After a major injury and a pandemic, a Sac State pitcher still hopes for MLB Draft call

Everything was going Stone Churby’s way. The Sacramento State closer struck out 11 batters in just five innings. He picked up four saves.

Then it all went wrong. Warming up during an April series against New Mexico State, Churby felt a ripping feeling reverberating through his forearm.

Churby, 21, didn’t realize it at the time, but he had torn the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow. He pitched one inning with two strikeouts April 9 against the Aggies, and one inning with one strikeout the following day. It was the last inning he pitched for the Hornets.

The next weekend he tried to throw and the pain was too much. An ultrasound and MRI confirmed the tear. Churby needed Tommy John surgery to reconstruct the ligament.

“It feels weird that I’m done pitching here,” said Churby while sitting in the dugout at Sacramento State. “I think I’ve come to terms with it, but it still kind of sucks. Cause I really did enjoy my time here at Sac State.”

Reconstructing the ulnar collateral ligament, a procedure that carries the name of the first pitcher – Tommy John – to undergo it and return to baseball, involves grafting a tendon harvested from elsewhere in the body to strengthen the elbow.

Churby’s surgeon Kenneth Akizuki, who is a team doctor for the San Francisco Giants as well as Sacramento State, took a hamstring tendon from Churby’s left leg during the surgery May 4. Churby said Akizuki was able to wrap the tendon four times, twice what he considers a good ratio. That results in a stronger hold for the ligament, according to Churby’s physical therapist Evan Hauger.

“It is one of the worst feelings I’ve ever had,” Churby said. “You self identify with something and then you have it just kind of crumble in front of you is definitely hard and it still is hard. The fact that it’s a 12-month process — that’s so long that sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the fact that this is a year thing and I’m a month and a couple of weeks into it.”

Churby, who has played baseball since age 5 and still hopes to receive a call from the big leagues during the MLB Draft, which runs from Sunday to Tuesday, has at least 10 more months of rehab before he can competitively pitch. In the meantime, he does physical therapy twice a week and rehabilitation five days a week as he recovers.

The surgery, like the team’s coronavirus-shortened five-game season his junior year, is just one more obstacle for Churby to overcome. His mother, Lori Churby, recalls the instances where it would have been easy for her son to give up his baseball dream.

“When he didn’t make the freshman team in high school. He could have quit when he was struggling to throw strikes or when he was struggling his freshman year of college, or when he gave up his summers to go pitch in summer ball,” she said. “There were a lot of instances where he could have made the decision that this was just too much. But he never quit. And in fact, I think what happened is every one of those instances just made him hungrier.”

After Churby’s freshman year at Sacramento State, coach Reggie Christiansen said he told his pitcher that his attitude needed to improve. Things changed.

“My freshman year my fastball was anywhere from 84 to 90 (mph) – it was just all over the place. Couldn’t throw strikes. I had a bad attitude,” Churby said. “After the season was over Reggie told me, ‘Hey, like you gotta figure it out or you gotta leave.’ Right there kind of made me realize how badly I wanted to be here.”

Churby went off to play summer ball and improve. He credits two things: bulking up to 190 pounds, and changing his arm action based on advice from then-pitching coach Jake Angier.

“I think shortening up my arm path is the best thing I’ve ever done for my career,” Churby said. “It was an instantaneous boost and ability to throw strikes and the instantaneous boost in velocity because everything was on time. Everything is clean and I haven’t looked back since.”

“I think Stone, over his career here, has done a great job of knowing who he is as a pitcher and mentally getting himself to a point where he feels like he’s the best pitcher in the country when he’s on the mound,” said pitching coach Tyler LaTorre.

Churby recently started to be open about his mental health to his family and friends. He says he sometimes feels sad or out-of-sorts. Despite a stigma that is especially strong among male athletes, he feels that it is an important subject to talk about.

“I’m not ashamed of the fact that sometimes you feel sad,” Churby said. “I think realizing that it was normal made me okay with mine. You gotta take care of yourself.”

With the draft coming, it has helped focus Churby. His mother said scouts have reached out to her son and teams have made inquiries about the surgery’s outcome.

“Stone has always said that all he wants to do is pitch,” Lori Churby said. “I have zero doubt that my son is going to pitch in the MLB someday.”