Reds’ Lodolo inadvertently made pair of injuries worse
Cincinnati Reds starting pitcher Nick Lodolo thought he had suffered a minor calf injury that he could pitch through, but it turned out to be more significant.
“I thought it was nothing, just soreness,” Lodolo said. “It kept lingering and lingering. We thought it was getting better, but it wasn't getting better. I had good days and bad days. Then I started realizing it started altering my mechanics. It was throwing stuff off.”
And it turns out it wasn't just his calf that was injured. An MRI determined that, in addition to the degeneration of his tendon's collagen, he also had a stress reaction in his left tibia.
“It's weird,” Lodolo said. “There's no incident that happened. Over time, it came up and never went away. Finally, we got it scanned and you could see it.”.
Lodolo started feeling pain in his left leg during spring training but still posted a 2.12 ERA through his first three starts and looked better than he did at any point during his rookie year.
Then over his next four starts, Lodolo had a 10.38 ERA. He wasn't getting the same extension off the mound that he usually creates. He watched video of himself pitching and saw that his mechanics were changing.
As pain in his calf flared up more consistently, the flat-footed Lodolo tried using orthotics in his shoes to create more of an arch. The goal was for the arch in his foot to take pressure off of Lodolo's calf, but that plan ended up hurting Lodolo's leg even more.
As a result, Lodolo went on the injured list, and he'll miss at least a month.
“The orthotics were aggressive in the arch because that's where I need to get to,” Lodolo said. “It aggravated it more by pushing into it.”
Lodolo said his calf feels better than it has in a while. Now, most of the pain is around his ankle and his shin. He will have a follow-up MRI at the end of May that will determine exactly how long he'll be on the injured list.
“Hopefully I'll be able to get out of this boot after the MRI and start getting back at it,” Lodolo said. “I don't know how long the build-up will be. Hopefully at the end of the month, I'll get back to playing catch on my feet.”