ANNA MARIA, Fla. — Zach Spears was without baseball long before COVID-19 put a halt to the sports world.
The 2015 Mt. Vernon High School grad, and eighth-round pick of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 2018 Major League Baseball Draft, has been without the sport since spring training of the 2019 season.
“You’re playing for 15 years, then all of a sudden you’re not,” Spears said.
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The 6-foot-7, 237-pound hard-throwing left-handed pitcher was dealing with a lingering injury and in July of last year had to have surgery to repair the anterior portion of the capsule in his left shoulder.
He was rehabbing at Pirate City in Bradenton, Fla. — the spring training home of the Pittsburgh Pirates — when the season was shut down mid-camp. Players were told to go home or go elsewhere. They couldn’t stay there.
Needing to continue his rehabilitation and wanting to be able to stay outdoors with warm weather and a throwing partner, Spears is living quarantine-style with a teammate in a beach house in Anna Maria Island, Fla., located just a few miles away from Pirates camp.
He’s working out regularly and has the necessary tools for his rehab at the house. He and his roommate have an empty street in front of the home where they can throw. Someone from the Pirates organization, either on the coaching or training staff, call to check on him every day, Spears said.
He said, he is still on schedule to return to the mound either in late June or early July, if the sports world has resumed by that time. He’ll be continuing his rehab work through the month of May.
Sitting out really gave Spears time to reflect, and he believes he’ll not only be a better pitcher when he is fully healthy, but already believes he’s a better person.
“It was extremely hard to go through, mentally and physically when I had the game taken away,” Spears said. “I look back and I am better, stronger and wiser.
“Sometimes you need something like that. I don’t think I was off track, but the time without baseball gave me a chance to figure out a lot about myself.”
Spears was a dominant pitcher at Mt. Vernon, striking out 76 in only 45 innings during his senior year that saw him go 6-2 with a 3.11 earned run average. After three stalwart seasons at Division-I Miami of Ohio, located in Oxford, Ohio, he was drafted by the Pirates.
He had 12 appearances, all starts in his 2018 rookie season for the West Virginia Black Bears of the NY-Penn League (Short A). He threw 43 innings and went 1-6 with a 6.07 ERA.
He was assigned to the Greensboro Grasshoppers, a Pirates’ full-season Class A team in the South Atlantic League (Sally), in June of last season but didn’t get a chance to pitch.
The tall lefty, who will be 23 later this summer, is still very early in his pro career. He is hoping what he has learned during and after his surgery will lead to a long professional career.
“I got hurt and those things happen. I’m going to do what I can to not let it happen again,” Spears said. “I’ve learned how to be more aware of my body and realizing how my body works.”
Always a hard-thrower with a long delivery, Spears said shortening his arm path will help take the stress off is shoulder and elbow.
Whenever the game of baseball resumes, Spears believes he’ll have not only a healthy arm, but the right mindset.
His mindset is that of taking a positive approach.
“Your perspective on life is reality,” Spears said. “What you want to see, you’re going to see. I wake up every day and I am thankful. If you are looking for negatives you’ll find negatives. Sports are such a little thing in life, compared to what is going on now with the coronavirus.
“My parents always told me it can always be worse. Someone out there has always got it worse. I’m dealing with the struggles of an injury, and I’m taking the positives out of it.”
The big Marauder reiterated how grateful he is. He starts his day with coffee and a smoothie, sits by the pool and works out with a teammate to get ready for the resumption of his professional baseball career.
“The Pirates have given me all I need to succeed,” Spears added. “That’s all I can ask for.”
