Andre Duplantier, back after surgery, glad for lessons the game offered

During Andre Duplantier II’s freshman year in 2020, a hand injury kept the two-way prospect from the Houston area from playing extensively in the infield. He still notched eight relief appearances and two starts at third for the Texas Longhorns, but the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the remainder of what was a promising freshman season.

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In preparation for the 2021 season, Duplantier was taking grounders at third and preparing to fill a two-way role. Then, he felt something no baseball player wants to feel in his elbow.

“I was taking ground balls, and I slipped,” Duplantier said Friday. “It was a freak accident honestly. I slipped on a throw, I felt something, went and got imaging and it was a partial (tear).”

He was told he’d need Tommy John surgery.

Duplantier missed the entire 2021 season, but was throwing bullpens toward the end of Texas’ run to Omaha. Though he had aspirations to be a two-way player, baseball informed Duplantier that wasn’t his path.

“I always felt like the game would tell me what I was going to do,” Duplantier said. “My freshman year, I got hurt hitting. I hurt my hand, and I was still pitching with a hurt hand. Then I was taking ground balls and I hurt my arm and I wasn’t pitching. Whenever I got the news that I had torn it, I had a lot of time to sit there and think about that. I was like, I’ve been hurt twice not pitching. Why don’t I just pitch?”

Duplantier eventually told UT head coach David Pierce what the game had told him; it was time to focus on pitching. He made his return to the mound for the first time since March 7, 2020 when he toed the rubber versus the Rice Owls in the opening series of the 2022 season.

He pitched a perfect inning with two strikeouts in game two of a Texas sweep.

“It was fun,” Duplantier said. “I had a little nerves going into it, but I did a lot of visualization before. Once I got back on the mound I was reminding myself this is what I do. It was a weird feeling being back in the exact same place, but two years later.”

He made his way back to the mound a few days later at Whataburger Field against the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Islanders, pitching 4.0 innings of one-hit ball and earning the win in a declared start.

During the recent series against Alabama, Duplantier was not called in from the bullpen. Pierce wants to extend the redshirt sophomore and see what he can offer in the Tuesday role.

While observing Duplantier’s rehab process, Pierce saw the right-hander who wears No. 88 (the largest number issued in program history) prove his mettle in a different way with how he remained engaged with the team. He had two fellow pitchers who underwent surgery go through the process with him in Chase Lummus and Travis Sthele. From what Pierce took in even amidst a run to the Big 12 title and the national semi-finals, he saw a trio dedicated to getting back on the mound.

“Rehab, you can alienate yourself from the team and feel like you’re an outsider, or you can do other things to help the team as you get your work in around that,” Pierce said Friday. “They had a buddy system, which helped them a lot because they were pretty much on the same schedule.”

“You deal with a lot of psychological stuff, and then does your feel come back? Is it going to recover 100 percent? There’s a lot of thoughts in there that also create a lot of tension, but I think they really handled it well. We didn’t push them to a point where we’re trying to rush them. They stayed on their medical schedule and just played off of that. I’m just really pleased that they took care of their bodies as they were getting their arm back.”

That buddy system helped to alleviate the psychological wear, according to Duplantier.

“All three of us really being able to feel the same things, we’d feel some things we didn’t like but it was honestly good feeling that with somebody else,” Duplantier said. “I feel like we all understand each other pretty well when we say it might not feel good that day, but you’re able to have somebody doing it with you, so it was good.”

Pierce said he works to keep players rehabbing injuries engaged by meeting with them on a consistent basis. He knows it can be an alienating process if not handled right. By all accounts, Duplantier handled everything exactly the way he should. He also had a good example to follow in Ty Madden, who he shadowed during the course of his rehab.

“I was just trying to be the best teammate I could and follow around whoever I could last year,” Duplantier said in learning from the 2021 ace.

Duplantier can now support the Horns by continuing to post outings like the two he’s already recorded in the young 2022 season, just like the game told him he should be doing. The SHSU Bearkats will likely be a tougher test than the Islanders, but it’s nothing compared to the rehab process he went through.