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<p>Karsten Whitson pitches during UF’s 5-0 win against USF on Feb. 20, 2011.&nbsp;</p>

Karsten Whitson pitches during UF’s 5-0 win against USF on Feb. 20, 2011. 

You don’t know what you have till it’s gone.

Maybe it’s a cliché, but for Karsten Whitson, who will play for the first time in nearly two years on Sunday, it rings true.

Whitson had a $2.1 million contract to play professional baseball after being selected ninth overall by the San Diego Padres, then a stellar start to his college career and pending ace-hood lined up for him.

Then, all of that vanished.

Whitson suffered from nagging shoulder fatigue before the 2013 season started and elected to have shoulder surgery — performed by renowned surgeon Dr. James Andrews — to repair an impingement.

The impingement was relatively good news. Whitson’s shoulder was intact — his labrum and rotator cuff were not damaged. Impingements just cause tendons around the rotator cuff to become irritated and inflamed.

However, the surgery ended Whitson’s season and cast his future into doubt.

The then-junior rode out the season on the bench, and when the MLB Draft rolled around in June, Whitson was selected in the 37th round, 1,126th overall — a 1,117-pick drop from where he was selected in 2010. The slotted salary of a 37th round draft pick is $100,000 or fewer — not quite near the $2.1 million he could have cashed in.

Was it worth it?

“Absolutely,” Whitson said. “It’s easy for people to say, ‘Do you have any regrets?’ It is what it is.

“I feel like I’m in a great place right now, I’ve made some great relationships, and I’ve played some great baseball.”

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When you’re selected ninth overall, there aren’t a lot of obvious benefits to postponing your payday.

If your goal is to play professional baseball, you can’t get off to a much better start.

Some players picked in the first round use college as leverage to get more dollars or hold off for a selection. Sometimes it pays off.

The New York Yankees selected Gerrit Cole out of high school with the 28th pick in the first round of the 2008 draft.

The Yankees threw money at Cole, reportedly offering him $4 million to sign. Like Whitson, Cole turned the money down.

But unlike Whitson, Cole cruised through college ball. He was the Friday night starter in his first season at UCLA and averaged more than a strikeout per inning with the Bruins.

Cole’s gamble paid off. When he was eligible for the draft again in 2011, the Pittsburgh Pirates made him the No. 1 overall pick, and Cole signed for more than $8 million. He made his successful Major League debut in 2013 and is a lock for the top end of the Pirates’ rotation in 2014.

Was Whitson planning the same?

Not according to his mother, Melissa Whitson, who told the Alligator in 2012 that Karsten would say, “It wasn’t coach (Kevin) O’Sullivan’s job to entice him away from the Padres; it was the Padres’ job to entice him away from coach O’Sullivan and the UF program.”

Whitson’s first years at UF were successful, and he seemed poised to possibly make that tough jump from top-10 pick to No. 1 pick.

Perfect Game named him the top freshman pitcher in the country after he went 8-1 with a 2.40 ERA in 2011. His strikeout-to-walk ratio was a solid 3.3:1, and he led a team that featured 12 pitchers who are now playing professionally in punchouts.

But Whitson struggled to follow up on his success during his sophomore season.

Whitson was limited throughout the season due to shoulder fatigue — something he became all too familiar with later in his career.

He missed more than a month of the season, finishing the year with only 33.1 innings pitched in 14 appearances, 10 of which were starts. When he did play, he struggled with his command, walking 18 batters compared to only 20 strikeouts.

He was ready to start the 2013 season, anxious to get back on the field, but his surgery delayed that another year.

“I kind of pitched through some stuff my sophomore year,” Whitson said. “Going off of those experiences, I told myself, ‘I really want to just be 100 percent.’

“If I’ve got something nagging that’s going on, I want to take care of it now. So that way I’m not pitching hurt in the season, because that’s not going to help the team, and it’s not going to help me in the long run.”

Now is his time to show he is still that first-round talent.

“I just think I’m a guy that teams would want to have,” Whitson said. “I think I’ve kind of faced some adversity in college. I’ve been through some things that I can kind of put a feather in my cap. It hasn’t broken me.”

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Sunday cannot come fast enough.

O’Sullivan pegged Whitson as the Sunday starter for Florida’s opening series against Maryland behind junior left-hander Bobby Poyner and freshman righty Brett Morales. Although Whitson has bundles of talent, O’Sullivan wants to ease him back into the routine of pitching in a rotation.

“It’s been a while since he’s been on the mound,” O’Sullivan said. “I thought it was important for him to come back and take a few games in.”

It has been almost two years since Whitson last saw action in a college game. Then a sophomore, he picked up a win in two-thirds of an inning of relief against NC State during the NCAA Super Regionals. He took plenty of games in from the bench in the meantime.

“You’re here for three years and build relationships, and guys expect you to be out there with them,” Whitson said. “It’s tough when you have to deal with an injury like that.”

Said catcher Taylor Gushue: “It was hard because that amount of talent was sitting on the bench. It’s hard as a player knowing that that’s there and it’s not accessible. But he has done a good job helping out our team this year. Now that the younger guys can look at him and they can see how he goes about his business on a day-to-day basis, I think that he will be a big factor on how well we do this year.”

Sitting out wasn’t a total loss, Whitson said. He learned ways to become a leader on the team without being out on the mound — ways he hopes translate to the field in his fourth season at Florida.

Whitson is one of only two fourth-year pitchers on the roster this season — the other is Keenan Kish, another pitcher who missed most of last season with an injury. There are no true seniors.

As a veteran member of the pitching staff, Whitson is going to be the rock O’Sullivan will try to base his rotation around.

“The bottom line is he needs to be good for us to be good,” O’Sullivan said.

And that is what Whitson is trying to focus on. Although the MLB Draft and his future are important, that isn’t where his mind is.

“Things are just in perspective for me after going through some of the things I’ve been through,” he said. “Just being healthy right now and just having fun with these guys and looking forward to the season — there’s really not much more to think about than that.”

Follow Adam Lichtenstein on Twitter @alichtenstein24

Karsten Whitson pitches during UF’s 5-0 win against USF on Feb. 20, 2011. 

Karsten Whitson pitches during UF’s 5-0 win against USF on Feb. 20, 2011. Whitson missed the entire 2013 season after undergoing shoulder surgery in February 2013.

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