Gamecock baseball commit battling back from Tommy John surgery

When pitcher Tyler Mettetal was looking for a college to commit to, he didn’t have to look long with one of his self-proclaimed “dream schools” in South Carolina came calling.

And when baseball assistant coach Sammy Esposito started Mettetal’s recruiting process, he was comfortable in deciding to leave the frigid Illinois winters for a warmer Columbia.

“The relationship I built with (Esposito) was so much better than with all the other coaches. The coaching staff there is really good; they’re all top-notch coaches,” he said. “It’s a school I can do pretty well academically. And of course the weather: you have to have some warm weather.”

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But the class of 2017 lefty won’t get the benefit of having a full healthy senior season before coming to South Carolina next fall.

He tore a ligament in his arm at the end of his junior season and underwent Tommy John surgery in May, missing out on the last few weeks of the year.

“It was really tough. When I threw the ball and heard it stretch, I knew right away and I just went to the bench and started crying because I just knew I was done,” Mettetal said. “I just have to stay positive with all of that stuff.”

Future Gamecock Mettetal joins fellow Gamecocks Wil Crowe and Braden Webb as players who’ve gone through the surgery. Both Crowe and Webb have rebounded from the surgery and were picked in this year’s MLB Draft with Crowe opting to return to South Carolina for his senior year.

He said when he told the coaching staff, Esposito was upset, and then the first thing he said was about those two pitchers.

“He was taken back I could tell, but then he told me about how Webb and Crowe all had Tommy John and they all came back really well,” Mettetal said. “He just said you have to be ready when you come down here your freshman year in the fall and be ready to go.”

Mettetal said he’ll be 100 percent in about 10 to 14 months, which puts his full recovery right about the time he’d be making his way south for college.

For now, he’s rehabbing and enjoying summer before his senior year starts. And a week after the surgery in May, the boredom had already sunk in.

“It’s been very brutal. It’s just nothing. They took some things from my leg, like ligaments, to put in my elbow so I couldn’t really walk so I was stuck on the couch for a week,” he said, chuckling. “So I watched the whole Matrix series the other day, I watched the whole Rambo series. I have nothing to do but watch movies. It’s pretty boring.”

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