Max Scherzer was pulled early from his last start last week despite only throwing 76 pitches, and he revealed after the outing it was due to right hamstring tightness. The future Hall of Famer and Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts both downplayed concern moving forward.
Scherzer threw a bullpen session Saturday and remains on track to start against the St. Louis Cardinals on Labor Day. “He said it feels much better. We got ahead of it, were responsible,” Roberts said.
“Everything is OK. He feels good, so he’ll be ready to make his start on Monday.”
Scherzer said he has had to deal with hamstring tightness in the past as it’s just “something that pops up,” but it has never caused him to miss any time as he always made the next scheduled start.
“It’s something you’ve got to deal with,” Scherzer said after facing the Atlanta Braves. “I’ve had this in the past and you just get treatment on it, listen to trainers and do what they want you to.”
Scherzer added the tight hamstring feels “better by my next time out,” so he doesn’t expect to be limited again either.
“You get with the trainers, get all the treatment, do all the work for it and they usually get your body healthy again,” Scherzer said. “These things happen. Fortunately enough I was able to work around it. Just do the treatment over the next handful of days and get back out there when it’s my turn to pitch again.
“Hopefully everything goes well. I fully anticipate everything will go well. I was able to keep this from being worse, where the hamstring actually goes on you. It was a small tweak and hopefully, we can just keep it at that.”
How the tightness affected Scherzer
While Scherzer was still able to throw six shutout innings in his last start, he said the hamstring tightness made his 76 pitches made him feel like he threw 90 because he wasn’t able to fully get his back leg into them.
“It just kind of changes your sequence a little bit. I can’t really rear back and go get my best fastball. You sequence a little bit different because of that and you just pitch,” Scherzer said.
“For me, I could still get somewhat into my leg and then just find a rhythm of where that’s at. Once you find that rhythm, it just comes back to pitch execution. I have enough feel with all my pitches of how to execute each one, it’s just finding the arm slot, rhythm and everything in order to execute.”
Have you subscribed to the Dodger Blue YouTube channel? Be sure to ring the notification bell to watch player interviews, participate in shows and giveaways, and more!
