Dodgers prospect lost use of his right eye, but his big-league vision remains

New York Times

5 hours ago

A year later, Patrick Copen is still upset about the walk. If not for the walk, he wouldn't have had to shift his attack to get a groundball and the double play he needed. If not for the walk, he probably wouldn't have thrown the cutter that changed his life forever.
For the Los Angeles Dodgers' prospect, that pitch on Aug. 20, 2024, could have been his last. Instead, it was a new beginning. Copen remembers everything about the 91-mph cutter. How it leaked out over the plate. How the ball came off Cooper Pratt's bat. How he saw it but couldn't react in time as the ball screamed toward his face. The shock of what happened and the reactions that told him the worst. The ambulance ride and emergency surgery.
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Because of it all, Copen lost sight in his right eye. He hasn't lost his perspective.
'I was never OK with the fact of losing vision, but I was able to accept it, knowing that I was going to be able to play again,' Copen told The Athletic. 'As long as I can see home plate, and my arm feels good, then I'm perfectly OK with whatever the outstanding circumstances are.'
A year later, Copen, 23, is back on the mound. He's advanced to Double A, enjoying the type of breakout he envisioned when the Dodgers selected him in the seventh round of the 2023 MLB Draft out of Marshall University.
'It wasn't a deterrent for him to get back,' Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes said of the injury. 'To ultimately keep going for the goal to be a big-league pitcher, it's pretty inspiring.'
They call him 'Cope.' It's a rather simple moniker, a play off his last name that blends seamlessly into the tradition of baseball nicknames. It fits and describes him in a way. Adaptable. Resilient. Process-driven and capable of handling instruction as well as hardship.
Going to the Dodgers in the draft represented a chance for Copen to learn, so he dove in headfirst. The team explained to him why they liked him so much. He is all arms and legs at 6-foot-6 and can generate extreme extension down the mound, cutting short the amount of time hitters have to react.
Copen embraced it. He sought out the information his new organization had to offer and worked to refine not just his pitch mix but how he attacked hitters. The changes took. He reduced his walk rate, which had been a problem during his college career. In his first professional season, Copen pitched well enough to earn a call-up from Low A to High-A Great Lakes.
'He has a lot of ingredients that fit in those boxes,' said David Anderson, who was Copen's pitching coach at Great Lakes, 'which makes it one of the most fun arms that you could have to work with.'
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Copen was looking to continue that momentum when he took the mound last Aug. 20 against the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, the Milwaukee Brewers' affiliate, in Midland, Mich. The first inning frustrated Copen, as he got two quick outs before allowing a run on a pair of hits and a walk. The second inning was Copen at his best, as he struck out the side.
Then came the third inning, and the walk. Then the first-pitch cutter that missed its spot with a runner at first and nobody out.
'I was just thinking, get a double play,' Copen said. 'We were pretty close, actually, if I would have gotten out of the way.'
Then, the crack.
'Off the bat, you heard that,' Anderson said. 'And you heard a second crack. Then you're just praying it's not what you think it was. … It was the worst thing I've been a part of on a baseball field.'
The blood.
'I saw blood dripping from my clothes,' Copen said, 'and that's when I knew, I wasn't going to finish my start here.'
The uncertainty.
He didn't feel pain when he got hit. Instead, he felt the pressure of several small facial fractures at once. Copen didn't lose consciousness. When a trainer came to check on him and went through his array of questions, Copen responded with frustration about leaving the cutter there.
Copen was immediately transported to a local hospital, then transferred to the University of Michigan hospital in Ann Arbor, more than 110 miles away. There, Copen underwent emergency surgery through the night as doctors sought to repair the globe of his right eyeball. The surgery around his orbital bone was successful, but the detachment of his retina was so severe that doctors told him they could not save his vision in that eye.
He was forced to navigate the world more carefully.
'Pouring water into a glass is different,' Copen said. 'Grabbing my card from the cashier is different. Seeing where I am in space, like grabbing the doorknob, is different.'
He figured going out to a mound again would be different, too.
Two weeks after surgery, Copen called the clubhouse manager at Great Lakes and asked if he could come to the ballpark. He did not return to Dow Diamond as a means of conquering whatever trauma had developed during his last time there. His purpose was more practical. He went straight to the mound and looked at home plate. Then he practiced his set motion from the stretch, as if there were a runner on base.
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He turned to the clubbie, Johnny Dukes.
'I think I'm going to have to hold runners differently,' Copen told him.
Save for a span of around 30 minutes in the ambulance, Copen figured that he'd somehow be back on that mound one day. He knew as much, especially as the calls rolled in from family and friends. Dodgers personnel, who urged him that if he wanted the chance to pitch, the organization would give him every opportunity to do so.
Anderson received a message the day after the injury from Copen, containing a video of the right-hander going through his normal day-after start routine and dry work to emphasize his lower half. The pitching coach was flabbergasted.
'I don't think there are many people in the world that would've attacked his rehab and his recovery the way that he did,' Anderson said.
It was the first of several videos that Copen and his girlfriend, former Marshall volleyball star Macy McElhaney, would record in the coming months, showing each stage of his recovery. There was the plyometric work, which likely went against the doctors' orders but was just part of Copen's usual throwing routine. McElhaney filmed herself throwing rolled-up socks, then tennis balls, then ping-pong balls at Copen in order to practice his depth perception. Before the season ended, Copen made sure to return to the Great Lakes dugout, putting on the uniform and joining his Loons teammates to show everything was alright.
'I'll never forget telling the guys this is the person who's most upbeat about all this, is Cope,' Anderson said. 'So it's like we need to rally around what he's setting the path for us to follow and rally around the positivity that he has.'
That part came easily for the young pitcher. Day-to-day tasks often took some adjustment time due to Copen's depth perception issues, but once on the mound, there wasn't much difference outside of how he holds a runner. Now, rather than give half a look to check the runner, he will turn his head completely.
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Once he figured that out, he wanted to see what happened the day of his injury. His goal was not to relive the experience of the line drive, though.
'I wanted to see why he hit it so hard,' Copen said.
He watched the video clip of the pitch repeatedly. The cutter hadn't moved the way he wanted it to. So he tweaked the grip, hoping to add more depth.
'I definitely don't want to throw cutters that act like bullet sliders,' Copen said with a laugh.
Catching rolled-up socks turned into playing catch, which turned into months of bullpen sessions before Dodgers personnel wanted him to face hitters this spring. Several team officials gathered on a back field in Arizona to watch what months before had seemed like a long shot.
Copen hadn't even lasted an inning before Dodgers All-Star Teoscar Hernández, seeking to get some extra at-bats, stepped in and scorched a liner back up to the mound that struck Copen on the leg.
He was fine, but the reminders kept coming. The next day, the Dodgers opened their spring training slate and watched as Bobby Miller got struck in the head by a comebacker, sustaining a concussion but avoiding more damage. A day later, on the same mound, a 102.4 mph line drive hit San Diego Padres minor-leaguer Cole Paplham in the face and hospitalized him.
'I didn't realize how often it happens until it happens to you,' Copen said.
'Any time anybody gets hit, it's a terrifying thing,' said Gomes, a former big-league pitcher. 'You get a pit in your stomach.'
That reality did little to deter Copen from achieving a goal he'd set when he got hit. When Great Lakes opened its 2025 season at Dow Diamond in April, Copen was the Loons' Opening Day starter. He threw 3 2/3 innings, allowing no hits, striking out nine and walking four in the first official outing of his new life.
The results continued from there. In 10 starts with the Loons, he struck out 77 batters in just 48 innings. His ERA sat at a measly 2.25 before he earned a call-up to Double-A Tulsa. Through his first 12 starts and 53 2/3 innings there, Copen's ERA is 3.52. He's still striking out hitters at a strong rate, continuing a season that has impressed the Dodgers beyond the circumstances.
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'He has three legit fastballs,' Gomes said. 'And he's taking steps forward. Even as he's moved up levels, the walk rates have been maintained … his overall pitch package is really impressive.'
Anderson also praised how Copen's focus has stood out since his return.
'His approach to his career is whatever happens to him, whether he's a big leaguer for 15 years, whether he's a big leaguer for one day, like he's going to make sure that he can say at the end of the day he did everything he could and he has zero regrets about how he goes about things,' Anderson said.
The last year has transformed Copen's life in more ways than one. He and McElhaney got engaged this spring, and months after she was there to witness Copen getting hit, she was there to watch his return to a professional mound.
'Having to deal with that has definitely allowed me to grow and have a different perspective on day-to-day life,' Copen said. 'I mean, I was pretty close to getting knocked out or even worse. So being able to look at that and get through it and come back way better than I was before.'
His perspective has shifted. The goal has not.
'There's never a bad time at the ballfield in my book,' Copen said.
(Top photo of Patrick Copen: Tim Campbell / Tulsa Drillers)
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