The drills. The videos. The constant reps. Repeating the motion. Overcoming the adrenaline.
Paul Kosanovich is trying to tweak the way he has always thrown a baseball. At 6-foot-4 and 240 pounds, the former college tight end is a big, stiff, strong right-hander. But his pitching mechanics had slid out of sync the past few seasons, putting additional strain on his right elbow as he threw his low-90s fastball.
That stress caught up with Kosanovich midway through last season. That’s why he was in the dugout but never on the mound during Virginia’s run to the College World Series. That’s why he has spent this offseason trying to correct those mechanics, with the goal of helping the Hoos get back.
“He works on it all the time. We try to video it all the time and see where it’s at. But it takes a lot of work,” admitted UVa pitching coach Drew Dickinson. “When you have thrown a certain way your entire life, you don’t just say, ‘Oh, I need to do this,’ and you just do it. It doesn’t work that way.”
The 23-year-old Kosanovich is now in his sixth season of college baseball, his fourth at Virginia after two seasons at East Los Angeles College. He’s made 32 appearances in a UVa uniform the past three years, all but one out of the bullpen.
His most recent appearance came on the first day of April last spring, when Kosanovich was charged with two runs on three hits in a 6-5 loss at Georgia Tech. That game ultimately proved to be the lowest point of the season for the Wahoos, dropping them to 11-14 overall and just 4-12 in the ACC. They’d win the next two in Atlanta to jumpstart a 14-6 run in conference play the rest of the regular season to get back to .500 in the ACC, into the NCAA Tournament and ultimately to Omaha.
It was the low point for Kosanovich as well.
“My mom made that joke when I went back home,” he said with a chuckle. “She's like, ‘Wow, they really started winning after you were out.’”
The Hoos were already down by four runs when Kosanovich entered to start the third inning against Georgia Tech. He worked around a one-out walk to throw a scoreless frame—but then surrendered a leadoff home run and a pair of doubles in the fourth inning. His velocity dipped as the outing wore on. Kosanovich felt like he was pushing the ball and couldn’t put anything behind it. The pain in his elbow that had gradually been getting worse for much of his UVa career had come to a head.
Athletic trainer Brian McGuire recommended an MRI. Kosanovich feared season-ending ligament damage, but the results instead revealed a stress fracture in the elbow. Still, given where the Wahoos were on both the schedule and in the standings, it was unlikely it would heal in time to pitch again during the season.
So Kosanovich could only watch as Virginia, after losing its first five ACC weekend series, won six of its final seven to get back into the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2017. The Wahoos were sent to Columbia, SC, where they first rallied to win a four-team regional despite dropping the opener to South Carolina, then took the final two games of the best-of-three super regional against Dallas Baptist to advance to the College World Series.
It was while the team was still in Columbia between the first and second weekends of the postseason that Kosanovich approached McGuire again. This time, the conversation was about possibly building the right-hander back up in case the Hoos got to Omaha. Kosanovich came to UVa to pitch in the postseason, he argued. He wasn’t sure what the future held, or whether the team would get back to that stage in his remaining time.
McGuire warned of the potential risks but trusted the pitcher’s judgment, and ultimately, Kosanovich started throwing again that week in Columbia. He threw a bullpen session on the Cavaliers’ practice day in Omaha as well—but wasn’t quite healthy enough to where the coaching staff felt comfortable adding him to the CWS roster.
Kosanovich threw a few more bullpens, holding out hope that he’d be cleared in time should the Hoos reach the CWS Finals and the roster could be revised. He also continued to serve as one of the Cavalier's ringleaders in the dugout, with TV cameras often catching the big right-hander in the center of mid-game postseason celebrations.
“People who know Paul, he wants to be out there and he wants to compete, but he’s also an amazing teammate,” said Dickinson. “He was more valuable than he’ll probably ever know.”
Kosanovich’s first UVa season, in 2019, ended without a postseason appearance; his second year ended abruptly in mid-March amid the initial COVID outbreak. So he tried to soak up the full College World Series experience.
“But it kind of just made me hungrier,” he admitted, “because I just felt like I couldn’t fully enjoy it.”
Shortly after the 2021 season ended, head coach Brian O’Connor extended Kosanovich the offer to return. With the disappointment of missing out on the opportunity to pitch on the NCAA stage still fresh—and the opportunity to complete a Master’s degree from UVa—Kosanovich called the decision to come back “kind of a no-brainer.”
He began throwing again at home late last July, then returned to UVa and resumed bullpen sessions in October. He worked with plyo balls and heavy balls, and doing other drills with the focus on fixing his pitching motion, “just to kind of train my arm, train my brain to get that muscle memory back the right way.”
With the Wahoos opening the season with three games in North Carolina this weekend, Kosanovich is ramping up that preparation. His velocity is back in the low 90s. He’s been locked in as the Hoos have scrimmaged this preseason, and has felt younger teammates gravitate toward the energy he brings and example he sets.
Kosanovich earned three holds and a win in the first month of the season last year. Dickinson says that if the experienced righty can get fully healthy and built back up, he could again serve as a bridge to the back end of the bullpen—or give the Hoos a strike-throwing veteran option in a midweek starter role.
“We’re trying to get him to a point where we can just get past the bumpy road, and be consistent and be able to throw every week,” Dickinson said. “He just wants to pitch, and first of all wants to be healthy. Because when you’re not healthy as a pitcher, it’s the most frustrating thing ever.”
So Kosanovich continues to throw the plyo balls and break down the videos and revamp the pitching motion that first brought him to Charlottesville. He’s motivated not just by the chance to get back to Omaha, but to prove to himself that he can get back to the pitcher that UVa coaches had targeted coming out of junior college, before his elbow started failing him.
“Coach O’Connor still hasn’t seen me on the mound. Who I am and what I believe my fullest potential is,” Kosanovich said. “Not proving everybody wrong, necessarily, but just proving everybody right for taking a chance on me.”
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