Defined as “a surgical graft procedure in which the ulnar collateral ligament in the medial elbow is replaced with a tendon from elsewhere in the body”, the surgery known as ulnar ligament (UCL) reconstruction - more commonly known as Tommy John Surgery - has helped pitchers reclaim their careers for over four decades now.
Chris Campbell and Nick Beaulac each have the surgery to thank for enabling them to return to the mound. Both earned their first collegiate victories within a week of each other earlier this season. And the two right-handers are in their first season pitching competitively since having the same procedure that saved the careers of the likes of Washington Nationals pitchers Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmermann and Drew Storen.
Beyond that, the two have taken very different journeys back to the mound.
Campbell, a fifth-year senior at Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland, is a 2010 graduate of Centreville High School, where he was a two-way player who helped the Wildcats to 16 wins and an appearance in the Group AAA Concorde District championship game as a senior.
After not appearing in a game as a freshman, the 6-foot-4, 205-pound Campbell pitched 64.2 innings in 28 appearances, including five starts, over the next two seasons. Six weeks into his junior campaign, however, he started experiencing swelling after outings of as few as 10 pitches, and after trying to pitch through the symptoms, was finally shut down after his last outing on May 11, 2013.
Just under three months later, on Aug. 7, Nationals team surgeon Wiemi Douoguih performed a three-and-a-half hour surgery, two hours longer than a normal Tommy John procedure takes. Campbell’s elbow, as it turned out, did not just need the UCL replaced. It also needed bone spurs shaved down, possibly the result of him continuing to pitch after swelling occurred.
“He came in and told me, ‘Don’t be nervous, this is my fifth of the day. And I have a 99% success rate,” Campbell said of Douoguih, who had also performed the surgery on Strasburg, Storen and a third current Nationals pitcher, Taylor Jordan.
After recovering from the procedure, Campbell went to Pivot Physical Therapy in Emmitsburg for his rehabilitation. Just under nine months after the surgery, he threw a couple light bullpen sessions in front of the Mountaineers’ coaching staff, and then threw in a controlled scrimmage to hitters at Herndon High School, where his head coach at Centreville, Morgan Spencer, was then serving as an assistant coach.
Key in Campbell’s recovery was the support of the Mount St. Mary’s staff, in particular head coach Scott Thomson and pitching coach Dustin Pease.
“It definitely builds confidence,” Campbell said of his coaches’ support. “Anytime you get hurt, the coaches can try and focus on what they have, the players that are actually playing. But throughout my rehab, Coach Thomson and Coach Pease were constantly asking me how my rehab was going and how I was feeling.”
His coaches’ interest in his comeback is paying off this spring. Campbell, who entered the season with a career 4.63 earned run average, has compiled a 2.08 ERA in 8.2 innings over four relief appearances.
He credits Pease, who holds the school’s career record for victories, strikeouts and innings and pitched in the San Diego Padres’ system, with getting his mechanics where they need to be.
“He helped me stay loose, and changed my mechanics to get more head drive,” said Campbell, who picked up his first career win after throwing three innings of relief in the Mountaineers’ season-opening 7-3 win over North Dakota State on Feb. 28. “He’s been working to get my balance, slowing me down and not trying to overthrow. Pretty much just repeating my mechanics.”
Those adjustments, mixed with the experience of being around the program for five years and the desire to get back on the mound for one last season has led to this season’s good early returns. Campbell’s fastball is consistently clocked from 84-86 MPH, and he hit 90 last fall. As the late winter turns to spring and the weather warms, his hope is to get the velocity up near that 90 mark yet again to help make his changeup and curveball even more effective.
“It was just nice for me to get my location back, that was one of things I was afraid of losing,” Campbell said. “Anybody can get up there and throw as hard as you can, but you have to work to get your location to where you want it.”
Campbell and the Mountaineers, who have dropped nine straight since opening the season with two wins, will look to get back on track during a three-game series this weekend with Jacksonville.
Beaulac, a walk-on third-year sophomore reliever for Elon University, was limited to playing second base his junior year at South Lakes High School because of a stress fracture in his elbow. He did not play at all his senior year after having his Tommy John surgery performed by Dr. Benjamin Shaffer of Washington Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine on Feb. 23, 2012, four days after the Seahawks’ season began.
Prior to the surgery, the 6-foot, 184-pound Beaulac had received a scholarship offer from the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. But the school he was targeting, Elon, did not show much interest in a pitcher who had never won a high school game.
Unbeknownst to Beaulac that February, he was about to embark on a three-year journey in which he was banished from the baseball facilities at Coastal Carolina University, cut from the team at Elon and turned away from two local collegiate summer league teams, finally getting some good news last month when he was told by Phoenix head coach Mike Kennedy that he had made the team.
A few weeks later, he earned his first collegiate win after getting four outs in relief during an 8-3 win over Davidson on March 4.
“Coach Kennedy never guaranteed me anything,” said Beaulac, who is carrying a 4.82 ERA in 9.1 innings over eight relief appearances entering this weekend’s series against visiting James Madison. “It was on me to perform. I’ve learned a lot this past year about how to pitch. I’ve had a lot of time off to watch games and learn how to pitch.”
Some of that time off included hauling a pitch-back and bucket of baseballs around in his car and finding open fields to throw at off campus after the Coastal Carolina coaches changed their minds about allowing him to rehab at their facility during the fall of 2012. After transferring to Elon for the spring semester in 2013, he was initially told he couldn’t workout with the team, but was eventually allowed to come throw in weekly scrimmages with the Phoenix players. Beaulac fell victim to a numbers game that fall - Division I teams are only allowed to carry 35 players - but Kennedy told him to keep working.
“He gave me a winter workout program, and I did that to best of my ability,” Beaulac said. “Some soreness returned and my velocity was down. I knew I was playing a numbers game, knew I was the 36th guy. But he said he was on my side, he wanted me on the team. I told him I wasn’t done playing baseball. I was going to come back and I was going to tryout again.”
Kennedy, who is in his 19th season as Elon’s skipper, noticed a change in the young hurler’s approach to the game when he came back last fall.
“He’s always been a good kid, there’s no question about that,” Kennedy said. “It was a growing process for Nick, ‘Do I really want to just be on a team? Or get better, compete and go all in?’ That was a challenge his first year here. He wanted to be a part of it, but he didn’t know how to go about it.
“We just made it clear, ‘If you go home, do it right, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to make our team’. And he’s done that and more. It’s been a long journey for him, but a learning process for him as well.”
After being turned away by the Vienna Riverdogs and Herndon Braves of the Cal Ripken Collegiate Baseball League last summer, Beaulac hooked on with the FCA Rangers collegiate team and then the Aldie Senators of the Valley Baseball League. His stints on those teams in addition to the time spent with Elon’s club team yielded about 35 innings of work on the mound during the 2013 calendar year, Beaulac estimated.
The next step was proving he was capable of seeing innings for a program that has finished in the top three in the Southern Conference in nine of the past 10 years.
“This fall I came back and had a locker waiting for me, which was a great feeling,” Beaulac said. “[Kennedy] said, ‘We still can’t guarantee you anything, but we want you here, and we want you to tryout again.”
He has since continued to gain command of his four pitches - a fastball, curveball, slider and changeup - and and more importantly, is learning how to get guys out.
“We want guys who have experience, and who compete at a high level. And he’s missed some time,” Kennedy said. “Now you have to retrain your mind, and refocus on making quality pitches in certain counts. And that’s the difference between when he didn’t make our club and now with him.”
Kennedy is no stranger to working with pitchers who are returning from Tommy John. The coach said he has had four other players work back from the surgery during his tenure at the school, including another current pitcher in redshirt freshman Robbie Welhaf.
“I think his arm’s in a good spot,” said. “We’re starting to see more life on his fastball. He’s upper 80s, and that’s really about where he’s going to be. Now it’s a matter of learning how to pitch at the Division I level.
“The more experience he gets in games, the better the results will be.”
Photos courtesy of Mount Saint Mary's University athletics and Elon University athletics
