The Washington Nationals have been without their all-star pitcher Josiah Gray since the second week of April.
Gray landed on the injured list on April 9 with a right elbow/forearm flexor strain. Not the start of the season Gray and the Nationals were looking to have.
But the good thing is that he’s shown signs of improvement. On March 4, he threw his first bullpen since landing on the IL, a step in the right direction for the 26-year-old.
Nationals manager Dave Martinez was pleased to hear about Gray’s bullpen session.
“Good. He felt good,” Martinez said in an article from masn.com. “So the next step, again, will be to throw another one in about three or four days. We’ll see how his recovery is. He says he feels fine. So he’ll throw another one here probably either Tuesday or Wednesday.”
Gray was poised to start the year off strong, especially coming off a 2023 season where he was named an all-star for the first time in his career.
He was named on the Opening-Day starter for Washington this season and did not have the start he envisioned. The Cincinnati Reds put up a total of seven runs in four innings against Gray.
In his next start, the Pittsburgh Pirates got the best of him as he gave up six runs on seven hits. That was his last start before landing on the IL.
After that start against the Pirates, Gray noticed some discomfort in his throwing arm.
When the discomfort did not go away, Gray alerted the staff and went to get an MRI and the team decided to scratch him from his third scheduled start of the season.
“The MRI was a good result,” Gray told mlb.com. “Everything was intact — the UCL was intact, all the other forearm muscles were intact. … Overall, a positive outlook.”
“It’s sort of a dull linger on the muscle, on the pronator flexor mass muscle,” he said. “[It’s] sort of a common thing for pitchers. The training staff is going to take care of it and take care of me.”
The Nationals want to make sure that Gray is 100 percent before he goes back out there on that mound.
Throughout his career, Gray has been injury free up to this point.
“It sucks,” Gray said of the injury. “Ever since I joined the Nationals, I made every single start that I was scheduled to make and I prided myself on doing that. So, obviously, it’s a little bit of a gut punch to come to the ballpark and not be slated in the five-man rotation for the foreseeable future.
“It’s a harsh reality of what we do as pitchers, especially in today’s game. Injury risk is going up. It definitely gives you a sense of reality in what we do. Unfortunately, I have to miss some time, but I don’t think it’s going to change anything I really do. Obviously devote some more time to recovery and stuff like that. But I’m going to turn a corner from this and come back strong.”
Once Gray makes his return, he will look to make an impact and have a different result from his first two outings of the season.
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