Bryce Harper will return to the Phillies’ lineup on Tuesday. Is it too much, too soon?

When Harper plays Tuesday it will be 160 days from operating table to the DH spot, the fastest return for a major league player from Tommy John surgery.

by Scott Lauber

Published May 1, 2023, 8:12 a.m. ET

LOS ANGELES — Two weeks after Bryce Harper had a torn ligament in his right elbow reconstructed with a tendon from his wrist, his agent weighed in on whether the star slugger could beat the initial “by the All-Star break” timetable for a return to the Phillies’ lineup.

”Our history with Bryce,” Scott Boras said on Dec. 6 from baseball’s winter meetings, “is that he has super healing qualities.”

Cue the snickering.

Is anyone laughing now? Only Harper and probably his teammates, coaches, and the club executives who flew out here late Sunday night. Oh, and Phillies fans everywhere. Because the Los Angeles-based orthopedist who performed the surgery on Nov. 23 gave the go-ahead after a checkup Monday, and Harper is expected to be in the Phillies’ lineup Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium.

It marks the speediest recorded return for a major league player from Tommy John surgery. At 160 days from the operating table to the DH spot, Harper will top infielder Tony Womack’s 182-day sprint back to the field for the Cardinals in 2004.

Fast, right? But is it too fast? Is Harper rushing back to rejoin the Phillies before he’s really ready?

In 2020, longtime former Phillies athletic trainer Scott Sheridan contributed to a Rothman Orthopaedic Institute study for the American Journal of Sports Medicine on the rate of return from Tommy John surgery among position players. The research included 141 ligament reconstructions on 137 players from 2010 to 2018.

Among the findings: On average, players began swinging a bat 150 days after surgery, taking batting practice 45 days after that, and playing in a real game at the 323-day mark.

Harper will make it back in half that time.

But as Sheridan noted over the weekend, Harper will be returning initially as a designated hitter, an option that was unavailable to National League players until last year. In the 2020 study, most players began swinging and throwing almost concurrently because it made little sense to do one without the other.

If Harper had to play right field — or even first base, where he has been taking grounders and practicing his footwork around the bag with infield coach Bobby Dickerson — he would still be a few months away from returning. But the hitting-only role expedited his timeline. He was taking “dry swings” without hitting a ball in March, weeks before he initiated a throwing program.

As a comparison, former Diamondbacks outfielder Luis Gonzalez had Tommy John surgery midway through the 2004 season and played in a spring training game 215 days later. Carl Crawford, also a former All-Star outfielder, had surgery on Aug. 23, 2012, and was back in time for opening day with the Dodgers in 2013.

Their comebacks were considered fast. With the benefit of the DH, Harper has been able to progress at, to borrow a phrase from Spaceballs, ludicrous speed, leaving something of an asterisk next to his ”fastest to come back” title.

”I’m sure, knowing the competitiveness that [Harper] has, he wants to be in the field. But that DH definitely helps,” Gonzalez said by phone in December. “You’re talking about a guy like Bryce Harper. This guy makes an impact just being in the lineup. His presence makes a huge difference.”

There’s another factor working in Harper’s favor. He throws right-handed but bats from the left side of the plate. So, his throwing elbow is his front elbow when he hits. And hitting tends to put less stress on the front elbow than the back.

”If you have a good hitter who’s an outfielder and it’s the nondominant [front] elbow, that’s the best-case scenario for him getting back sooner than some of the traditional timelines,” said Marcus Rothermich, an orthopedic surgeon at Andrews Sports Medicine in Birmingham, Ala. “It would be the absolute earliest on the timeline.”

Because Harper chose to do his rehab with the Phillies, every step he took happened in public rather than in relative seclusion at the spring training complex in Clearwater, Fla. But it also enabled head athletic trainer Paul Buchheit to supervise everything.

When Harper faced live pitching, as he did last weekend in Houston against minor leaguers Victor Vargas and Tyler McKay, Buchheit was there. When he slides feet-first or does infield drills, Buchheit is watching. When Harper began playing catch last week, Buchheit was by his side.

“He’s done such a great job for me,” Harper said. “When he needs to reel me back in, he does, and then he’ll be like, ‘OK, you feel good? Let’s keep going.’ It’s been a good give-and-take with me and him, like a good cop/bad cop kind of thing.”

Boras has surely been monitoring Harper, too. And Neal ElAttrache, the prominent orthopedic surgeon who operated on Harper and cleared his return, has undoubtedly been in contact with the Phillies’ medical and training staffs.

But Harper’s return will be hastened by skipping one notable step: a minor league assignment.

Last year, Harper crushed triple-A pitching for two games (5-for-8, two doubles, two homers) as he worked his way back from a broken left thumb. He saw mostly fastballs and changeups, though, and it took several weeks for him to regain his timing against curveballs and sliders.

Team officials are in agreement that Harper can get just as much out of facing pitchers in a controlled environment — and from a new robotic pitching projection machine that simulates actual major league pitchers.

”Is there an advantage to him going down to triple A or double A and playing? I don’t know,” hitting coach Kevin Long said. “I know when spring training starts, what do you do? You play. I’ve seen him in spring training in his first at-bat hit a homer. With Bryce, I think he knows himself, I think he knows his body, I think he knows what he’s up against. As far as I’m concerned, as soon as he says he’s ready, I think he is.”

Indeed, that — and ElAttrache’s blessing — is a suitable standard for the Phillies.

Ready or not, their biggest star is about to return.