Andrew Heaney only made two starts for the Los Angeles Dodgers before he was shut down due to left shoulder discomfort and placed on the 10-day injured list on April 20.
The veteran southpaw resumed throwing a little more than a week into May, and began a rehab assignment at the start of June.
Heaney recently completed his third rehab outing, and the results were encouraging enough that he has returned to L.A. to meet with the Dodgers’ coaching and training staff to determine when they can activate him.
“It did. He went five innings, close to 70 pitches,” Roberts said when asked if the most recent rehab start went well. “So he’s going to fly into town [Wednesday] evening, not sure he’s going to make it to the ballpark.
“So we’re going to get together with him and figure out when the soonest we can slot him in the rotation is.”
The Dodgers have yet to name a starter for Sunday against the Cleveland Guardians. Clayton Kershaw is the probable for Friday and Julio Urías is scheduled to start Saturday. Heaney is among the pitchers under consideration to start the series finale at Dodger Stadium.
“It’s possible,” Roberts said. “I don’t want to go on record right now. But once we get our pitching guys to kind of huddle up and talk to Andrew, then we’ll know a definitive answer, probably tomorrow.”
Roberts also added the Dodgers flipped Urías and Kershaw in their rotation for this upcoming series to give the former an extra day of rest and keep Kershaw on his regular schedule.
Heaney was impressive prior to his injury, throwing 10.1 scoreless innings while striking out 40% of batters and walking 7.5%. His return will be an important one for the Dodgers rotation that recently lost Walker Buehler to a right flexor strain that will likely keep him out until September, at least.
Dodgers update: Buehler’s elbow surgery
Buehler underwent arthroscopic surgery on Monday to remove a bone spur from his right elbow. The operation does not impact Buehler’s timeline for a return from the primary injury that forced him to the 15-day injured list.
“It was something that I’ve dealt with for a long time, and given that rest and rehab was 10 to 12 weeks, and having the spur removed was 10 to 12 weeks, as a group we decided to just go ahead and get it done,” Buehler said of his elbow surgery.
“It’s something I was going to do in the offseason, probably we’ve discussed for the last three years to get those taken out, but ended every year healthy and kind of didn’t have the necessity to do it.
“Decided to be a little bit aggressive and go ahead and get that out of there. The timeline doesn’t really change a whole lot by doing that, and kind of kill two birds with one stone. So yeah, we’ll take six weeks, see where we’re at and then build up.”
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