Kansas City Royals

Kansas City Royals Reliever Seth Maness Is Making History

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 1:55 p.m. ET

Fansided, Benjamin Chase/FanSided via Call to the Pen

Kansas City Royals reliever Seth Maness is making baseball medical history this season. Could he start a new trend?

This offseason, CTTP covered the surgery that Seth Maness had in August 2016 to repair his Ulnar Collateral Ligament, a procedure very different than the typical replacement surgery. He had held a workout for teams days before the linked article, and within a week of that article, he signed with the Kansas City Royals.

Maness made his way back to the major leagues quickly, receiving the call to Kansas City on May 11th from AAA Omaha. While his ERA hasn't been pretty, he's never been a guy that FIP has liked due to the extreme ground ball nature of his pitching, focusing on generating weak ground ball contact rather than swing and miss.

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The excellent thing for Maness is that his previous velocity and movement on his pitches have completely returned. What he has admitted is still a work in progress is commanding his pitches and gaining the strength in the joint to throw on back to back days.

Because his injury was classified as a Tommy John procedure, many teams likely incorrectly believed that Maness would miss all of 2017, so the Royals are reaping the rewards for their gamble.

Maness had talked with a few reporters recently since coming up to the Kansas City Royals about the procedure and his feelings about his rehab and the unsure feelings he had going into the surgical room. He had a an interview with The Ringer's MLB podcast and was humbled by the suggestion by Mike Berardino that the surgery he had could be termed "Seth Maness Surgery" soon.

Right now, reporters are already associating primary repair UCL surgery with Seth Maness whenever another player has the surgery, like recently when St. Louis Cardinals minor league reliever (and former major league outfielder) Jordan Schafer had the procedure. The history has already begun…

Maness' debut back for the Royals: