Getting Healthy

Garrett Sherrill started the 2009m season with the Timber Rattlers. This story gets you caught up on what happened and where he is.

The 6-foot-5 substitute teacher has been a major hit with the kids in the Kannapolis school system, but they shouldn't grow too attached to him.

Most subs have never thrown a baseball 94 mph, but 22-year-old Garrett Sherrill has. His right elbow has recuperated, and he plans to report early to the Milwaukee Brewers' Spring Training camp in Arizona.

Sherrill — a three-sport star at A.L. Brown, a dynamic pitcher at Appalachian State and a 12th-round draft pick in 2008 — last trotted to the mound for an official pro game on May 6 as a member of the Class A Wisconsin Timber Rattlers.

He tossed three scoreless innings in relief in his final outing and struck out three, but he also realized something wasn't right.

"My control was off and my velo (velocity) was way down — 84-85 — and that was it," Sherrill said. "I'm supposed to be 88 to 92 all the time and I like to think I can get 93 or 94 when I really need to. I wasn't feeling any sharp pain and I could have kept pitching through it, but I needed to know what was wrong and went to the coaches and trainers."

An MRI told the story. He was pitching with a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. Usually when you read UCL, you read Tommy John surgery in the next sentence, but Sherrill and the Brewers looked at surgery as a last resort.

"They explained to me that with a partial tear of the UCL it comes down to the percentage it's torn," Sherrill said. "Above a certain percentage, it's surgery. Below a certain percentage, they'll let you try rehab."

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