was able to throw out a ceremonial first pitch.

John allowed five runs in seven innings and took the loss in that start, but rebounded with six innings of one-run ball against the A’s in the ALCS opener. When the Yankees reached the World Series, he spun seven shutout innings against his old teammates in Game 2, but he had hard luck thereafter. Summoned into a bases-loaded relief appearance in the eighth inning of a tied Game 4, he allowed two inherited runners to score in what proved to be the decisive rally. In Game 6, with the Yankees trailing three games to two, John threw four innings of one-run ball, but with two on and two outs in the bottom of the fourth and the score tied, 1-1, manager Bob Lemon made the controversial decision to replace him with pinch-hitter Bobby Murcer. The broadcast captured a disbelieving John as he was told he was out of the game.

Murcer flied out to end the threat, and then the Dodgers broke the game open against reliever George Frazier (who had already taken two losses in the series, including in Game 4) and claimed their first championship since 1965.

John didn’t complete his contract with the Yankees; with the team going nowhere, on August 31, 1982, he was traded to the playoff-bound Angels. He threw a complete-game victory in the ALCS opener against the Brewers, though he was hammered in Game 4, and the Angels went down in defeat.

Highlighted by his securing his 250th win on May 1, 1984 with eight strong innings against the A’s, John spent two and a half more seasons with the Halos with diminishing returns. He drew his release in June 1985; battling injuries, he finished that season with the A’s, putting up a career-worst 5.53 ERA. The next spring, he made the Yankees as a 42-year-old non-roster invitee and pitched well when available, but he missed one month due to back spasms and two more due to a ruptured Achilles tendon, then tore ligaments in left thumb in a fall on September 3, ending his season. He intended that to be his last one, having accepted a job to become the pitching coach at the University of North Carolina, but the Yankees lured him back with a $350,000 contract. In his age-44 season, he pitched quite respectably, posting a 13-6 record with a 4.03 ERA (110 ERA+), a 3.88 FIP, and 2.4 WAR.

John spent parts of two more seasons with the Yankees. He was the Opening Day starter for the last of them in 1989, the third-oldest in major league history at the time, at 45 years and 317 days. But after going 2-7 with a 5.80 ERA in 10 starts, he was released in late May and announced his retirement in September.

In the weeks between his 1985 stints with the Angels and A’s, John served as a color commentator alongside Tim McCarver on ABC’s Monday Night Baseball, and after his retirement, he worked in that capacity for the Twins (1994–96), Triple-A Charlotte Knights (1997–2000, in addition to community relations duties), and Yankees (1998). He returned to coaching, serving as the pitching coach for two affiliates of the Montreal Expos, the Double-A Harrisburg Senators (2002) and Triple-A Edmonton Trappers (2003). After managing Maryvale in the Arizona Fall League in 2002, he piloted the Low-A Staten Island Yankees in ’04 and the independent Bridgeport Bluefish from ’07 until July ’09, when he resigned in midseason, citing personal obligations. None of the teams he managed posted winning records, though he was well-regarded by players.

John first became eligible for election to the Hall of Fame on the 1995 BBWAA ballot. He received just 21.3% of the vote from a stingy electorate that overwhelmingly chose Mike Schmidt but left third-year candidate Phil Niekro and second-year candidate Don Sutton — a pair of 300-win, 3,000-strikeout contemporaries of John who respectively received 62.2% and 57.4% — short of the necessary 75%. John spent the next 14 cycles receiving 20-something percent of the vote, save for 1999 (18.7%) and 2009; in his final year of eligibility, he climbed to 31.7% while Rickey Henderson and Jim Rice were elected, with pitchers Bert Blyleven (62.7%) and Jack Morris (44%) far outpolling John. Various Era Committees took up his cause, but he fell below the threshold of reported vote totals on the 2011 and 2014 Expansion Era ballots and the 2018 and 2020 Modern Baseball ballots before receiving 43.8% on the 2025 Classic Baseball ballot on which Allen and Dave Parker were elected.

As I’ve written countless times in connection with elections dating back to 2002, John’s fitness for the Hall depends on the amount of subjective credit one grants him for his pioneering role as the recipient of the game-changing surgery, because on a performance-only basis, he appears short by both traditional and advanced statistical reckonings. While he compiled some impressive totals over the course of his lengthy career, he never led his leagues in a Triple Crown category (wins, ERA, and strikeouts), though he did have five top-10 finishes in wins and six top-five finishes in ERA (six in the top 10 for ERA+, taking into account the pitcher-friendly nature of his ballparks). Beyond his two runner-up finishes in the Cy Young voting, he placed eighth in ’78 and fourth in ’80, but neither those showings nor his career totals stand out within the context of the dozen enshrined contemporaries from “That Seventies Group,” as I called them in The Cooperstown Casebook. Carlton, Niekro, Ryan, Sutton, Gaylord Perry, and Tom Seaver all won at least 300 games and struck out more than 3,000 hitters, with Blyleven and Fergie Jenkins reaching the latter milestone. All except for Sutton, Blyleven, Kaat (who was elected on the 2022 Golden Days ballot), and Morris (who was elected on the 2018 Modern Baseball ballot) have more Cy Young Shares, based on cumulative voting performance.

According to the Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor, which measures how likely (but not how deserving) a player is to be elected by awarding points for various honors, league leads, postseason performance and so on — the things that tend to catch voters’ eyes — John scores a 112, somewhere between “a good possibility” (100) and “a virtual cinch” (130).

One can play “what if” and surmise that John might have reached 300 wins, and thus automatic enshrinement, had he not missed a year and a half due to his elbow injury, but the high level of success he enjoyed in the first half-decade post-surgery may not have been attainable without that intervention. Also, had his career progressed without his UCL tear, he could easily have been sidetracked by a different arm problem in his late 30s or early 40s, after banking a few million dollars in free agency, at an age when rehabbing might have seemed less appealing than when he was 31.

While 164 of John’s wins (about 56%) and 2,544.2 innings (54%) came after his fateful collaboration with Dr. Jobe, his pitching WAR split is almost exactly down the middle: 31.1 WAR before, 31.0 after. On a prorated basis, he was more valuable before the surgery (2.9 WAR per 200 innings) than after (2.4 WAR per 200 innings), mainly because he was mostly a below-average pitcher over his last seven seasons (4.43 ERA, 92 ERA+, 6.5 WAR in 1,002.2 innings from 1983–89). Despite his longevity, John’s 61.6 total WAR (including offense) ranks just 58th all-time among starters, ahead of only 23 out of 67 enshrinees, and just three out of 12 from “That Seventies Group,” namely Kaat (50.5), Morris (43.5) and Catfish Hunter (40.9). From that group, John’s 111 ERA+ surpasses only Hunter (104 ERA+), Morris (105), Kaat (108), and Sutton (108).

Beyond his lesser run prevention relative to that group, John’s low strikeout rate (4.3 per nine overall and 3.4 per nine after surgery) means that he shares a greater portion of the credit with his fielders, leading to lower WAR values. With just four seasons of at least 5.0 WAR and among his leagues’ top 10, his 33.4 adjusted peak WAR — his best seven seasons, with any over 250 innings prorated — is tied for 136th, matching or ahead of just 10 of the 67. His 47.5 S-JAWS is tied for 77th, ahead of just 19 of 67 enshrinees, some of whom (such as Sandy Koufax, Dizzy Dean, and Addie Joss) threw fewer than half as many innings.

That said, I do think it’s reasonable to value John’s contributions to the game from his surgery highly enough to bridge the gap. The technique was Jobe’s, but John was more than a passive recipient — he was an active participant whose perseverance showed that coming back from what had previously been a career-ending injury was possible. Still, Hall of Fame elections don’t happen in a vacuum. By current Era Committee rules, voters are allowed to choose a maximum of three candidates out of eight, and so the competition for ballot space makes for agonizing choices. Recent voters haven’t shown a great deal of imagination or consistency when it comes to weighing non-performance factors against more straightforward statistical cases. John Donaldson, who laid the groundwork for decades of barnstorming Black baseball stars, and Fernando Valenzuela, who dramatically expanded baseball’s Latin American audience, have both come up short, while Kaat, whose career numbers are similar to (but generally short of) John’s, was elevated on the strength of a lengthy second career as a broadcaster.

But if Tommy John hasn’t been anointed in Cooperstown, that hardly invalidates his contributions to baseball. Beyond his ups and downs amid a seemingly endless slew of groundballs, he blazed a trail that left the game’s injured players — of which we have far too many, though that’s a topic for another day — with the hope that they could recover and resume their careers. That’s a legacy that’s hard to top.