Dodgers’ Walker Buehler feels ready to live up to standards
Buehler will make his return from the injured list on Wednesday, and he believes he’s in better position to succeed after addressing a hip injury and re-establishing his mechanics
MILWAUKEE — There is a lot at stake for Walker Buehler when he takes the mound for the Dodgers on Wednesday.
He has been given some leeway in his return from a second reconstructive elbow surgery, but he probably used that up with a 5.84 ERA over eight starts in May and June.
“The standard here is different. It’s not just work through it and take your lumps,” Buehler said Tuesday. “I expect to throw the way I used to. But it’s not just me that expects that. It’s our standard of what we’re trying to accomplish here.
“You can’t pitch to a 5.00 ERA and expect to help us win a World Series.”
When Buehler went on the injured list in June, it was cynically viewed as the Dodgers way of buying him more time to rediscover his pre-surgery form. He would not be the first pitcher placed on the injured list – by the Dodgers or any team – with a minor injury used as a convenient excuse to give him some down time.
But Buehler said that was not the case.
“The hip thing was real,” he said.
It started, he believes, with a ball that hit him in the right leg just below the knee while throwing a live batting practice session in April.
“It hit me in the peroneal nerve, which people have only heard about in the UFC when guys get kicked,” Buehler said of the nerve that helps the ankle and foot function properly. “I got hit right in that nerve so my foot was not pushing in the way that I wanted to. So then all I could do was spin and rotate and I ended up hurting an external rotator in my hip.
“It all kind of tracks. I got hit and it didn’t hurt. It hurt like a little bruise on the bone but it never really affected me to the point where I thought, ‘My foot’s not working right.’ … It’s a chicken-or-the-egg type situation. I don’t know if the hip came from my mechanics or if my mechanics were off from the hip. I think probably my mechanics weren’t super-efficient for my body and it had to pull on something.”
That lack of efficient mechanics was a knot Beuhler felt he had to untangle and he needed to step away to do it. Rather than work with the Dodgers’ staff, he went and spent some time at Cressey Sports Performance in Florida to work on his “delivery, the hip – and to be able to fail for two weeks if I needed to and stick with the feel without trying to get major-league hitters out.”
“I have absolute faith in every part of our organization,” he said. “If my foot was broken then we’d fix it. But it was that and mechanics and the mental part of it. It’s hard if you don’t have a baseline. I felt like that’s where I was at. I needed to go and re-establish my baseline.”
He returns to the Dodgers’ rotation now, coming off his best start of the season – a 5⅓-innings rehab outing with Triple-A Oklahoma City in which he allowed just one hit (a home run) and struck out five.
“Hopefully that delivery is in there and it stays in there,” he said.
Looming over all of this is Buehler’s approaching free agency. He is not signed beyond this season and figured to cash in big when he reached free agency at age 30 – before his elbow gave out two years ago. It’s hard now to predict his future with a twice-repaired pitching arm and poor results in his comeback. He can’t help but think about it.
“I think it’s human to,” he said. “At the end of the day, I think I’m in position where, if I throw well, things are going to go how they have gone or how we thought they might. And if they don’t, then next spring my opportunity looks a little different, probably, whether it’s here or somewhere else.
“But at the end of the day, if I feel good about how I’m throwing the ball then there will be an opportunity for me to pitch in the big leagues.