Owen White
By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com
SURPRISE, Ariz. —William Timothy Owen White turns 20 today in Arizona, but his day, at least the early part of it, will involve more grinding than celebrating.
White, the most honored player in Carson baseball history and the 2018 Gatorade Player of the Year for North Carolina, won’t get anywhere near a pitching mound today. Therapists will lead him through three or four hours of drills, exercises and movements as he rehabs a right elbow that is on the mend from Tommy John surgery.
“It’s either three hours or four hours per day depending on the schedule for our team in the Arizona League,” White said.
“Our” is the Texas Rangers, the organization that selected White, a 6-foot-3 right-handed pitcher, in the second round of the June draft in 2018. He was the 55th player picked.
White was a South Carolina signee, but the Rangers offered him $1.5 million to pass on the college experience.
White, the No. 7 scorer in Carson basketball history for coach Brian Perry, was also a super shortstop for coach Chris Cauble’s Cougars and holds the school’s career batting records for hits (139), runs scored (92), RBIs (82) and doubles (40), as well as pitching records for victories (32-8) and strikeouts (358). He’s a special enough athlete that he may have been a two-way player at South Carolina, but the money on the table was life-changing. If you’d polled 100 people, 99 would’ve said White did the right thing to choose the pro path.
The Rangers, from the very start, did their best to protect White’s future and their investment.
He had a limited throwing program, but he didn’t pitch in games at all during the summer of 2018 after he signed with Texas. He, along with several new teammates, was part of the Rangers’ innovative “de-load program,” which allowed him to rest a right arm that Carson had leaned upon heavily for four years. Instead of firing baseballs, White built up his lean body with weights and spent his time in classrooms learning about nutrition and human physiology. He was taught Spanish and he picked up basic minor-league life skills such as cooking.
It all appeared to make a lot of sense, especially when White returned to the mound and experienced success pitching in the instructional league last fall. He broke off nasty curves to complement a fastball that reached 94 mph. He fooled hitters with an 83 mph changeup.
The plan for the 2019 season was for White to keep learning and pitching in extended spring training in Arizona until June when he would be assigned to a minor-league team, but a handful of pitches that White threw in late April changed everything.
“I was supposed to pitch three innings that day and I’d gotten through two innings in good shape with everything feeling great, and then I got the first two outs in my last inning,” White said. “One hitter to go and I threw a two-seam fastball, and that’s when I felt something. What I felt in my arm wasn’t pain, it was more like numbness. I knew something wasn’t quite right and I stepped off the rubber for a second. I wanted to get that last hitter out, so I threw a changeup. That’s when my whole arm just lit up. I still was able to throw one more pitch — a slider — and I got the last out on a fly ball.”
White reported to coaches and trainers that something wasn’t right. After initial tests in the training room, there was still optimism that it was a relatively minor strain of his forearm, but an MRI the next day revealed extensive damage to his right elbow. His ulnar collateral ligament was almost a total wreck — 80 to 90 percent torn.
“The extent of the tear ruled out just trying to rest it,” White said. “Surgery was really the only way to go.”
The reconstructive elbow surgery named for former MLB left-hander Tommy John — he was the first to have his career saved by the revolutionary surgery in 1974 — has become fairly routine stuff for pitchers over the last 45 years. More than 25 percent of MLB pitchers have had “TJ” surgery at some point in their careers.
White’s surgery was performed on May 1 in Arlington, Texas, at the TMI Sports Medicine center. Dr. Keith Meister, the Rangers’ director of medical services, operated.
A tendon was taken from White’s hamstring and was used to repair his elbow. The surgery took about 55 minutes.
The odds are in White’s favor that he’ll fully recover and be as good as new. The success rate for full recovery from “TJ” is at least 80 percent. Some put the figure closer to 90 percent.
While the math is on his side, it’s going to be a long, tedious recovery process for White.
“When I started, the plan was for a 14-month rehab program, but now they’ve adjusted it to a 16-month program,” White said. “They don’t want to take any chances. There’s no rushing it. The target date they’ve given me to be back on the mound is Aug. 20, 2020.
That’s a little more than a year away. White marks the weeks off his calendar. He’s currently in the 14th week of that 16-month challenge.
He’s up to 188 pounds now — which is good news. He was about 170 when he was drafted.
“I’d like to get bigger than that, but I sweat so much in my workouts that it’s hard to keep the pounds on,” White said.
He’s not lonely. He said there are nearly 40 Rangers at the complex rehabbing from various injuries and surgeries. So there are plenty of workout partners.
“By the fourth week after the surgery, I had full range of motion,” White said. “By the sixth week, I was able to do drills. Starting in the eighth or ninth week, I was able to really start working out with my arms as well as my legs. I think it’s all clicking, all going according to plan. I feel a little stronger every day.”
White insists that he’s not going crazy from boredom. He credits his roommate Tyler Thomas, a rehabbing lefty pitcher with some minor league experience, for keeping things positive.
“I pass the time playing games with family and friends back home on the PlayStation 4,” White said. “I stay in touch with everyone as well as I can.”
FaceTime is also an important tool for him to stay connected with his family — his parents and his three sisters were all standout athletes in Rowan County. He also frequently FaceTimes girlfriend Madison Barnhardt, who was an excellent volleyball and softball player for Carson.
“She’s been pretty amazing through everything,” White said. “She pushed herself hard through high school, always trying to get better, so she knows what it’s like to be an athlete. And she’s gotten the picture of what the White family is all about. Everything we do is a competition.”
If all goes well, an outstanding competitor will return to the mound in 2020.
