Former Bainbridge Spartan standout JR Ritchie, who is now pitching for the Rome Emperors, the Atlanta Braves’ High-A affiliate minor league team, had a long road to recovery after suffering a grade two tear of the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow in May of 2023.
The injury sidelined Ritchie for 14 months, but he returned to pitch for the Emperors last season. He said there would be some days where he had difficulty finding the strikezone, noting that pitching again was a “total mental grind.” This season, he is 1-0 with a 1.86 earned run average and six strikeouts over 9.2 innings. He was the 35th overall pick in the 2022 MLB Draft.
“You know, coming into this spring, I finally felt good,” Ritchie said. “I was bouncing back, my arm felt pretty good every week, so you know just trying to build off of that. You don’t really begin to feel like yourself until you hit that 18-month to two-year threshold. Thankfully, I’m past that.”
Ritchie received Tommy John surgery on his elbow roughly three weeks after the injury. For the following weeks, he was limited in what he could do, having to go through a rehabilitation program that consisted of grip strength training and regaining overall movement in his elbow.
He noted having a good rehab group was key to recovery, allowing him to exhibit his innate competitive nature and build strong friendships. Ritchie noted that in the rehab group it was important to have everyone uplift each other, as the process alone was “definitely a mental grind.”
Ritchie noted the most difficult part of recovery was staying positive. He said it was relatively easy to “kind of get down on yourself” and have a “woe-is-me” attitude, especially since for the first six months he couldn’t throw a baseball.
Regardless, Ritchie said the injury “gave me a more positive outlook on life and on baseball in general, and definitely made me more grateful for it.” He noted that when something as integral to him as baseball is taken away, it is a big mental hurdle.
Ritchie’s dad, Ian, noted the process helped his son’s maturity. Visualization and how Ritchie handled it set an example for the players he mentors.
Some of the mental approaches Ritchie implements include asking questions such as, “How well can I recover? What scouting reports can I go over? How’s my diet? How’s my sleep? What am I doing for my arm to prepare for that?”
When he was just 7 years old, Ritchie played on a select team, the Bainbridge Mavericks, that was largely for 9-year-olds, so he hardly got any playing time. Playing up was something he struggled with. So the injury isn’t the first time he’s dealt with adversity.
Ian motivated Ritchie then by telling him, “If this is something you want to get better at and this is how you want to play, you’re going to have to work for it.”
