When the Los Angeles Dodgers placed Shelby Miller on the 15-day injured list June 21 due to neck pain, manager Dave Roberts estimated he would be sidelined a minimum of three weeks.
However shortly after, Miller revealed his neck injury to be more serious than initially believed. “I’ve had neck stiffness in the past, like in Spring Training I missed a couple days from throwing. But this is a little bit more, I wouldn’t say severe, but worse than what that is,” he said in late June.
Miller at the time was focused on eliminating inflammation in his neck but otherwise declined to provide specifics of what the MRI revealed. “It’s a little worse than we thought, but we’ll just keep it at that,” he said.
The veteran relief pitcher has since revealed his neck injury to be a herniated disc that caused numbness and tingling in his left arm, per Bill Plunkett of the Southern California News Group:
Miller has been out since mid-June with what turned out to be a herniated disc in his neck that was causing numbness on his left side.
“It was pretty big,” Miller said. “It was shooting on a nerve and going down my left side. It wasn’t on my throwing arm, which is good. It wasn’t when I was performing or anything. Just at night, it was not very comfortable. And then it was really stiff for a while. I don’t know how it happened. Woke up one day and it was there.”
Miller is 1-0 with one save, a 2.40 ERA, 4.51 FIP and 1.00 WHIP across 25 appearances in his first season with the Dodgers. He was signed to a one-year, $1.5 million contract that included performance bonuses.
Shelby Miller rehab assignment
The 32-year-old began a rehab assignment with the Arizona Complex League (ACL) Dodgers on August 5, and has thrown two scoreless innings over two appearances, four days apart.
Miller likely will join Triple-A Oklahoma City at some point before potentially returning to the Dodgers bullpen.
Because the Dodgers transferred Miller to the 60-day IL, he is not eligible to be activated until Sunday, August 20.
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