Back … and better than ever?

Things are simpler for Jonathan Santucci these days.

There are two parts of that statement for the Friday night starter on Duke’s baseball team, which is gearing up for its season opener against Indiana on Friday in Conway, S.C.

First, Santucci is no longer pitching through the elbow injury that ended his season after seven starts a year ago. The junior left-hander didn’t need Tommy John surgery, but had a fractured olecranon — basically the hinge of an elbow — that needed a screw inserted to fuse the bone back together.

Second, now his sole focus is on pitching, casting aside the past two years of being a two-way player for the Blue Devils.

“Just this year, this fall especially and kind of really thinking about it in the summer as I was rehabbing, thought it was finally time to just focus on one or the other,” Santucci said. “Obviously I know that my future is on the mound and I just think it’s really relieving to go to practice every day just being able to focus on one.”

The 6-2, 205-pounder had 23 at-bats in the last two seasons, with a homer and two doubles showcasing some pop.

But as he points out, his future is on the mound. Santucci landed at No. 7 on D1Baseball’s list of the top 150 starting pitchers in the country and is a potential first-round pick going into his junior season.

Santucci was 2-3 with a 4.17 ERA in 41 innings as a freshman, recording 58 strikeouts and walking 20 batters. That catapulted him into the Friday night role last year, in which he had 50 strikeouts and 16 walks in 29 1/3 innings.

But the last time he was on the mound for the Blue Devils was March 31 against Pittsburgh, with Santucci exiting while holding his left elbow.

Coach Chris Pollard said Dr. David Ruch, a hand, wrist and elbow surgeon at Duke, believed Santucci might have had the injury without knowing it.

“Dr. Ruch felt like the injury that he had could have been present in some form or fashion for maybe as much as a year or more,” Pollard said. “The reality is, he was probably pitching with some form of that injury for a while.”

Getting Santucci back into form and revved up for this season is a key step in Duke’s return to normalcy as a pitching staff. The Blue Devils entered last season thinking they would need an unconventional approach past Friday nights, and when Santucci was lost, every game basically became an all-hands-on-deck bullpen game.

It wasn’t necessarily to Duke’s detriment. The Blue Devils won 39 games, won the Coastal Carolina regional as a 2-seed — where their season starts this year, a rematch against the Chanticleers on tap for Sunday — and were one win away from reaching the College World Series, falling to Virginia is the best-of-3 super regional.

Still, that was making the best of what they had. The goal this year involves more of a traditional approach, starters going deeper into games and a set weekend rotation. (more on that later)

That starts with Santucci.

“I’ve really dug deeper into the recovery process and just the day-to-day activities that come with being a pitcher at this level,” Santucci said. “I think being able to focus on (pitching) has allowed me to take bigger strides and really kind of take my time and focus on it for the first time in my life.

“I think that’s going to be pay big dividends for me this year and I’m excited to see how that has worked out once the season starts.”

And, for Pollard’s stance on his ace lefty:

“He feels great, he looks strong,” Pollard said. “I mean, he looks like a horse.”

Now, he’s a horse in the starting gate with the season-opening bell near its ringing.