Return to Play and In-Game Performance Statistics Among Pitchers After Ulnar Collateral Ligament Reconstruction of the Elbow: A Systematic Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Injury to the ulnar collateral ligament of the elbow is relatively common among baseball pitchers. Ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction (UCLR) has revolutionized the management of this injury, allowing a greater proportion of pitchers to return to play. PURPOSE: To assess the return to play and in-game performance specific to baseball pitchers who have undergone primary UCLR. STUDY DESIGN: Systematic review. METHODS: This review was conducted according to the PRISMA guidelines (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses). The electronic databases MEDLINE, EMBASE, and PubMed were searched for relevant studies, and pertinent data were abstracted. Only studies reporting in-game performance statistics (earned run average [ERA], pitching velocity, innings pitched per season, etc) of pitchers after UCLR were included. The methodological index for nonrandomized studies (MINORS) was used to assess study quality. RESULTS: A total of 14 studies and 1520 pitchers were included in this systematic review. All studies were of level 3 or 4 evidence, and the mean ± SD MINORS score was 14.4 ± 3.0, which indicates fair quality of evidence for nonrandomized studies. The rates of return to any level of pitching after UCLR ranged from 79% to 100%. Subgroup analysis revealed that 79% to 87% of Major League Baseball (MLB) pitchers returned to preinjury levels of pitching. The mean time to return to play was 19.8 ± 13.5 months, and the mean time to return to competition for MLB pitchers was 17.3 ± 2.4 months. Of the 5 studies reporting ERA, 2 cited a significant increase after UCLR, and 1 indicated a significant decrease. Of the 4 studies reporting fastball velocity, 3 cited decreased pitching velocities after UCLR. All studies found that pitchers pitched, on average, fewer innings per game or season after UCLR. CONCLUSION: There was a high rate of return to pitching after UCLR. However, most studies showed that UCLR was associated with a prolonged recovery and significant decline in pitching performance as objectively measured by in-game statistics. The strength of these conclusions is limited by the quality of the available literature and inconsistencies in the reporting of outcomes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".