South Carolina to be without Eli Jerzembeck for entire 2025 season after injury setback

South Carolina received a tough blow on Thursday when head coach Paul Mainieri revealed right-handed pitcher Eli Jerzembeck will be out for the entire 2025 season. Jerzembeck has a stress fracture in his right elbow.

“He’s going to have surgery on March 7 to have a screw or two screws inserted into his right elbow,” Mainieri added.

Jerzembeck, who hasn’t pitched in a regular season game since May 7, 2023, missed all of last year after undergoing Tommy John surgery. He worked his way back to where he took part in fall and preseason scrimmages leading up to the start of this season. But right before Opening Day, Mainieri said Jerzembeck had went to see a doctor to try and identify what the issue was after he struggled mightily on the mound.

“I don’t know. I asked that specific question to Eli just a little while ago today, and he said he doesn’t know,” Mainieri said on how it happened. “But ever since last summer, whenever he was throwing bullpens or whatever, that after he would throw, his arm would be sore, and he just thought it was, I guess, natural muscular soreness. So it’s just one of those things that’s hard to say.

“We don’t know when it would have started. It probably started with a stress reaction and was never diagnosed because, you know, nobody thought it was serious enough to even look at. He probably never complained about it, and that probably evolved into a stress fracture. But I looked at the X ray, and you could clearly see, I think they call it an incomplete stress fracture. Didn’t break all the way through the entire bone, but you can definitely see the crack in the bone.”

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When Jerzembeck was healthy as a freshman in 2023, he showed flashes of brilliance. He finished his first year at South Carolina with a 2.84 ERA over 31.2 innings. He struck out 36 and walked six batters while making 16 appearances (three starts).

“Obviously it’s a big blow to our team,” Mainieri said. “All summer since I was here, all fall, all winter, I anticipated he was going to be a Friday night starter. But you could see he just wasn’t right when he pitched in the scrimmages. He usually has really good command, and his control was really off. And even though he was throwing touching 95 miles an hour the other day, you could tell his fastball didn’t have the same explosiveness that it had in the fall.”

Mainieri expects Jerzembeck to make a full recovery and will be able to continue his baseball career. He didn’t share a timetable for when his eventual return to the mound could be. For the time being, South Carolina will now have to continue to use other pitchers to help fill out innings on the roster.

“I think that’s what we’re doing already. The three starters from last week threw five innings. Depending on pitch counts, and you know, it’s still a long season, you don’t want to be crazy,” Mainieri said. “If you’re fortunate enough for them to stay in your rotation and be healthy, that’s 14 starts in the regular season. There’ll be one in the SEC Tournament, there’ll be one in the regional, one in the Super Regional, two in the (College) World Series.

“So that’s a lot of pitching, and so you just can’t be crazy too early. We’ll make the smartest decisions that we can when it comes to trying to win the game, but also making sure we take care of the health of the players.”

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In other injury news, Mainieri doesn’t have an update on when right-hander Eddie Copper will make his return after suffering an elbow injury in 2024.

“I would have thought by now we would have,” Mainieri said. “I know he’s continuing to rehab with Corey Barton, and I don’t even have an update for you. He hasn’t thrown off the mound yet this spring, so I have no idea when he might be ready.”

South Carolina will begin a three-game series with Milwaukee starting on Friday. First pitch is at 4 p.m. on SEC Network Plus. Dylan Eskew (0-0, 1.80 ERA) will make his second start of the year.

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