Feb. 9, 2004
Notre Dame freshman righthanded pitcher Jeff Manship (San Antonio, Texas) is scheduled to undergo “Tommy John” reconstructive elbow surgery on Feb. 11 and is slated to miss the entire 2004 season. Manship was expected to be one of the top pitchers on the 2004 staff and is considered one of the nation’s elite freshman players, with Baseball America recently rating Manship as the No. 3 pro prospect among all college freshmen.
Manship was a two-time All-American at Reagan High School and pitched during the summer of 2003 with the United States Junior National Team.
“Unfortunately, Jeff arrived at Notre Dame with a tender elbow and was unable to participate in fall practice,” said 10th-year Notre Dame head coach Paul Mainieri. “We tried, through rest and rehabilitation, to get him ready but during that process he had a setback and it was determined that the only alternative was for reconstructive surgery.
“We expect Jeff to make a full recovery, under the expert care of our athletic trainer Mike Bean, and this simply is another challenge to be met by both our pitchers and our position players.”
Manship earned high school All-America honors following his junior and senior seasons at Reagan High School, with his combined statistics from the ’02 and ’03 seasons including a 0.65 seven-inning ERA (0.83 for nine innings), a 22-2 record, four no-hitters (one a perfect game), nearly an 8-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio (292/37) and nine-inning averages of 17.4 strikeouts, 2.2 walks and 3.1 hits allowed.
His dominating senior season featured a 0.64 ERA and 13-1 record, plus 133 Ks, 18 walks and 33 hits allowed (just one home run) in 77 innings. He had posted a nearly-identical ERA as a junior in 2002 (0.66) while pitching three fewer innings (74), with a 9-1 record, a higher strikeout total (159), virtually the same number of walks (19) and an extremely low number of hits allowed (19; or 2.3 per 9 IP).