More Bad News for FSU Pitcher Jacob Marlowe
Many of you already know the story of FSU pitcher Jacob Marlowe.
Marlowe has had to overcome several obstacles since signing with the team, including two open-heart surgeries.
And now, Marlowe has a new obstacle to face. The team announced Friday that he will have season-ending Tommy John Surgery.
Marlowe posted on his Instagram that he will redshirt for a second time this upcoming season. He underwent Tommy John surgery late last year.
Marlowe returned to the mound last season after missing the 2024 season due to two open-heart surgeries in October of 2023. This will be his second missed season in three years at FSU.
Marlowe’s health struggles have been well-documented, and during the Summer of 2024, he played in the Cape Cod League, where he talked about his surgery.
Marlowe admitted that when he heard about his diagnosis, he thought about his baseball career being over, and last summer was his first time hitting the mound since his heart surgeries.
“It’s going to mean the world to me,” Marlowe said at the time. “It will be my first time in an actual game-like scenario that I'll be back, and that's probably the most exciting feeling I can have.”
Marlowe was diagnosed with a heart murmur at birth, but the doctors didnt think it would affect his ability to play baseball, and he may not have to have surgery until he was in his 30s.
After several checkups, they realized the murmur wouldn’t go away and believed Marlowe had aortic stenosis — when the valve narrows, and blood fails to flow normally.
“I was caught off guard because I was told throughout my years in college that I'd be fine throughout the whole thing,” Marlowe said. Obviously, that wasn’t the case.
“He (Marlowe) just wanted to get it done,” Marlowe’s father Shawn, said. “He knew it was going to come at some point in his life. Unfortunately, it came now so we talked about the bad things and the good things that come about it.”
On October 23rd of 2023, he had his first heart surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. Doctors attempted to repair the valve by cutting it into two leaflets.
The surgery seemed to be successful, but days later, his numbers were dropping rapidly, and something wasn’t right. Doctors rushed in, inserted a temporary pacemaker, and decided Marlowe would need to go through surgery again.
The second surgery apparently fixed the program, but now he has to miss another season of baseball because of failing health, which is unfortunate considering all this young man has been through over the past few years.