Fifteen pitches.

Fifteen pitches were all it took for Rob McDonnell to strike out the side in the second inning against Indiana State on March 18.

Those 15 pitches translated to a feeling of relief for the lefty, who walked off the mound at Illinois Field after getting all three Sycamore batters he faced to go down swinging. His arm was back to 100 percent and for the first time in a long time McDonnell wasn’t concerned about being on the mound.

“I’m not worried about my arm anymore,” McDonnell says now, about two months later, while standing near the field before practice in the same white uniform he had worn against Indiana State. “It feels great so I’m happy.”

Against Indiana State, McDonnell went on to throw another three innings, tallying six strikeouts — a career high — and picked up his first win as an Illini.

“To be able to strikeout the side was definitely a real big confidence booster,” McDonnell said.

McDonnell grew up with three older brothers in Barrington, Ill., and remembers always being the smallest when the boys played baseball in the backyard.

When he was 9, McDonnell got his first chance on the mound in little league and has pitched ever since. McDonnell kept growing and reached 6-foot-2, a height that now makes him the biggest brother.

McDonnell kept playing baseball into high school.

His sophomore year, McDonnell began to focus solely on baseball. He started to see a future in the game for himself.

McDonnell considers his junior year to be his breakout year. The lefty went 9-3 with a 2.10 ERA and 99 strikeouts in 71 innings.

Then it happened. Halfway through his senior year, he began feeling pain in his throwing arm. 

“It felt like someone was (kind of) stretching out my arm, stretching out my muscles, kind of like a tearing feeling, a burning sensation” McDonnell said. “It would feel like that for three hours after I threw.”

McDonnell felt pain on the mound and it would linger long after he walked off the field. So he took action and got an MRI.

The MRI showed a tear in his ligament and after consulting several doctors, McDonnell went ahead and had Tommy John Surgery.

In July of 2010, McDonnell had surgery at Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana. He was nervous beforehand, worrying about what could go wrong. But after the surgery, he was his normal, goofy self.

“After the surgery I woke up and my mom was right there,” McDonnell said. “The nurse was wrapping my arm and she goes, ‘Is it too tight?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, because my guns are too big.’ And the nurse looked at me and my mom like, ‘Yeah, he’s fine.’”

McDonnell was put on a rehab schedule and was a medical redshirt his freshman year at Illinois in 2011.

Initially, McDonnell could only participate in the team’s conditioning workouts. Soon he was lifting with the team and not long after that he began working on baseball-specific workouts with the Illini trainer.

The first step in McDonnell’s recovery was working with resistance bands.

“We use a band to simulate the throwing motion and get the muscles back to work,” McDonnell said.

Next came playing catch with a tennis ball, which McDonnell was doing by January of that year. The final major jump in his rehab was successfully swapping the tennis ball for a baseball.

At first it was just a few throws back and forth. Those few tosses turned to catch and by the end of the season McDonnell was pitching in the bullpen.

In his redshirt freshman season McDonnell seemed poised to come out and play well for Illinois. Instead, injury struck again.

After only two appearances and 11 1/3 innings, he was shut down for the season with forearm tightness again.

McDonnell was forced to watch from the sideline once more.

He came back in his sophomore season and made a start at Busch Stadium against Missouri before pulling himself out of the game with forearm soreness yet again.

The injury wasn’t as bad as it had been his freshman year. McDonnell was back on the hill two weeks later; in a game against Michigan State. McDonnell came down on his shoulder hard after jumping to try to catch a ball and tag a runner. His shoulder was bruised and he was forced to sit out again.

At this point in his career McDonnell said he began to feel that nothing was going right but he didn’t let that stop him from being determined.

“I definitely had that feeling,” McDonnell said. “I love this game, and I couldn’t imagine not going out here and being with the guys.”

After his sophomore season McDonnell pitched for the Lombard Orioles, a team in the Chicago Suburban League. He threw more than 50 innings without any injuries.

“Every time I started to throw more than five innings, I was always afraid that my arm might give out a little bit,” McDonnell said. “But over the summer it was fine. It was healthy. My arm felt perfect.”

He entered his junior year this spring and was able to transfer his success in Lombard to the Illini. This season, McDonnell has picked up all four of his career wins, and has already struck out more batters, 28, than in his two prior seasons combined.

“I love him as a pitcher,” Illinois pitching coach Drew Dickinson said. “He has the best change-up on the team. He knows, and we all know that when he throws strikes with his fastball, he’s near un-hittable because the change-up is so good.”

Illinois’ head coach Dan Hartleb had similar praise for McDonnell.

“I think he has the capability to be a dominant pitcher,” Hartleb said.

Hartleb added that after working for so long to be mentally 100 percent after all his injuries, McDonnell is now working towards becoming a consistently dominant pitcher.

For McDonnell, all he really wants to do is help his team win now that he’s finally healthy.

“This is the best my arm’s felt since high school,” McDonnell said. “It’s great.”

Nicholas can be reached at [email protected] and @IlliniSportsGuy.