Tigers right-hander Jackson Jobe will undergo Tommy John surgery. Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press was among those to relay the news. He’ll miss the remainder of his season and possibly all of 2026 as well. He is already on the 15-day injured list but will be transferred to the 60-day IL whenever the Tigers need to open a roster spot.
The news is obviously brutal for both Jobe and the Tigers. Jobe, third overall pick of the 2021 draft, was one of the top pitching prospects in the league as he climbed the minor league ladder. The Tigers called him up late last year to factor into their postseason run even though he was only 21 years old. He got to make two regular season appearances and then two more in the postseason.
He came into this year as a member of the rotation. He wasn’t exactly dominant, with a 4.22 earned run average, 17.9% strikeout rate and 12.4% walk rate through ten starts. However, that’s a small sample of work and he’s also still quite young.
It’s also possible, in the wake of this news, that he wasn’t fully healthy. His velocity was down in his final start and the Tigers placed him on the 15-day IL a couple of weeks ago with a flexor strain. Now it seems the determination has been made that he’ll need to go under the knife. Tommy John surgery usually requires 14 to 18 months of rehab. Given that window, Jobe will miss the remainder of the year and a return in the second half of 2026 can’t be guaranteed either.
For Jobe, it’s obviously a gut punch for him to lose most of his age-22 season and potentially all of his age-23 campaign. For the Tigers, they are going to lose almost two whole seasons of their six-year window with Jobe.
They will have to proceed without him in their plans for the foreseeable future. Their current rotation consists of Tarik Skubal, Jack Flaherty, Casey Mize, Keider Montero and Sawyer Gipson-Long. They could get Alex Cobb into the mix soon, as he’s currently on a rehab assignment. Reese Olson is out with a finger issue that doesn’t seem terribly serious. Jose Urquidy had Tommy John surgery around this time last year and could be a factor later in the year. Ty Madden has a rotation cuff strain and could also return from the IL later this year.
Most of that group will be in the mix for the 2026 rotation as well. Cobb is the only one fully slated for free agency. Flaherty has a player option for 2026 and could decide to return to the open market. The Tigers have a club option for Urquidy’s services for next year. It’s also possible that the Tigers change this picture via trades ahead of this year’s deadline.
Photo courtesy of Junfu Han, Imagn Images.
Wait, what?!
You seem surprised.
LOL. Gob Bluth, is that you?
This is an illusion, Michael…
her?
We’ve obtained photographs that officials call definite proof of W.M.D.’s in Iraq. What that means for your weekend at 10:00!
Ha! War crimes! One million dead! So funny!
Silly lib
“Ha! War crimes! One million dead! So funny!”
Exactly. That was exactly the point those “Arrested Development” writers were making with that joke: Americans were NOT paying attention to war crimes and millions of dead, unless it somehow affected their weekend.
Most shows at the time were afraid to say anything remotely critical for fear of not “supporting the troops.”
Super unfortunate news
nothings wrong with baseball
everythings cool
lets keep it all the exact same way
make no changes to the philosophy of playing, developing
so what if every single pitcher on earth is going to have TJ surgery
IT. IS. FINE.
Yeah, it might be easier at this point to list the guys who have not had TJS!
Draft SP’s who have already had TJS, so you are not throwing away 2.5yrs on combo of rehab and severely limiting their IP after it.
If trading for an alleged top tier SP prospect, ditto.
I thought that but seems like that doesn’t even guarantee much anymore either. Some still get it again or ucl issues. It reallly sucks because there’s no known way to prevent it. And like you said, the worst part is ruins basically their whole development because you have to baby them again with innings to ramp back up. I say screw it and just let it rip.
Or you get it very late in your career like Verlander, which is pretty rare. It’s all a dice roll.
I remember growing up watching guys like Bob Knepper throwing 85 mph, while making two all star teams, and having long careers.
Knepper wouldn’t even get a try out these days.
Gotta wonder if Maddux even would..although I know he was low 90’s early in his career.
Same reason Ian Seymour is sitting back in the Minors. The Rays don’t realize how good of a pitcher they have on their hands.
@Trump4 The reason the Rays who have been amazing at assessing talent don’t realize it is likely because he would not be that good in today’s game.
Who?
They would all throw harder today because that’s what’s expected and they train for. Maddux actually reduced his velocity for command and control. The problem is he likely wouldn’t be allowed to develop as the Greg Maddux today.
He would’ve probably had the same career trajectory as Felix Hernandez had Maddux debuted two decades later.
Maddux would. He had pinpoint control and was very efficient with his pitches.
The strike zone box would not be his friend. It would even impact Glavine to a greater degree
Baseball is cyclical. There may be a trend back toward pitching more off-speed stuff without as much spin. Kahnle gets by with mostly change-ups.
I loved that era of MLB, RonD. I’d like to see some more knucklers in the game, too. What is more wild card in sports than that?
This is where analytics screws things up. It makes things like velocity too important. Knuckleballers would grade low because of velocity. Phil Niekro wouldn’t have made it out of double A because he didn’t throw hard enough to satisfy today’s ridiculous analytics.
Poor old Knucksie only pitched for 24 years.
To me, baseball is not cyclical. It is going in one direction … and fast. As time flys by, it is getting further and further away from playing a game to being an uber competitive sport fueled by making money. The powers that be are convinced that big arms and big bats are what sell. In their minds, forget all that finesse stuff.
@84 Tigers have a kid at Erie who throws an 88 MPH knuckleball. Not sure how much movement he gets on it though.
Kenny Serwa has two different speeds on his knuckleballs and appears to be quite effective.
Actually, Niekro grades out very highly with analytics, with a career WAR of 96. In one of his Historical Baseball Abstracts, Bill James goes through his career year-by-year in the 1970’s, showing how great he actually was despite having less than stellar W/L records. He pitched for some very bad Braves teams, which made him appear to be less dominant than he really was.
You’re right, though not necessarily a kid…he’s 27.
Come on, you can’t get these hitters out today throwing 85.
The type of mechanism that’s used to measure the speed of the pitch has evolved over time, as well. The first was the same speed gun that was used by police for traffic. The point of flight that gets measured also has changed. If those pitchers were measured by today’s equipment, they would get a faster reading.
Counterpoint. Ryan Yarbough was pitching like that for the Yankees. Then he got hit around badly and now fans want him gone. People don’t have patience for 87mph guys cause they have very little margin for error.
Brutal
Huh, I’m lost.
It appears that you are. Lol
Always count on “chandlerbing” for your daily dose of pessimism, doomerism and constant negativity.
He’s not totally wrong though.
I’ll give credit where credit is due… he’s not wrong in saying that the sport is fine.
If you can find some data that says otherwise I’d like to see it
Had a bad feeling about Jobe ever since he was removed and they let him skip post-game comments. Tough luck, but that’s baseball these days. Seems like it is just a matter of time before someone needs TJS.
84: I wonder how many pitchers in the majors are currently on the IL because of tjs.
About 80, difficult to be exact for a variety of reasons.
Should have had a bad feeling about him when drafted since ironically it was Dr Frank Jobe who first developed the surgery with TJ !!
C-rap!
I grew up in the 80s and remember half the all-time greats having Tommy John. Oh wait.
You don’t know those greats. They didn’t happen once their arms were wrecked. Thanks for your ignorance.
Their arms weren’t wrecked in their 20s and early 30s. Thanks for your ignorance, zoomer.
Have you ever heard of Sandy Koufax?
Yes, there were many Sandy Koufaxes around in the 60s. Maybe even 15 at any given time. Some are saying there were multiple Nolan Ryan types in the league as well during the 70s. Clearly the league was profuse with talented and durable pitchers like those two that during that time.
The ’70s ’80s were all power pictures averaging 14 to 18 complete games. The biggest problem in those eras was rotator cuff because the arm slot was majority over the top instead of the side or twist and turn. That’s why these pictures are blowing their arms out
I think the point that @Major League Baseball Fan was trying to make is that fans in the 80s and before didn’t have the access to information and knowledge of players that we have today. If a pitcher blew out their elbow, that was the end of their career and most fans wouldn’t know about it if it wasn’t printed or spoken about in your brief local news sports segment.
@YBC exactly. Nobody acknowledges the sheer amount of information we get nowadays. Yeah, like back in the 70’s and 80’s you’d hear about almost every prospect and their medicals…come on.
Like when boomers are like “we rode in the back of the pickup and we turned out alright”, like the horrible accidents that happened didn’t exist because they weren’t there to see it.
No way to sound dumb more quickly than talk about “boomers” as a pejorative.
You didn’t need access to information because those pitchers were healthy and you could watch them on television year in and year out.
People who were born after the twin towers went down think everyone is a boomer.
Anyone who thinks older generations can’t teach them anything are idiots determined to remain idiots.
How was it used as a pejorative? It’s what people are called in that generation and that’s a thing that happened in that generation. I think you’re just being sensitive.
I’m not, and I am not a “boomer” but you mocked a behavior that you think is stupid and how boomers react to it and conceal information. All that from your dad’s basement. Impressive.
I didn’t mock anything. You are looking for offense. My comment spoke about how lack of widely available information in the past makes it seem like things happened less often in the past. Like how people rode in the back of trucks and said it wasn’t a big deal. Because they didnt have the information available to know it was a problem. Then you personally attack me? That’s being sensitive.
You miss the point.
Yes, sometimes we rode in the back of trucks and we said it wasn’t a big deal. Not because we didn’t have the information available to know it was a problem.
We were well aware of how dangerous driving was. Safety standards and advancement were much lower. The fatality rate was probably a lot higher. There was also a lot more 2-lane highways that led to a lot of dangerous passing.
The mindset was different back then, though. We didn’t worry about every little thing. Occasionally riding around in the back of a pickup was just a small part of living life. The adults drove responsibly if someone was in the back. I don’t know anybody personally who was killed riding in the back of a truck.
People were better drivers overall. For example, very few were dumb enough to try to read and write while driving.
I think you’re missing my point. First of all, you are speaking for everyone in your generation. Second of all, you literally say you don’t know anyone personally and then excuse the practice like the law is wasn’t really needed. Which kind of reinforces the lack of information at the time point. Point being, it’s not about the example I used it’s about how more information in the palm of our hands tells us about all arm injuries from high school to pros. That wasn’t available back then, so this “epidemic” could potentially have information availability as a partial reason for people thinking that.
Gotcha. Fair enough.
Most guys when they needed it just got lousy and ended up either going unsigned or hanging on to reach their pension. Elbow problems used to be a career killer.
My best friend growing up had an uncle who pitched in the Kansas City A’s organization. He played with Vida Blue, George Hendrick, and others who became MLB players. He made it up to A ball, and had pretty good stats. He was a pitcher who threw hard, a better fastball than most of the guys in his league. He blew his arm out in A ball, a torn UCL. (undiagnosed, there was no imaging available)
He was told to “tough it out” and that if he “pitched through it” he would feel better lol.
Then when he started throwing 84 mph and getting shelled they gave him a plane ticket back to Long Island so he could get a job at the plant..
Dude was playing in our rec league, dominating a bunch of 25-30 year olds well into his 50’s.
He used to tell us how many guys he played with, who were as talented as any MLB pitcher, only to injure their arm and get sent home.
Most of the managers in the minors back then thought you were just soft if you couldn’t power through what they considered a “sore arm”, you never hear about any of these guys they just went back home and sold insurance.
Those were the days!
Fortunately, Montero and Gibson-Long have been pitching well.
Troy Melton’s and Jake Miller’s ETAs just moved up a notch.
Frank Jobe. Jackson Jobe. We have come full circle.
Excellent!
I’d rather go back to the juiced ball era where pitchers were not trying to throw 100mph every pitch with 1200 rotations per minute spin rates.
If teams in the 90’s and early 2000’s had the same kind of biomechanical technology and “pitching labs” that teams have today, pitchers definitely would have been trying to throw 100 with max spin on every pitch in the juiced ball era. The best way to combat a lineup full of juiced sluggers is with the strikeout. When hitters are so strong they can easily hit a pitcher’s pitch out of the park, the best option is to avoid contact at all cost.
In this way, the steroid era actually led to the modern approach to pitching. Which further goes to show that nothing good came out of that era.
1200 RPM would be a horrible spin rate for a fastball.
I knew when he pitched his last game that something was up. His velocity was down over 2 MPH and he kept shaking his arm after nearly every pitch. Luckily we have a deep staring rotation. We got Sawyer Gibson-Long back recently and will have Alex Cobb shortly to go with Skubal, Mize and Olsen. We’ll be ok, but this still SUCKS!
Don’t forget Flaherty!
I would not count on Cobb anytime soon. The Tigers are not allowing him to cover first base in his rehab. And have heard reports that Cobb is grimacing on almost every pitch. I don’t think we see Cobb this year and certainly not as an opener.
Yeah, me neither. He was just a lottery ticket. Expensive lottery ticket.
The solution is more knuckleballs.
Maybe there will be a submariner revival and contemporary guys start to emulate Kent Tekulve and Dan Quisenberry.
Diggerydoo: Then there’s Wilbur Wood, a knuckleballer that threw both games of a doubleheader more than once and never hurt his arm. It’s the screwball that should not make a return. Too much torque on the arm.
To catch one, let it stop rolling and then pick it up…
There’s a reason there aren’t actual, living pitchers in MLB with 72mph junk.
kyle hendricks is angrily looking in through a window at you rn
Not that it means much coming from a keyboard warrior like me, but you really do wish the best for these guys when something like this happens. Its happening way too often nowadays it seems. And its happening to these guys that are investing their livelihoods into the game just to make “The Show”. You really just hope folks have a fall back plan in place when these types of things happen.
Coaching?
Given the MLB minimum is 50 times the US minimum wage, that service time accrues during time off due to TJS, that they get paid while on the IL, and their medical expenses are covered, these aren’t the guys I’m worried about.
Kids and players need to get away from year round training of one sport. Let your kids do multiple sports to workout different muscles. Not only that , not just weight lifting. Gotta learn stretching or more natural building muscles of the past. I very rarely saw guys who worked on farms ever get hurt. They built muscles by lifting and twisting, like pitching feed or hay bales along other things. Heck ball players use to have jobs in off-season which helped with conditioning. Pee Wee Reese was built very good after basic training in the Army. Gotta get back to that stuff if these players wanna stay injury free
They need to develop a medical sleeve that will add support for a pitchers arm.
I don’t think the league would allow it as crazy as that sounds. It would probably depress offense too much. If not for injuries, some teams would develop some truly scary pitching staffs.
This stinks, but fortunately a) Jobe is only 22 and still has a (hopefully) long career ahead of him, and, b) the Tigers have a lot of backup depth in Montero, SGL, Cobb and pitching chaos. Still stinks and wishing Jackson Jobe a full recovery as soon as possible
I think Harris might have been onto something signing Urquidy. He might actually help the Tigers this year.
One thing is for sure. Anyone in a keeper fantasy league are going to have a lot of different keeper lists next year.
It’s just a matter of time. Skene will get it too.
Funny how it took Verlander, like, 16 years before he had to have it.
Nolan Ryan never did, but it happened at the very end and ended his career.
Frank Tanana went from fire balling with Nolan on the Angels to being a finesse pitcher with the Tigers and others.
Yep, night and day. Tiger fans love him forever for that ’87 clincher against the Jays.
Teams should probably prioritize drafting hitters over pitchers. I know I do in legacy leagues. Just seems like a high probability of TJ for any MLB SP. Why assume the risk? Draft hitters instead and, if you get a surplus, trade for SPs. While SPs should probably trade at a premium, it seems like they do not against a quality position player. So go the less risk route.
Um, you also need pitchers.
Well that sucks. He was supposed to be the one who could avoid this. He never really pitched until HS, avoiding all the arm stress that these kids who play travel ball and go to indoor training year round. He didn’t go to college and he did not have a ton of innings on his arm having missed parts of a couple of minor league seasons with other injuries. Makes me wonder if they just decided to do it now and get it over with rather than rehab and hope he could avoid this later.
Losing 2 years of a players six year window to FA is not anything a team would consider if there were other options.
When are they gonna invent bionic elbows? Get to work, scientists…
Notice how Rick Porcello never had a TMJ surgery?
Neither did Chris Volstad
He only pitched until he was 31 so who knows if he would have needed eventually if he kept pitching. Verlander was 37 when he got TJ.
Porky was done at 31 and had one good year after age 27, so…
I remember when a good fastball was between 92 and 96. Now everyone is throwing 97+.
They don’t teach the art of pitching anymore. Fire away and then they wonder why pitchers are going down.
Jim Price is that you?
There are some wild men who just throw hard but 96+ with everything else is just industry standard now for a good pitcher. Skenes throws hard as hell but his most dangerous stuff is how he locates and his changeup and splinker.
I don’t disagree, Goose, but that didn’t apply to you, J.R. Richard, Nolan Ryan, early Frank Tanana, Randy Johnson, and a few others. Those guys threw blistering heat. Long before Chapman, Richard and Ryan were hitting 100-105. It’s said Ryan once threw 108.
web: Goose Gossage’s fastball typically ranged from 98 to 102 mph, with some reports suggesting it could reach 103 mph.
Goose was intimidating. And he usually pitched 2 IPs. Gibby beating him made ’84 that much sweeter.
Not enough, “Yellow-Hammers”.
The average MLB fastball is 94.3 mph.
15 years ago it was 91
They are creating new pitches every year and fans are like “they are not teaching pitching!!!!!!!!”
Wow!
Very tough break for the team with the best record in baseball.
The Tigers have some depth with Reese Olson on his way back,Montero, Gipson-Long and a few others.
Could’t hurt to get an arm or 2
with a trade and/or waiver wire pickup(s).
Old man Alex Cobb is due back soon too. Luckily they do have some decent SP depth at least.
I am guessing Cobb will not pitch for the Detroit Tigers. Harris made a big mistake there.
Yeah terrible waste of 15M
Cobb is cooked.
Tough break for Jobe and the Tigers. MLB pitchers going down right & left. No pun intended.
Not really. Jobe has a FIP of 5.10, has (had) an innings limit in 2025 in any case, walked 5 per 9 and was among the worst in MLB in K/BB ratio.
This is more an inconvenience than a tough break. Unpleasant for Jobe, of course, but he’s one of the rare Americans whose medical expenses are completely covered with no out of pocket.
Uggghhh. Maybe they will be looking for pitching at the deadline after all
Merrill Kelly or Zack Gallen from the Diamondbacks would look good in a Tigers uniform…
You can have Montas. Mets have 8 SPs.
Another one bites the dust!
This is awful for baseball
He hasn’t been quite right for a while now. This unfortunately makes sense.
Please don’t draft a pitcher at the top of the draft. These kids are put in bubble wrap and they still get injured. It’s not their fault but it’s ridiculous to invest in them.
Maybe they should watch the pitching form promoted by MLB great Dr. Mike Marshal. The clips are on YouTube, look bizarre, but maybe he was actually onto something?
That pitching motion Marshall was advocating was nearly impossible to repeat for 100 pitches. Maybe 10. It’s totally inconsistent with how a human being wants to throw…anything.
They need to go back to allowing the sticky stuff. When they took that away it forces pitchers to grip the ball much harder to generate spin. Make a fist and tell me your forearm isn’t the first thing to tighten up. We let hitters wear armor, let the pitchers have spider tack.
And cheat all those doctors out of their second and third homes, vacations in the Bahamas……?
We could all offer them our thoughts and prayers. LOL
MLB isn’t worried about TJS. The owners aren’t worried about TJS. The players union isn’t worried about TJS. Fans seem to be very worried about TJS. Things will change when the first three groups are worried about it.
I think there is a parallel to concussions in football. There are obvious long term health issues for the players and profit issues for the game if players have to retire because of concussions.
Once elbow and shoulder injuries become profit problems for the owners, then there will be large scale changes to lower the number of those injuries. This injuries don’t have the same kind of long term cognitive issues of concussions, so that’s not where the changes will come from.
I remember when he was drafted, a lot of draft pundits said that you should never draft RH HS SPs that high.
Tough break for Jobe and the Tigers. Unfortunately at this stage of season it’s see you in ’27
Honestly sucks, tho in his case he’ll get to test free agency in 6 years on a relatively new elbow.
Making “negotiated” amounts of money that most fans will never earn, is hardly indentured servitude.
Currently 42 pitchers on IL due to Tommy John surgery.
And 76 pitchers on the IL with elbow issues, a big % of which will require TJS.
Short of some combination of one to all of deadening the ball, moving the fences out to some minimum allowable distance, only allowing ash bats of a certain density, allowing larger diameter bats but only if under a certain density promoting contact over power and letting pitchers use guile more than speed,… it’s not going to get better. And even then, torque / spin will still be at a premium.
In fact it will probably get worse as motions are refined to result in increasing velocities above what’s possible today, but arms remain fundamentally the same.
Is Matt Manning still in the plans? Looks like he is having some location issues.
Diggerydoo
But coaches want heat because winning is all that matters
=======================
1-It is probably the rotation more than the heat.
2-Every kid throws as hard as they can as soon as they start playing. When I was 8, we had kids throwing as hard they can. It’s instinctual. You might as well tell kids not to run as fast as they can, or not hit someone as hard as they can.
Shocker. Baseball has a real issue on its hands. It’s almost a certainty that a guy requires this now at some point.
Does it, though?
Even if the percentage reaches 50% (it’s currently 36%), given players are paid while on the IL, with IL time equaling service time, with medical expenses fully covered…. what’s the issue? Professional sports come with risks.
One credible study put the expected life span of an NFL player at 59.6. That’s far worse than having a 1/3 or 1/2 chance at TJS during a career. Is anyone not going to try to make it in MLB because of the chance they might have to have arm surgery that’s not life threatening? Doesn’t seem so.
There are things you can do to turn pitching into more of an art, including things that make slugfests more common, which the average fan routinely prefers, but there’s hardly any talk of moving in that direction.
You’re absolutely right on the player perspective of this. They’re still
Getting laid and accumulating service time so this is viewed as part of the process in their big league journey. However, i don’t think it has to be…
I think a big part of the problem is how these young pitchers train, specially the ones that chase velocity. Look at any of the MLB social media posts about pitchers and they use any chance they can to hype
Up and praise guys for throwing 100 MPH regardless of final stat line. You mix guys going max effort for velocity with the pitch clock and you’re going to get arm injuries. This has been mentioned by many current and former big league pitchers.
I also don’t see any talk of turning pitching into more of an art but what I think you’ll start to see more of is teams doing what the Mets and Brewers have done with their “pitching labs”. Taking guys with some time in the big leagues and working with them to resurrect their careers for relatively reasonable salaries. By continuing to push this velocity narrative, the MLB is just saying it’s ok for them
To lose current and future aces for seasons at a time. Bad for the game in my opinion.
Paid* not laid LOL hopefully that too though
LOL
It’s unfortunate for the young kid. But it’s hard to ignore the irony of a pitcher named Jobe getting Tommy John surgery.
I don’t know what I’m missing but it’s something. What’s ironic about Jobe and Tommy John?
Trust in Harris and Fetter
wow this is a big bummer. at least the tigers is winning (jared jones)
Sometimes I wonder if James Andrews is to the point of just opening a Quick Lube
Did baseball exist before Tommy John surgery?
It’s like the chicken and the egg….
No one knows.
It a shame what it happening with all those young guns
They get to the big league and Less than 100 innings TJ surgery
Spin rate is killing then
Surprise, Surprise, Surprise….