May: `You have no idea' how frustrating injuries have been
GLENDALE, ARIZ. >> These have been trying times for Dustin May.
“You have no idea,” the 26-year-old right-hander said with all the weariness that two major elbow surgeries 26 months apart will bring.
“It was definitely not what I wanted to hear when I heard that I needed surgery again. … You can understand the first one. It's, `OK, I'm going to go get fixed and then I'm going to be fine and I'll be able to stay healthy and compete.' Then as soon as I get back basically, the same thing happens again. It's just a gut-wrenching feeling. It's like the rug keeps getting pulled out from under my feet. All I want to do is go and compete and I keep being told I can't.”
May was just 23 innings into his 2021 season when the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow gave out. He had Tommy John surgery on May 12
Fifteen months later, he was on a big-league mound again and pitched 30 innings over the final weeks of the 2022 season. But May says now he was never really right.
“No. I wouldn't say that I ever felt more than probably 75%,” he said.
“It hurt every throw. Everybody always says it always hurts (after Tommy John surgery) and then one day it just clicks. I was waiting for that. Mine – instead of getting better, it kept getting worse and getting worse. It kept climbing in the wrong direction and it got to a point where my last game it was affecting my velo(city) so much I was like, `All right, I'd better say something.' I didn't even need to say something. They were like, `Are you OK because you're throwing 93?'”
An MRI revealed damage to the flexor-pronator mass in his elbow. Repairing it required another surgery and likely another 12 months of tedious rehab. While May was undergoing surgery for the flexor repair, the doctors also put a graft on his repaired UCL.
“I was definitely very frustrated, especially in LA after I got my MRI results,” May said. “I was very frustrated just in the moment. Then it was like — it took me a day and then I was, `What am I mad about? I can't do anything about this. This is the cards I've been dealt. I've got to go do what I gotta do and hopefully be back whenever I can.'”
May said he has asked a lot more questions this time around — “I've got a good understanding and grasp of how the elbow works and what it's supposed to feel like after the second one.”
So far, it feels “really good.” May has started a throwing program but is just playing catch on flat ground from 90 feet four times a week. Throwing off a mound probably won't come until late April at the earliest. Rehab games would follow and — if his rehab continues without any setbacks — May is optimistic he will be pitching for the Dodgers in late August or September.
“The second one is going to be a little shorter hopefully,” May said of his rehab. “But there's still that mental side of, `OK, I could be out competing right now. I know I could be helping.' But you can't. You have to be here and you have to be going through this. It's something that there's nothing I can do about right now so I've made my peace with it.
“But it's definitely one of those, `All right. Please stop doing this to me. Come on, now.'”
GM Brandon Gomes said the Dodgers are taking a “wait-and-see” approach with May much as they did with Walker Buehler last year.
“Coming off a second surgery, we're definitely going to err on the side of caution,” Gomes said. “He's in his program and we'll just keep going along and at each point we'll keep setting the foundation and if it's there, awesome, because the talent is obviously immense. But we're certainly not going to put him in harm's way to try and get him X amount of innings at the end of the season or into the playoffs.”
Because he underwent two surgeries on his elbow in such a short time period, questions are raised about his viability as a starter long term or whether he needs to change his mechanics in order to stay healthy.
“I think it's something we'll monitor as the intensity gets going.” Gomes said of the mechanics question. “It's kind of hard to put too much focus on changing a delivery on a flat ground (work) or something like that.
“It'll be a plyo-care routine and making sure that we're monitoring things like his lead leg block and his arm path. But as far as we're concerned, we don't see him any differently. Guys are now just coming back from second surgeries more than they have in the past.”
If May makes it back late in the season, he could find a rotation with no vacancies — if the front group of Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Bobby Miller and James Paxton stay healthy, Clayton Kershaw returns as expected and the group of young pitchers continue to progress.