McClure’s Road To Recovery
After suffering a severe injury that sat him out for most of the 2018 season, Kade McClure has bounced back on the mound.
Pitching for the Low-A Kannapolis Intimidators on May 13, 2018, at Asheville, Kade McClure knocked down a hard hit line drive from Tourist outfielder Roman Marcelino, positioning himself for an easy out at first base. Planting his left foot to reach down and field the ball, McClure heard the pop that ultimately ended his season.
Gripping to his leg, McClure felt his knee cap facing towards the outside of his body before sliding it back into its original state.
“I kind of grabbed my leg,” said McClure. “And when I grabbed it, it slipped back in. I couldn’t really see it because I had game pants on, but I felt it for sure.”
As trainers and coaches ran onto the field to help their pitcher, then-Kannapolis manager and current Dash skipper Justin Jirschele knew from the looks of McClure that this was serious.
As it turned out, McClure suffered from a medial patellofemoral ligament tear in his left leg. This ligament is located between the knee cap and the side of the femur and its main function is to hold the knee cap in place from falling to the outside of the leg.
The right-handed pitcher underwent surgery just two weeks later, performed by the Chicago White Sox doctor, Dr. Nikhil Verma, before being released to go back to his hometown for the remainder of his recovery in Mentor, Ohio.
One unfortunate injury, and a season of traveling through the Minor League cities of North Carolina was now being replaced by an unintentional trip back to Mentor.
Growing up as a multi-sport athlete, McClure was gifted in more realms than just baseball. Leading his 2012–2013 basketball team at Mentor High School to a state championship title and falling into the role as current Chicago Bears quarterback Mitch Trubisky’s backup on the football team, McClure already knew what success looked like.
As a four-year letter-winner in baseball and ranking as the No.4 player in the state of Ohio, McClure was awarded the Conference Pitcher of the Year at Mentor before earning a spot on the baseball team at the University of Louisville.
Fresh on the scene with the Cardinals, McClure landed a 1–1 record with two saves and four starts to register a 4.18 ERA before heading into a prolific sophomore season.
In 2016, the right-handed pitcher garnered All-American honors after securing a 12–0 record with 77 strikeouts in 13 starts on the bump. After sitting down a career-best 11 batters at the plate against Wake Forest in the ACC Championships, McClure became the nation’s second 12 game-winner.
Spending the following summer with the Brewster Whitecaps in the Cape Cod League, McClure had 22 strikeouts in 19 innings, positioning himself to become one of Louisville’s aces for the following year.
In his junior season with the Cardinals, the pitcher started on the mound 18 times, ending the 2017 season with a 3.58 ERA and 111 strikeouts. When Louisville’s season came to a close in the third game at the College World Series, McClure was ready to kick start his professional career on the bump.
Selected by the Chicago White Sox in the sixth round of the 2017 MLB Draft, McClure’s dream of becoming a professional baseball player was coming true.
The pitcher was moving through the ranks quickly as he continued to dominate on each level showcasing his command of pitches. Beginning what should’ve been his first full season at the professional level with Kannapolis, McClure off to a hot start, posting an ERA around 3.00 through his first nine outings.
Unfortunately, start number 10 slowed his roll.
“You don’t know exactly what it is at the moment on the field,” said Jirschele of the injury that halted McClure’s season. “But, you can obviously see visibly that he’s in excruciating pain, so you always tend to think the worst going off of how they react to the injury.”
For the first six weeks prior to the surgery, McClure spent all of his time in a straight leg brace that stretched from his hip to his ankle, making simple everyday tasks much more difficult.
“It was tough,” said McClure. “I had to sleep in it and have it on 24/7. I had to shower and put my whole leg through the bottom of a garbage bag and tie it up and saran wrap my leg, it was miserable.”
After the brace was removed, McClure spent the next six months rebuilding his strength at AGM Physical Therapy in Mentor with head physical therapist, Greg Morris.
“He’s worked as hard as anybody I’ve ever worked with,” said Morris. “To get to where he’s at now, he was in more than normal. Generally people come in three days a week for therapy, but he was in five days a week with me.”
The pitcher’s daily routine soon became mundane, spending three hours at AGM doing his warmups and exercises with Morris, before calling up his mom for a ride home, just to spend the remainder of his time lounging on the couch watching Netflix.
“It was frustrating obviously,” said McClure. “But, I was able to follow along on social media and talk to my buddies and stuff that were still playing, but it was definitely frustrating not being able to play and be apart of the rest of summer.”
Being used to the fast-pace life of sports, McClure’s rehab routine was something totally foreign to him.Living back at home for the first summer since high school, the pitcher thought it might be nice to have some off time.
That is, until that off time lasted for eight long months.
Not having the ability to drive or even get up and leave anytime he wished was something new to McClure and definitely not something that was ideal for someone in their early twenties.
When he was able to leave the house with friends or family, McClure never escaped the public eye. As people continually drilled him with questions regarding his injury, the pitcher was ready to escape for a little while.
“People coming in and out would recognize me just from being in the area,” said McClure. “And I was very over-talking about it for a while. Just the same questions anytime I went to a graduation party, or went somewhere, ‘How’s the knee?’, ‘How long has it been?’. I was just going to get a shirt and print it on me, ‘I feel great, I’m at three months’ or whatever.”
While this was a restricting time for McClure at home, his parents Brian and Lisa McClure, never failed to be their son’s support system any time he needed advice. Since Brian played football at Bowling Green State and later was a quarterback for the Buffalo Bills, he understood his son’s frustration with major injuries at a professional level.
While his mom also played volleyball at Bowling Green State, Lisa is a practicing physical therapist, so she offered a totally different perspective. Since she’s seen all types of injuries from athletes, she understood the tedious process McClure was having to endure to rebuild his leg back to normal.
When McClure was beginning to make the decision as to where he wanted to complete his phsyical therapy, Lisa gave him a list of options in the nearby area. The pitcher felt most comfortable with Morris, who had previously been a student of his mother’s when he was finishing up his time in P.T. school.
“For her to call me and ask me to take care of him,” said Morris. “It was a special thing for me because I know she trusts me. So to entrust the care of her son, number one was something I don’t take for granted and also just knowing what’s on the line for Kade, who’s aspiring to be a professional player, it’s a responsibility for me that I didn’t take lightly.”
Continuing on with his strict schedule of physical therapy each day, McClure tried to keep his sights set on the big picture of becoming healthy and pitching again the next season, but sometimes it was hard to see quick improvements through the exercises.
“The first almost two months was just regaining range in motion and quad function,” said McClure. “And just raising my leg off the table by myself. As simple as that stuff sounds, the function of that goes away so fast when you get opened up and all that stuff is adjusted. So a lot of it was very simple with my new little movements that took a little while to get those functions back.”
Following his surgery, Morris and McClure were restricted to a tight protocol they had to obey by, making sure not to bend McClure’s knee past a certain degree of range. While this took a lot of patience and faith, Morris tried to keep McClure’s mind off of his injury by focusing his attention on things they could control in the present.
“We had to work on arm stuff and his torso,” said Morris. “So you can start putting in whole body exercises that don’t involve anything that is against the protocol against his knee. And getting his mind off of what his knee is not doing, so that he can start thinking about having his arm ready to throw, having his torso ready to get in action and working his good leg as well as his one that had surgery.”
After McClure figured out the basics of therapy and gained some strength back, Morris began to feed him tougher exercises. With heel slides, single leg jumps, and weight bearing movements, McClure found himself feeling stronger already.
McClure and Morris worked side-by-side for months attempting to get him back to where he was before the injury, but even through all this work, McClure didn’t pick up a baseball until about six months into the therapy. Beforehand, all he ever held was a towel to stimulate the feeling of a ball.
While this might seem tedious to the public eye, the little motions were what was most beneficial to McClure’s healing process, and if that meant not touching a baseball for half a year, McClure was all in.
“The first almost two months was just regaining range in motion and quad function,” said McClure. “And just raising my leg off the table by myself. As simple as that stuff sounds, the function of that goes away so fast when you get opened up and all that stuff is adjusted. So a lot of it was very simple with my new little movements that took a little while to get those functions back.”
The estimated recovery time for a torn medial patellofemoral ligament was anywhere from seven months to a year, while this sat McClure out for the offseason as well, he was cleared by the start time of Spring Training in 2019.
“I didn’t even feel really 100% until about a year or eleven months or so,” said McClure. “But, I was cleared to resume normal activity around eight and half months.”
After clicking the pause button on his career midseason last year, McClure quickly jumped back into his old habits.
McClure began this season with the Intimidators getting in 10 starts on the mound to record a 3.09 ERA before being promoted to High-A in Winston-Salem. While his time with the Dash has been short, McClure has impressed the very coaches who have seen him grow from his injury.
“Obviously in the training room with the training staff and conditioning staff. You expected it, but it’s great to see it come to form here and him have success at a higher level, and with the work that he put in helped him mentally, and physically really,” said Jirschele. “When you got to go through something like that it’s never easy, but I think it showed him that he can get through anything and I’m extremely happy with the success he’s had here so far this year.”
McClure’s performance talks for itself as he’s tallied a 2.32 ERA in nine starts with 50 innings under his belt. While only giving up 13 earned runs, the White Sox Minor League Pitcher of the month of June, has fanned 37 batters.
McClure recognizes that as he continues to advance to the next levels, he can’t strike everybody out, instead he has to trust the defense behind him and know that they have his back throughout every outing.
“At this level obviously the pitching gets better,” said McClure. “The hitting gets better, defense gets better and all of those things, but I think it’s just kind of refining all of the things that you can do at this point.”
After spending eight and half months away from the mound, McClure has bounced back stronger than ever before, not only physically, but also mentally. Understanding that the little movements meant big progress, was the light at the end of the tunnel for this pitcher.
“Once you learned to kind of trust it,” said McClure. “Everything else came kind of quickly, which was nice.”
McClure’s speedy rehabilitation process shaped his road to recovery. With the non-extinct scar on his left knee to show for his gruesome injury, the pitcher never lets his past halt him from his defense.
With agile movements on the mound and an increasing command of pitches, McClure continues to look forward in hopes to one day make his Major League debut in Chicago.
