Senior Toledo transfer RHP Jackson Bergman will undergo elbow surgery in the coming weeks, apply for waiver to return in 2027
By Carl James @jovian34 March 20th, 2026
The Indiana Baseball program announced yesterday that right handed starting pitcher Jackson Bergman will have surgery on his throwing elbow and miss the rest of the season. Perfect Game had ranked the Toledo transfer the no. 67th ranked senior in Division I coming into the season.
Bergman is in his fourth year as a player and will apply for a waiver to get his this year of eligibilty back as he only played in 3 games. He will not need a “clock” extension as next year still falls within the standard 5-year window athletes get. He just needs the NCAA to waive the current year as a redshirt year. Precedent makes that almost a guarantee. I doubt the team would have mentioned that so publically if it wasn’t.
Bergman was slotted as Indiana’s Sunday starting pitcher who started the first three weekends of the season tossing 14.0 innings with a 4.50 ERA, a 1.64 WHIP, 9 strikeouts, and 5 walks. He was reported as ill for Indiana’s Big Ten opening series against Washington, but when he was not announced against Oregon, Indiana shuffled the rotation pushing Tony Neubeck and Brayton Thomas each back a day hinting that a more permenant situation may have been in the cards.
Indiana opened the Oregon series with Coppin State grad transfer Reagan Rivera, who has seemingly found his fastball command and has shown the ability to get stretched out. The program also announced that Rivera will start the Friday opener against Minnesota this evening. This makes the Rivera – Neubeck – Thomas rotation very likely going forward.
Taking Rivera out of the bullpen role will impact the depth there. Gavin Seebold is available for a multi-inning outing either to finish a game a bridge to another reliever. Ivan Mastalski has been a 2-inning stalwart on Saturdays, but can only pitch Saturdays to give him the rest he needs to do the same in Tuesday midweeks. Jackson Yarberry has been best in multiple 1-inning outings, but the coaches have been forced to move him into a multi-inning role with the depth issues and he ended up giving up the losing run on Sunday in his second inning of work. We will see how pitching coach Matt Meyers further tweaks his bullpen usage in the Minnesota series.