Kennedy: Brash nearing return to Mariners
Kingston Thunder alum Matt Brash (Kingston, Ont.), shown here in a recent rehab outing with the triple-A Tacoma Rainiers, is nearing his return to the Seattle Mariners’ bullpen. Photo: Tacoma Rainiers
April 25, 2025
By Patrick Kennedy
Canadian Baseball Network
It was around this time last year that Seattle Mariners pitcher Matt Brash got some devastating news.
The Kingston native listened in disbelief as a team doctor told him the results of an MRI exam on Brash's injured right arm – his “money arm.”
The doc told the Bayridge alumnus he would need ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, a.k.a. Tommy John Surgery (TJS). In a flash, due to the estimated 12-to-14-month recovery period, Brash's much anticipated 2024 season was over before it had even begun. There would be no follow-up to the promising relief pitcher's stellar 2023 campaign during which he compiled a league-high 78 appearances (70 2/3 innings, 3.06 ERA) while whiffing 107 batters.
“I really didn't believe (the diagnosis) at first,” the 6-foot-1 righthander Brash says one year later. “I was stunned.”
He had a whole year to try and not think about what he was missing. Fat chance. He thought about it every day.
“It was hard watching games and seeing my spot come up in the game and wanting to be out there...that was the hardest part,” Brash recalls over the phone from Tacoma, Wash., a few hours before his latest rehab assignment with Seattle's triple-A affiliate.
Less than 12 months later and well ahead of schedule, Brash, 27, is back atop a pitching mound, his repaired elbow feeling “as good as ever.” He's on the cusp of being recalled by Seattle, whose heavily taxed bullpen – first in the American League in innings pitched – could sorely use an experienced arm that discharges 98-mph fastballs and frisbee-like sliders.
Lip-biting future big-league pitcher Matt Brash, nine, keeps his eyes riveted on the target while delivering a high, hard one for the 2007 Kingston Thunder mosquito rep team.
“We can't wait to get that lightning bolt of an arm back,” Seattle reliever Trent Thornton notes of his teammate, who was not with the ballclub during a recent three-game series in Toronto.
Thornton says Brash's return should “solidify” an overused bullpen.
“It's a much different atmosphere when Matt's there with us,” he said.
Thornton, who has never had TJS, scratches a superstitious itch by politely declining to even discuss the topic. He doesn't even refer to it by name.
“Truthfully, I'm a little uncomfortable just talking about it,” he admits.
It's hard to fault Thornton for being spooked, given the trend that shows Brash is now part of the growing percentage – 36 per cent as of 2024 – of big-league pitchers who've undergone TJS. Moreover, that percentage continues to climb. There were more Tommy John Surgeries in the MLB in 2024 than in the entire decade of the 1990s. There's a reason for this: studies also reveal the surgery has a roughly 80-90 per cent success rate.
Way back in 1974, the year Hank Aaron pushed past Babe Ruth on the career home-run ledger, Lou Brock became baseball's all-time stolen base king, and Catfish Hunter's Oakland A's captured their third straight World Series, Dr. Frank Jobe performed the first “ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction” on journeyman left-handed pitcher Tommy John.
More than a half-century later, Jobe's handiwork remains a medical rarity. It's not everyday that “patient zero” in an experimental, unproven procedure remains the best-case example of a surgery that is now commonplace in the sport.
Best-case example? You be the judge.
When Tommy John had his career-saving procedure, he and his left elbow were 31 years old and had already combined to toss 2,142 MLB innings. After undergoing the revolutionary surgery, the durable southpaw pitched for another 15 seasons, adding another 2,346 innings to a career total of 4,710 amassed over a remarkable 26 seasons in the major leagues. Dubbed “Bionic Man,” in each of the five seasons following his surgery, he logged at least 200 innings and won 20 games in three of them. He retired at age 46 with 288 wins and a career ERA of 3.34. Indeed, 51 summers later, 'patient zero' has proven to be a tough act to follow.
By the way, how is it, I wonder, that Tommy John isn't enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown?
Former big-league catcher Caleb Joseph, now a colourman on Blue Jay broadcasts, recounts his first glimpse at young Matt Brash and being duly impressed at what he saw – and heard.
“Mariners' spring training camp 2021,” says the Tennessee native and six-year MLB veteran. “I was watching this new young kid throw and, man, 'electric' doesn't begin to describe his stuff,” says Joseph. ”I was standing next to the guy who was catching Brash and I could hear the seams on the baseball whistling by my ear. Matt was still a baby, so it was really fascinating to see all that power and speed coming from an unsuspecting small frame.”
A host of pitchers have undergone two Tommy John procedures, including former Cy Young winner Jacob DeGrom of the Texas Rangers, Boston's Walker Buehler, and former Blue Jay Hyun Jin Ryu. Topping the multiple TJS list is retired portsider Jonny Venters. Talk about bionic, Venters had three Tommy John surgeries, plus left shoulder surgery to repair a torn capsule. That's a lot of sewing and stitching for just four big-league seasons.
Prior to having his surgery, Brash was quietly developing into a dominant reliever, especially as the so-called late-inning “set-up man.”
Before being lost for the 2024 season, the Mariners were banking on Brash forming what Mariners MLB beat writer Danel Kramer describes as a “three-headed bullpen beast,” along with Gregory Santos and Andres Muñoz, support on the back end for one of baseball's best starting rotations.
Right-hander Matt Brash (Kingston, Ont.) has made four rehab appearances with the Seattle Mariners’ triple-A Tacoma Rainiers. Photo: Tacoma Rainiers
Seattle manager Dan Wilson, another ex-catcher, says being physically ready is only part of the rehab process.
“The most important thing is to be ready mentally,” says Wilson. “You have to be confident in your ability. Belief in one's self cannot be underestimated, it's absolutely huge.”
Wilson says Brash won’t immediately be inserted as the “setup man” or as a second option to all-star closer Muñoz, the role that Brash fulfilled in late 2023 when the Mariners split game-closing duties between those two after trading away Paul Sewald.
“We'll work him in there gradually, ideally at the start of an inning, after the pivot guy relieves the starter,” notes skipper Wilson “Believe me, we're all anxious to get Matty back and put him to work.”
That goes double for Matt Brash.
Patrick Kennedy is a retired Whig-Standard reporter, the best sports scribe to appear in Canada’s oldest newspaper since the late Paul Rimstead. He can be reached at pjckennedy35@gmail.com