South Carolina loses pitcher for 2023 season
South Carolina will be down one of its pitchers the Gamecocks were going to rely on this season for the entire year.
Notre Dame transfer Roman Kimball announced on his YouTube channel Thursday night he’ll miss the entire season due to Tommy John surgery to repair a partial tear in his UCL.
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In the video, Kimball explains he felt a jolt through his arm during one of the Gamecocks’ intrasquad scrimmages and immediately left the game.
He said in the video one of the initial ideas was to get a shot and have a six to eight week resting period before pitching this season. THe ligament, he said was “not a good looking” one and he opted to go get a second opinion.
Kimball flew to Dallas this week where he did further testing and ultimately came to the conclusion he’d need season-ending surgery.
He’ll have Tommy John surgery in Texas next week, Nov. 16.
It’s a blow to South Carolina’s pitching staff, which was going to use Kimball either as a weekend starter or a high-leverage bullpen piece this season.
Earlier Thursday, Mark Kingston said Kimball should know soon what his prognosis is for the 2023 year.
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“It’ll be fairly soon. It’s a little bit of a privacy issue right now working through some things and meeting with doctors,” he said. “But when he’s comfortable and our athletic trainers and doctors are comfortable making the next step and announcing it, you’ll know.”
Outside of Kimball, though, South Carolina is relatively healthy coming out of the fall.
“Injury-wise, we are going to be pretty solid coming out of this fall. Roman Kimball is working through something right now. We did have some guys miss the fall but anticipate everybody being ready to go for the most part come our spring season and opening day,” Kingston said. “Again, Roman is working through some things as we speak but the Dennys and Maddens and some of the pitchers who didn’t participate in the fall should be good to go.”
Kimball, who played his senior season at P27 in Lexington, started his career at Notre Dame. As a freshman he had a 5.76 ERA in 25 innings where he struck out 32 to 14 walks.
This summer in the Cape Code Leauge he had a 0.90 ERA in 20 innings with 28 punchouts to 14 walks also.
He was having an electric fall where he solidified himself as one of the team’s best arms before injury.
South Carolina’s staff, even without Kimball, should be much improved from last season. The Gamecocks return Will Sanders, Jack Mahoney, Eli Jones, Noah Hall and plenty others while bringing in talented freshmen like Eli Jerzembeck.
