Tony Gonsolin underwent an encouraging MRI last Friday that didn’t reveal an injury other than a right forearm strain, and he was able to resume throwing following the scan.
However, the Los Angeles Dodgers starter has not progressed as the team originally hoped. “He’s doing alright,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Tuesday.
“Honestly, it’s not going as quickly as I think many of us would like, but we’re moving forward every day, which is a good thing. So I don’t know the next step. I think it’s just essentially playing catch every day and stretching it out until we feel we can get him off the mound.”
Gonsolin is still dealing with “residual soreness,” according to Roberts. “It’s not a sharp pain of any type,” the skipper added.
“Obviously, the scans came back all positive. So now it’s just kind of the soreness and trying to keep his arm moving, which is important for a pitcher. And then once we can get that soreness out, then hopefully that’ll all dissipate and he can just go from there.”
With time running out on the season, Roberts said everything needs to go right for the 28-year-old. But despite being in the final month, the team is still trying to guard against setbacks. As of now, Roberts is confident Gonsolin will be fully built up for the playoffs.
“But you could ask me the same question in a week,” Roberts said. “If we don’t make a whole bunch of progress, then I might have a different answer. But right now, I feel that we can get him back to fully ramped up.”
Roberts unsure if in-season rest would have prevented Gonsolin’s injury
Gonsolin has already thrown a career-high 128.1 innings, which makes it easy to believe that was the cause for the injury, but Roberts isn’t sure about that idea.
“Where we’re at right now, there were no markers that kind of showed that. But I think right now where we’re at is looking at it as a three-week break, essentially,” Roberts said. And hopefully we can use this time to catch his breath, get him back, get his strength back and have them through October.
“I can’t say right now that if we would have skipped a start here or there that we would have prevented it. I don’t think anyone knows that answer. But we didn’t know where he was at, it was more than it’s thrown before, absolutely.”
Gonsolin has been throwing from 90 feet but he has yet to reach the 150 feet mark yet. Once reaching that point, he could potentially begin to throw off a mound again shortly after.
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