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Detroit Tigers reliever Brendan White is example of just how tough baseball can be on body
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- Detroit Tigers reliever Brendan White is example of just how tough baseball can be on body
For six months, Detroit Tigers reliever Brendan White didn't know what was causing pain in his right elbow.
The lingering injury, specifically the uncertainty of its diagnosis, became an insurmountable hurdle in the 2024 season, as White was limited to eight games (spanning 7⅓ innings) at four levels of the minor leagues.
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On Aug. 20, White underwent a hydrodissection procedure to treat a right radial nerve injury .
He has been healthy ever since then.
"Towards the summer, we started to identify it a little bit more specifically, just being a pinched nerve," White said. "It was good to see that the whole time my elbow was structurally sound, which I was very happy about. Nothing serious was going on, but it just took a bit to figure out what it was."
Detroit Tigers pitcher Brendan White during spring training at TigerTown in Lakeland, Fla. on Friday, Feb. 16, 2024.
By late September, White threw a bullpen session without any setbacks and transitioned into his offseason program. He elected free agency after being designated for assignment in mid-November, but he re-signed with the Tigers in mid-December on a minor league contract with a non-roster invitation to spring training.
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The 26-year-old, who made his MLB debut in 2023, feels healthy as he prepares in White Plains, New York, to report to spring training in Lakeland, Florida. He is already throwing bullpens and live batting practice.
"I went back to square one," White said. "I was just going back to the basics and executing them, and then setting up building blocks. I had goals each week in terms of distance and volume. I felt healthy the entire time, knock on wood, so I'm feeling great."
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The elbow injury in the 2024 season flared up for the first time in the first week of spring training, described in mid-February as right posterior elbow discomfort.
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That initiated an extensive search for answers, including three separate MRIs.
The first MRI in mid-February showed inflammation but no structural damage, with a rest period prescribed. The second MRI in early May showed inflammation but no structural damage, with a cortisone shot and a rest period prescribed. The third MRI in early July — performed by elbow specialist Dr. Keith Meister in Dallas — showed no structural damage, just like the previous two MRIs.
"I was like, 'There's no freaking way,'" White said. "This is the best elbow guy in the world for baseball, and he's saying the elbow looks healthy, which was really disheartening."
Then Meister provided some hope.
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"In that same sentence, he says he knows a guy who could help get an idea if it's a nerve issue," White continued. "He sent me over to his guy to get a nerve block."
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Between the three MRIs, White pitched in three games for Triple-A Toledo (from March 31 to April 7), three games for Low-A Lakeland (from April 28 to May 5), one game for Double-A Erie (May 8) and one game in the Florida Complex League (June 18). A proven strike-thrower, White was responsible for 11 walks and six strikeouts across 7⅓ innings in those eight games, with a 7.36 ERA.
One of White's symptoms was he couldn't feel his fingertips on the baseball.
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At Meister's recommendation, White visited Dr. Gregory Pearl — also located in Dallas — in mid-July to receive a nerve block, which used a mix of novocaine, botox and cortisone.
"They put it in my neck and put it in my pec," White said. "Those locations are typical sites for nerve pinches, like the neck being the scalenes and the upper pec being the brachial plexus, which leads into the arm."
The nerve block was a diagnostic tool, not a permanent fix.
The doctors administered in the nerve block and instructed White to throw a baseball as soon as possible, as nerve blocks only last between three days and three weeks. If White felt healthy while the block was active, it would confirm his issues were nerve-related.
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"It happened to be the All-Star break," White said, "so I flew back home, up to White Plains."
Detroit Tigers pitcher Sean Guenther, left, talks to Brendan White during spring training at Tigertown in Lakeland, Fla. on Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024.
His girlfriend picked him up from the airport at midnight.
She dropped him off at a field with a fence at 1 a.m.
White started throwing as hard as he could to test the nerve block in his arm.
"I felt completely normal," White said. "I was throwing hard again. I really felt my fingers over the ball. ... I realized a couple hours later that it definitely was a nerve because there was no pain. ... That started to drift away after about three weeks."
The elbow pain resurfaced, but only after the effects of the nerve block subsided.
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The good news: White received a definitive answer about his right elbow, leading to a nerve conduction test in mid-August that showed a radial nerve injury somewhere in his forearm.
White traveled Aug. 20 to the Andrews Institute — founded by famous orthopedic sports surgeon Dr. James Andrews and located in Pensacola, Florida — to undergo a hydrodissection procedure, which is a non-invasive procedure that treats nerve entrapment by injecting a fluid to separate the nerve from the muscle.
"It was like a super deep ultrasound to go through my forearm to find the spot that the nerve was being pinched," White said. "It was up in my supinator. They injected saline into it to create a little bit of space for the muscle and the nerve to operate freely. It's not a very crazy procedure."
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White ramped up his throwing program in early September, threw a bullpen in late September and entered his offseason program in early October.
There haven't been any setbacks.
Finally healthy, White is determined to return to the big leagues for the first time since 2023.
"I want to get back really freaking bad," White said. "I feel like that says enough."
White pitched in 33 games for the Tigers in the 2023 season, posting a 5.09 ERA with 15 walks (8.5% walk rate) and 44 strikeouts (24.9% strikeout rate) across 40⅔ innings. He struck out Ozzie Albies , a three-time All-Star, with a 95.8 mph fastball for the first strikeout of his career in his June 15 debut.
His underlying metrics — such as a 3.85 FIP and a 4.41 expected ERA — suggested he was better than his baseball card stats indicated, as did his above-average results in whiff rate (29.2%) and ground-ball rate (51.3%).
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Both his four-seam fastball and slider had whiff rates above 35%.
"I've really worked on cleaning up my fastball in terms of some (spin) efficiency," said White, who throws a fastball, slider, sweeper, sinker and splitter. "Sometimes I get it to cut a little bit more than I would like, so I've been working on that. And then I'm diving a little bit more into my splitter. I've really tried to work on some cues to throw that a lot more this year."
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White, a 26th-round pick by the Tigers in the 2019 draft out of Siena College, enters spring training as an underdog for a spot in the bullpen on the 2025 Opening Day roster. Still, he's a dark horse candidate to make the team.
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Healthy and determined, White is eager to prove he can help the Tigers in 2025.
"I'm excited to compete and win a job," White said.
It's been a long time since White has been able to talk about being in competition mode.
"Now that I'm healthy, I'm really itching," White said. "I feel like it's been over a year since I can actually focus on pitching, not just trying to see if I'm healthy."
Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him @EvanPetzold .
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Where was Brendan White in 2024? Detroit Tigers P had tough route back
