BRADENTON, Fla. — It wasn’t the first elbow surgery that really got to Cory Luebke. Wasn’t the second, either, nor was it the procedure to release his ulnar nerve, which he described as “stuck.”
The staph infection Luebke got last summer, which began in his forearm and crept upward, proved to be the backbreaker.
“Of all the crap I dealt with,” Luebke said, “that one was probably the worst.”
Luebke, a 30-year-old left-hander, has moved on from the series of medical issues that cost him most of the past four seasons and turned what looked like a promising young starter for the San Diego Padres into a non-roster invitee on a minor league contract with the Pirates.