Walker Buehler will miss “a good bit of time,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, after the pitcher was put on the injured list Saturday because of a right forearm strain.
Exactly how long he will be out won’t be determined, however, until the team receives the results of an MRI exam Buehler took Saturday afternoon in Los Angeles.
“The first step is to get the information and figure out where we go,” Roberts said. “I don’t really want to say how long [he might be out].”
Buehler was injured during his start against the San Francisco Giants on Friday night, when he said something “grabbed” in his elbow while he threw a breaking ball in the third inning.
The right-hander initially tried pitching through the discomfort but eventually exited the game after the fourth inning when the sensation didn’t go away.
“This was just a little bit different,” said Buehler, who added he has regularly experienced various feelings in his elbow ever since he underwent Tommy John surgery as a prospect in 2015. “[It is] something we need to check out.”
While Roberts didn’t yet know the specifics of Buehler’s injury before Saturday’s game, he said his estimation that the pitcher would be out “a good bit of time” was based on the “part of the arm, the history with it, how it manifested last night, knowing that we a lot of times take the conservative approach to get a player back.”
In a corresponding move Saturday, the team recalled right-handed pitcher Michael Grove to give the bullpen some added length.
The Dodgers are getting other reinforcements on the starting pitcher front too.
On Saturday, Clayton Kershaw will make his return from a monthlong absence caused by a back injury. Andrew Heaney could be back from a shoulder injury as soon as June 19, with the left-hander scheduled to make one more minor league rehabilitation start Tuesday.
“I think guys understand that there’s going to be more asked of them,” Roberts said. “That just happens naturally.”
While Buehler was perhaps the most talented pitcher on the Dodgers’ staff, he was in the midst of an inconsistent start to the season before his injury.
His ERA was 4.02, the highest it has been through 12 starts in his career. His strikeout rate and walks plus hits per inning (WHIP) were at career-worst levels. And he had pitched into the seventh inning only twice, something he had done with regularity last season.
Buehler said his elbow injury wasn’t to blame for his subpar performance, though, and didn’t even believe it impacted his pitches at the end of Friday’s start.
“I’m not a person that’s going to blame that,” he said.
Roberts agreed with that assessment Saturday. The manager also said that, while Buehler had been tinkering with his mechanics in recent weeks in search of more productive results, he couldn’t say whether it had any impact on Friday’s injury.
“I don’t know if that triggered [it],” Roberts said. “I don’t know if anybody knows.”
What the Dodgers do know is that, for at least the foreseeable future, their rotation will be without its opening day starter and supposed 27-year-old ace — a pitcher whom, up until his elbow started to hurt Friday, they were still heavily counting on this season.
“To lose him in any capacity is a blow,” Roberts said. “We’ll see where we come today, and hopefully we’ll get him back sooner than later.”
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