AJ Russell boarded a flight to Omaha a day after undergoing surgery to repair his partially torn Ulnar Collateral Ligament in his right arm last June. The sophomore had finally found clarity following a season of injury confusion, and refused to be 900 miles away from his teammates as they chased Tennessee’s first ever national championship.
The ensuing two weeks were both “awesome” and nagging for Russell. His desire to get back on the mound in a Tennessee uniform was an unscratchable itch that wouldn’t go away.
Nearly a year after surgery, Russell is back where he had longed to be, on the mound for the Vols in another postseason push.
“I think on top of the appreciation, it’s a little bit more of I want output equal to my input,” Tennessee head coach Tony Vitello said. “Because it’s been a massive amount.”
Russell’s sophomore year couldn’t have gotten off to a better start. Striking out 10 of the first 13 Texas Tech batters he faced in Tennessee’s season opener, Russell shot up draft boards and looked every bit the part of one of the nation’s best pitchers and a future big leaguer.
But arm pain during a mid March outing against Ole Miss upended Russell’s season. Multiple MRIs showed that his UCL was sprained but not torn. A common injury for a pitcher, doctors believed that Russell just needed rest to get back on the mound by the end of the season.
“When I started throwing again, it just, nothing really felt right,” AJ Russell told RTI. “The best you’re gonna feel is opening day. And we all joke about that, but it’s true. The only time your arm really doesn’t hurt is opening day. So it’s like just one of those things you kind of just live with and you manage it.”
Russell returned to the mound in the SEC Tournament against Vanderbilt and then again in the championship game four days later against LSU. It was evident from the jump against the Tigers that Russell wasn’t himself.
“And I could just tell from the start that something wasn’t right,” Russell said. “This is way too painful to be just a sprain of UCL or a strain of my flexor.”
Tennessee returned to Knoxville after winning the SEC Tournament and Russell had another MRI. This time, it showed a tear and a need for surgery. Most pitchers can point to the exact pitch when their arm blows out. Russell never had that moment.
The odd set of circumstances led to a spring of confusion. While having surgery was not the ideal outcome, it did finally bring Russell clarity about the situation.
Russell’s sophomore season was the first time he dealt with an injury. It was the first time he’d been in a hospital.
“It was a lot of first times for me,” Russell said.
The newness and uncertainty of it all made it a season of self reflection for Russell. He came to an old-but-strengthened conclusion about himself.
“How much I love baseball and how much I want to, want to be a part of not only last year’s team, but this year’s team as well,” Russell said.
Russell didn’t sit on his hands when he was unable to pitch. He used that time to learn more about his craft and the mental side of the game. Russell sat in on meetings with junior starter Drew Beam, catcher Cal Stark as well as coaches Frank Anderson and Richard Jackson as they game planned to attack lineups each week.
“He just, at that point, was wanting to keep getting better as much as he could,” Beam told RTI. “And so, yeah, he just asked if he could kind of listen. I mean, it was my third year as a starter, so me and him had a pretty good relationship throughout college. So he just asked if he could kind of tune in and see kind of what I was looking for, looking at on hitters as we kind of got prepped for a game.”
Russell was naturally good enough to have success in an albeit limited role as a freshman. Spending more time around Anderson while facing elite hitters was naturally going to lend to his growth. But while the arm injury stunted Russell’s physical growth, it expedited his mental growth.
“I would absolutely say I was green,” Russell said. “It was just pick up the baseball and throw it as hard as I can. And I would throw it. I’m gonna throw it at the glove. And now there’s little things that I’ve learned of like where to throw certain pitches, how to attack guys. Like I said, why we’re throwing certain pitches in certain counts, that kind of thing. The analytics behind certain people, what people hit better than others. And I’ve learned so much. There’s so much that you can go into, and go into depth about. I’ve learned just watching the game.”
“It sucks to have to sit out for a season and be injured, but it also, I think, can greatly improve your kind of mental side of the game,” Beam said.
Russell’s injury reiterated his love of baseball. It forced him to develop not only mentally as a player but in his maturity and understanding of all that goes into treating baseball like his profession.
“I would say he’s grown up a lot,” Tom Russell, AJ’s father, said. “He understands the risks now better than ever, and he understands too what is at stake.”
“We’ve seen that shift in his mentality, as far as I would think, one, understanding what it takes to be at that next level, and two, the maturity to say no to a lot of things because he has a goal,” AJ’s mother Katherine Russell added.
Before Russell went in for surgery, the doctors estimated a 12 to 18 month rehab before he would pitch again. That timeline, at a minimum, eliminated him from pitching in his junior season and put his Tennessee career in flux. But the doctors had a pleasant surprise for him when he woke up following the surgery.
“Then I get out of surgery, and he says, oh, we gave you the other surgery, which is that, on average, eight to 10 months,” AJ Russell said. “And that one was where my tissue is in such a good place, because instead of it just fully snapping, it was one of those gradual tears.”
That changed everything. There was all of a sudden a chance that Russell could pitch again in his junior season at Tennessee.
“That was really the driving factor of rehab, which is to just get as healthy as possible as fast as possible and make sure that everything was feeling good,” Russell said. “I wanted to play more here. So that was kind of the big driving factor.”
“He totally jumped into his rehab and bear hugged it,” Tom Russell said. “He just took ownership and just said, ‘I’m going to get better, and I’m going to be on that field next spring somehow, some way.’ And that’s what he did.”
Russell stepped back on the mound against North Alabama on Feb. 25. It was 275 days after he had last pitched in a game and an incredible 259 days after he underwent surgery to repair his UCL.
The 6-foot-6 right-handed pitcher’s injury and rehab also magnified another area where he could improve.
“I learned a lot about the process of just how to take care of my body the right way,” Russell said. “And I put on a bunch of weight during that process of lifting. I learned the kind of ins and outs of like, warming up the right way, the post throw stuff that I didn’t take fully serious as a freshman.
“That’s stuff that as a freshman, when everything’s kind of going the right way, you don’t necessarily think about.”
Russell came in as a lanky pitcher due to a late growth spurt, but he’s always loved and embraced working in the weight room. His development was more with understanding how to best take care of his body between starts. He extended his warm up process and fine tuned his post throw routine.
That, combined with a slow build up this season, has led to Russell getting better as the year has progressed. He’s also accepted an abundance of roles. Russell still projects as a top three round pick in this summer’s MLB Draft, but hasn’t been demanding about when he should throw.
Because of that, Russell has helped Tennessee piece together its pitching staff. The Franklin native has started games, thrown in long relief and late in games.
“Personally knowing him, it’s spot on to who he is,” Beam said. “He’s a big team guy, loves his teammates, loves the guys that he’s around. And he’s always been that way, so just kind of an accolade to him that he’s just going out there and he just wants the best for the guys around him.”
After a ho-hum first few SEC outings, Russell has turned a corner in recent weeks. He looks like the pitcher who dominated Texas Tech 16 months prior and is the most trustworthy Tennessee reliever entering the NCAA Tournament.
“I would say this past weekend (in the SEC Tournament), the swagger came back,” Tom Russell said. “He had that little strut and that little slide in the step and that little smirk, and you could see that stuff. And then that’s, I think, been the most fulfilling thing out of this whole journey for him and for us, is that we’re seeing that come back.”
A year after sitting in the dugout during Tennessee’s national title run, Russell is back on the rubber, champing at the bit to help write the 2025 Vols’ postseason story.
“I’m ready to go,” Russell said. “I think the rest of the guys are too and I think we’re gonna make a good run at this.”
