Rutgers baseball shortstop Dan DiGeorgio had high hopes for his second season after being named to the All-Big Ten freshman team last year. However, it appears that we will have to wait as he suffered an ACL tear this past fall.
Rutgers head coach Joe Litterio offered his thoughts on losing one of his teams top players for the beginning of the 2019 season.
“We lost Danny DiGeorgio when he tore his ACL early on in the fall,” Litterio said. “He’s had surgery and he’s optimistic about coming back. He is one of those kids that nothing is going to get in his way to coming back. So we have Dave Soto, a freshman stepping up in his role at shortstop.”
The Knight Report was also able to catch up with DiGeorgio to get a little more insight into how the injury happened and where he stands with his rehab.
“First week of practice I was going for a ball in the hole and my knee buckled,” DiGeorgio said. “My knee just gave out and I blacked out for a few seconds and next thing I see a few coaches trying to help me up. It felt fine that day and the next couple days, and it was just really sore. I was staying confident and I was still pretty strong in the weight room. I got the news about three weeks later that I had a fully torn ACL and a torn lateral meniscus.”
Sources told TKR that DiGeorgio is expected to miss only a couple more months and he expects to be back some time in April.
“I had a meeting with my surgeon on January 10th and everything looks really good,” he said. “He also said that I’m a little bit ahead of schedule right now and we are aiming for some time in mid-April for a return.”
Although DiGeorgio is going to miss the first couple months, he is still confident in his teams ability to get out there and earn some wins.
“I was a little doubtful at first, because we had a few big losses,” said DiGeorgio. “However, I’m pretty confident now. The pitching has really stood out to me and I think we have a better staff and we are deeper than last year.”
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