When February rolls around, a professional baseball player’s thoughts turn to green grass and warm weather – ball meeting leather and the sounds of baseball season beginning to bloom.
But when that player can’t make plans to head south to Arizona or Florida, he feels a void that nothing much else can fill.
Lucas Gilbreath, currently a former Colorado Rockie and the pride of Broomfield’s Legacy High School, is dealing with that void right now. He’s busy trying to fill it with his local youth baseball business. He’s leading some hunting expeditions and working with a couple younger pro pitching prospects. What he’s not doing is throwing a baseball off a mound with any bad intentions. In other words, he’s not getting ready to pitch this upcoming season.
Gilbreath hasn’t missed a spring training since 2018. Counting his high school and college years at the University of Minnesota, he’s been gearing up to pitch in February for 15 straight years.
This February is different – and not by choice.
Gilbreath is currently trying to rehab his surgically not-yet-repaired left elbow. An unusual nerve issue has left him unable to throw without serious difficulty, and according to Rockies doctors, another surgery – he already underwent a Tommy John procedure – would likely just make things worse, not better.
So he goes to physical therapy and tries new and cutting-edge, nerve repair procedures, and he waits for some good news.
It hasn’t been that long since Gilbreath broke in and became a mainstay in Bud Black’s bullpen in 2021. After just three years in the Rockies minor league system, Gilbreath reached Coors Field and had a very nice ‘21 campaign, followed by an excellent start to the 2022 season. Then the problems started. The 29-year-old left-hander was first diagnosed with a left elbow flexor strain in August of 2022. He missed the rest of that season and had a “platelet-rich plasma” injection in September. When that didn’t fix things, he had the Tommy John surgery that caused him to miss the 2023 season. Back he came in 2024, but after a few good outings, the elbow problems returned, and that season ended with him sidelined once again. More rest and rehab followed, but the problems didn’t go away.
The TJ surgeries and rehab didn’t improve anything. After making just one big league appearance last summer in Pittsburgh, Gilbreath was back in the minors and on and off the injured list. The diagnosis this time was different: “Severe Neurogenic Thoracic Outlet Syndrome,” or TOS. He has “compressed nerves” in his arm, tingling in his fingers, arm weakness and fatigue. Those things aren’t good things for a pitcher.
The most well-known case of TOS was the one that shut down Washington Nationals star right-hander Stephen Strasburg. While searching for answers and impactful treatments, Gilbreath called Strasburg over the winter and asked what the former World Series MVP did to treat his injury.
Strasburg’s answer? “I retired.”
That’s not what an otherwise healthy pitcher wants to hear, of course. But here we are. Spring Training is starting in Scottsdale, and Gilbreath is home in Colorado working with physical therapists and nerve specialists to see if any experimental treatments can end the pain and numbness and get him back on the hill.
True to his nature, Gilbreath is optimistic. He plans on exhausting every possible avenue and treatment he can find out about. And while he isn’t heading to Arizona any time soon, he’s hopeful that sometime this summer, when the pain is gone and his fastball pops again, that the sights and sounds of baseball here at home will be enough to get him back in the game.
