TAMPA — It is an exclusive club, and not one that Nick Burdi particularly wanted to be a part of.
Almost 50 pitchers have undergone two Tommy John surgeries.
Another 50-plus have had surgery to address thoracic outlet syndrome.
But there are only two known examples of a pitcher having two Tommy John surgeries plus thoracic outlet surgery and then coming back to pitch in the majors: Burdi and Shawn Hill.
“It was a lot,” said Hill, who pitched for the Expos, Nationals, Padres and Blue Jays and is now entering his ninth year as a Yankees pro scout.
Hill made it back to the big leagues for one game in 2012 after the third surgery.
Burdi returned from the terrible trifecta for three games with the Cubs last year, only for an emergency appendectomy to derail the feel-good moment.
But now he has a chance to make it back again, opening the Yankees’ eyes early in spring training as a non-roster invitee competing for a bullpen spot.
“It’s one of those things where I feel like I can still do this,” Burdi said Sunday. “I feel like at some point, the tides are gonna turn and the health is gonna be there. To be in this locker room, some of the guys I played with last year, we had a saying, ‘We have a jersey, we got a chance.’ To me, if someone’s gonna give me a chance, I want to make the most of it and run with the opportunity.”
The 31-year-old right-hander arrived at camp with a lower arm slot that he first started messing around with late last year before going all in on it in the offseason.
It helped relieve some of the stress on his oft-surgically repaired arm, all without losing the sharpness or shapes of his pitches — in fact, he said, that has all been better, too.
Burdi threw live batting practice on Saturday and flashed a mid-to-upper 90s fastball along with a sweeper slider and changeup from the lower slot.
“That was real,” pitching coach Matt Blake said. “That was impressive.”
“It’s kind of like a low-riding four-seam [fastball] with no arm-side run,” said Ben Rortvedt, who spent time with Burdi in the Twins organization and faced him in Saturday’s live session. “The off-speed’s firm and sharp too. … The stuff is really good.”
Burdi’s talent has never been in question.
The Twins selected the former flame-throwing Louisville closer in the second round of the 2014 draft.
He was viewed as an arm that could quickly rise through the minors, but injuries slowed him down.
The first Tommy John surgery came in May of 2017.
Later that year, he landed with the Pirates via the Rule 5 draft and continued his rehab with them before making his MLB debut in September of 2018.
“He’s one of the hardest workers I’ve come around,” said Clay Holmes, who overlapped with Burdi in Pittsburgh.
Burdi made the Pirates’ Opening Day roster in 2019 but in an April 22 game, he crumpled to the ground in pain and tears with a right biceps strain that eventually led to surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS) that June.
He also had another surgery in September to address an issue in his forearm.
After appearing in three games in 2020, Burdi underwent the second Tommy John surgery that October, and then had his ulnar nerve transposed in 2022.
“That was the hardest because that was the first one where I had a lot of setbacks,” Burdi said. “I had a hematoma, I had an infection in there. Every time I threw, it just hurt. The summer of 2022, it [was] like, ‘Maybe I should start looking for a job or seeing if there’s something else that intrigues me, because I don’t know if this is going to happen.’
“But I do remember my wife being like, ‘Just keep going.’ And we did and now we’re here.”
Hill said he also had a stubborn mentality that kept him coming back from all the surgeries.
He went through a wild-goose chase (including the second Tommy John) before his TOS was diagnosed.
All the surgeries took a toll over time, though he made it back to the majors later that year for one final game with the Blue Jays.
“I remember the trainer when I showed up there again … and he’s just shaking his head, like, ‘I don’t know how you’re still going,’ ” said Hill, whose velocity disappeared the following year. “I was like, ‘I don’t know anything else. This is what I do.’ It was gratifying, but it was also frustrating because yes, I had made it back, but I also knew I was kind of a shadow of who I could have been and was.”
Burdi is hoping to write a different ending to his story.
He wants to pitch for six to eight more years and sees the Yankees — with their history of developing bullpen arms out of nowhere — as a good place to take his next step.
“Especially being a dad, it’s one of those things where down the line, I want [my daughter and son] to be able to see I didn’t give up,” Burdi said. “I kept going, pushing myself. So if they ever have a dream one day, that they’ll go follow it and have that passion to do it.”
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