Brad Lincoln

Lincoln played baseball for Brazoswood High School of Clute, Texas, though he also played on the football team, and did not concentrate exclusively on baseball until after his sophomore year. After his senior season, the Texas Rangers selected him in the 28th round of the 2003 draft, but he elected to attend college rather than turning pro at that time.\n', ' He matriculated at the University of Houston, where he played college baseball for the Houston Cougars baseball team. He built on a strong year in the Cape Cod League in 2005 to emerge as a top-level talent during his junior season in 2006. He began the 2006 season by being named the |Most Outstanding Player of the Houston College Classic. For the season, he posted a 12–2 win-loss record and a 1.69 earned run average (ERA), with 152 strikeouts in ​127 2⁄3 innings pitched, and also excelled with the bat, achieving a .295 batting average with 14 home runs and a team-leading 53 RBI. At the end of the season, he was named to the Conference USA All-Tournament Team, recognized as the Conference USA Player of the Year, and won several major national awards, including the Dick Howser Trophy and the Brooks Wallace Award. He was also one of four finalists for the Roger Clemens Award, but lost out to Andrew Miller of the University of North Carolina.\n', ' Scouts regarded Lincoln as one of the best players eligible for the 2006 draft, and the Pittsburgh Pirates chose him with the fourth overall selection of the first round, with the intention of advancing him through their system quickly. Lincoln received $2.75 million to sign with the Pirates, and almost immediately encountered injury problems. An oblique strain limited him to 24 innings in 2006, and then he had Tommy John surgery on his right arm in April 2007, which sidelined him for the entire year. He first experienced elbow pain while pitching in the Florida Instructional League in late 2006, and then the pain recurred in spring training in 2007, leading to the discovery of the injury and the subsequent operation, performed by Dr. James Andrews in Birmingham, Alabama.\n', '