LOS ANGELES — The biggest mystery surrounding the Los Angeles Dodgers’ fortunes this October returned to Dodger Stadium on Monday afternoon. While playing catch in the outfield, Walker Buehler sought to rediscover himself following a second Tommy John surgery. Former Dodgers pitching coach Rick Honeycutt, dressed in street clothes, watched from the sidelines as an extra set of eyes.
34 days have passed since Buehler’s major league comeback was postponed. A significant portion of that time has been spent at Cressey Sports Performance, a private facility in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, where he is seeking to heal a bothersome hip ailment and get well.
Accompanied by his spouse McKenzie and their daughter Finley, Buehler threw there. He managed to escape as well. Though he sent videos of his progress to the organization, much of his past month has been spent behind closed doors.
Buehler’s return from surgery did not go well. Through eight starts over May and June, he had an unwieldy 5.84 ERA. For as much as his stuff appeared to have been restored to his pre-surgery form, Buehler struggled to execute with consistency. Everything felt different than it had during his rehab appearances.
What inspired him to try something different?
“Being s—,” Buehler told The Athletic. “There’s nothing worse than costing your team games and feeling like you’re in the way because you need all this attention. It’s easy to kind of demand attention and time or whatever when you’re throwing the ball really well. But when you’ve got a 6 (ERA), it’s mentally hard.
“It makes it hard for you to want to be here in some way. I think it makes it hard for you to keep taking the rep from the teammates who are there helping us win. I don’t know if everybody thinks that way but that’s just kind of how I think.
“Rehab is hard. Trying to get out of rehab is hard.”
One of the reasons Buehler decided to go elsewhere was that he had been experiencing hip discomfort, which almost kept him from starting on June 12 against the Texas Rangers and finally necessitated treatment in order to allow him to pitch. That continued into his next start at Coors Field, where he gave up seven runs in four innings.
“I had a hip problem,” Buehler said. “I think it’s kind of f—ed up that everyone assumed I didn’t have something.”
It provided an opening for the Dodgers to shut him down. When he was placed on the injured list the next day, Buehler broached the idea of going elsewhere.
Since his time at Vanderbilt, Buehler had known Eric Cressey, who manages his own private facility and is the director of player health and performance for the New York Yankees. But he would never had direct collaboration with him. So rather than continue to work with pitching coaches Mark Prior and Connor McGuiness (or report to Arizona with director of minor-league pitching Rob Hill, like the Dodgers did recently with a struggling Bobby Miller), Buehler suggested going outside of the organization altogether.
“Obviously I trust Mark and Connor and the performance guys here,” Buehler said. “I’ve trusted them with my career, and they’ve gone through this for years and years. Sometimes that second set of eyes is not a bad thing. The last thing I would want is for anyone to think it was any sort of indictment on the people that we have here. I just think it was simply like, I just felt like I needed to be somewhere else for a second.”
Though the organization has publicly endorsed it, it was an unconventional arrangement.
“However long he was away, I think it was beneficial,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
“He was confident that’s what was best for him,” general manager Brandon Gomes said. “We stayed in touch along the way. We were good with it because so much of this is that if the player is confident in what they’re doing, it’s going to help them come back and perform at a high level.”
Tasks remain to be completed. He will not be able to regain his All-Star form with a few bullpen sessions at a facility in Florida.
“I don’t necessarily think it was some sort of miracle pill,” Buehler said. “But I feel like I have a clearer path to what I want to be.”
His comeback road was a shambles the last time Buehler took a big-league mound. He stumbled with his four-seam fastball, rarely throwing it in his last start as he teetered with how to pitch with a twice-repaired ligament in his elbow. Buehler’s aspirations were barely visible glimpses.
He can close that distance, the Dodgers hope. Though it has been almost three years since he last took the mound in a postseason game, few pitchers in the sport have a more esteemed October reputation than Buehler, who has a 2.94 ERA in 15 playoff starts. Buehler has a respectable arsenal following surgery. It is unclear, though, how to turn that into something useful.
The Dodgers might need him given the dearth of real impact options anticipated to be available at the trade deadline of July 30th, which is scheduled for next week. They have a lot of unknowns going into this stretch. While Clayton Kershaw is recovering from his first major arm surgery of his career, Yoshinobu Yamamoto is recovering from a troubling shoulder condition, Tyler Glasnow is getting close to a career-high in innings pitched, and Miller is still in the minors attempting to work out his problems. Gavin Stone, Landon Knack, Justin Wrobleski, and River Ryan are the other players in the rotation that are all rookies.
And then there is Buehler, who might make a quicker recovery now that he is back in Los Angeles. He threw 82 pitches against batters in his most recent live session, indicating that he has stayed mostly built up. It might just take him one or two rehabilitation games to return to action.
“Then for me at this point, it’s really more in the team’s hands of, if I’m throwing the ball well and they want me in the rotation,” Buehler said.
(Photo of Walker Buehler from June 18: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)
