Dodgers: Dustin May Likely to Return as a Reliever, According to LA Analyst
The Dodgers have a lot of questions when it comes to their pitching staff. Dustin May’s recovery from Tommy John surgery is one of the big ones.
May underwent season-ending Tommy John in the spring after damaging his UCL in a May 1st start in Milwaukee.
There’s plenty of speculation about when the powerful righty will be able to pitch again for the Dodgers. Once May does return in 2022, one insider believes it will not be as a starter.
Dodgers reporter David Vassegh gave an educated guess for both May’s return date and what his role will be once he’s back on the mound.
“I guess [an] optimistic return date for Dustin May would probably be sometime in August. From what I understand, and the conjecture I’ve heard, it wouldn’t be coming into the rotation, Maybe as an opener, but more so as a reliever as he works his way back from Tommy John.”
The 24-year-old was cleared to begin throwing on November 1st. Rebuilding his arm strength and stamina is going to take time.
Another wrinkle to the recovery calendar is the fact that May can’t utilize the Dodgers facilities nor training staff during the current MLB lockout.
Historically, the Dodgers have not rushed young pitchers back from injury. Julio Úrias is a prime example of the Dodgers longview approach when it comes to talented, but delicate arms.
When healthy, May has shown the ability to pitch at a high level whether it’s as a starter or reliever. May owns a 2.84 ERA in his 19 career starts. He has a 3.32 ERA when coming out of the bullpen.
If all goes well, May should be a factor for the Dodgers in September regardless of his role.
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Perfect! Want to destroy a 24 year old potential superstar’s arm coming off TJ, put him in Delusional Dave’s bullpen
Drrrrrrr would never do that right away Bobbyd, He’ll just put May in at 1st base or center field in the Divisional games, or the NLCS ……..
then again, they have a done a good job with Juilo
Going to be interesting to see if he changes his types of pitches he throws. I remember that his spin rate on the curveball was very high. Might need to go more with a sinker/ cutter mix to protect his elbow.
Also, with the way his fastball moves, I’d love to see him develop the Maddux fastball to lefties that starts inside and breaks back to the corner. That would make him effective against left and right handed batters and make him a great multi-inning reliever.
i think that its possible may injured himself because he tried to make his body do too much and he overstressed himself and threw harder than his frame could reasonably handle. he wants to make a name for himself and get the highest salary so he expends too much energy to acheive those double digits on the radar gun. he needs to back off a little bit and dial back on the velocity and torque more in line with his frame. the players are too greedy and theyre going to hurt the game. if free agents were limited to 3 years maximum contracts theyre already making enormous sums. the players association would probably be against that as theyre probably against expanding postseason rosters to have full access to a teams 40 man rosters. even though that makes tons of sense. all season teams have full access to 40 m rosters but just as the postseason begins all of a sudden when teams are most tired they shrink the rosters down to 26 or 28 men and that makes no sense from a health perspective. then the following season some hit the i.l. because of the load. the only reason theyd be that dumb is because to get a larger playoff cut and thered be less to divvy up amongst the players. but that hurts the game. the players look real greedy at this juncture. and theres no end to their greed. its never enough. salaries have skyrocketed far beyond the imaginable and way beyond what it was 30 years ago and they all want to break the bank even if it means the end of baseball. yeah. but the right thing to do is limit free agent contracts to 3 years maximum and expand postseason rosters for full access to 40 man rosters and spread the workload around. some guys would play a little more and others less but no one should be overworked ever to be more precise. thats how youre supposed to do it. especially if youre competing for a title every year.