The baseball world was shook when it was announced that Los Angeles Angels superstar Shohei Ohtani suffered an elbow injury and might need Tommy John surgery, but his former manager Joe Maddon was on the Starkville podcast with Jayson Stark and Ken Rosenthal and explained why he expects Ohtani's rehab to go smoothly.

“What I do know is that the guy is different, obviously, and whatever the workload is to get back, he'll do it. He will do it,” Joe Maddon said on the Starkville podcast. “He'll leave the ballpark to go to his room. Probably he'll eat something. He'll eat everything properly that night. He'll get up the next morning and do what he's supposed to do. Go to the ballpark, do whatever he's supposed to do, and then he'll get ready again. So you're going to be rehabbing a guy that's like textbook rehabber. You know, he's going to do exactly what you tell him to do, ask him to do, he's going to do it. And if he's not satisfied, you will research something that maybe missing right here. So you have the most dedicated student ever to get back to do what he had been doing before.”

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Maddon's words are telling. He was the manager of the Angels when Shohei Ohtani was returning to being the two-way player after his first Tommy John surgery, so he has first-hand experience with how Ohtani approaches the rehab process and the day-to-day of being a baseball layer.

It will be interesting to see what course Ohtani takes with his recovery as his free agency looms.