For those scared off by Ohtani's elbow

I've seen a lot of comments and heard a lot of people talking about being scared of Ohtani's elbow injury. I've seen suggestions to take Luis Robert as the 1st overall pick in new player dynasty drafts and I think that's just absurd. I thought I'd shed a little light on Ohtani's injury to calm some fears.

UCL sprains are graded from 1 to 3. A first degree sprain means the ligament is just stretched out. A second degree sprain means it is partially torn and a third degree means it is fully torn. 3rd degree sprains require Tommy John surgery while most of the time second degree sprains do too. Ohtani has a first degree sprain and received a Platelet-Rich Plasma injection 3 months ago.

There isn't a lot of statistics backing up PRP study's but so far the results have been promising. This study is a good read for anyone interested, but I'll break it down for you. 34 pitchers with grade 1 or 2 sprains underwent a single PRP injection after 2 months of rest. Of the 34 pitchers, only one wound up needing Tommy John. After follow ups ranging from 11-117 weeks, 30 of them said they returned to the same level of play with no complains and the average return time was 12 weeks. There's a bunch of other medical stats in the study that show that they actually healed as well.

While any UCL damage is worrisome, recent medical advances, mainly PRP injections, have been able to keep pitchers away from going under the knife. Masahiro Tanaka went through this in 2014 and Ohtani's own teammate Garrett Richards just returned last year without having Tommy John with promising results and they both had grade 2 sprains.

TL;DR

Don't worry so much about Ohtani's injury and absolutely DO NOT pass him up with the 1st pick in a first year player draft if you have it