Relief in sight for Thornburg
Sox pitcher remains positive
Even though he’s on the wrong side of one of the Red Sox’ worst trades of this millenium, Tyler Thornburg can’t help but be happy for Travis Shaw.
The 34 doubles, 31 homers, .273 average and .862 OPS that Shaw provided for the Milwaukee Brewers in 2017 actually made Thornburg feel happy for his former club.
“In no way would that ever make it worse,” said Thornburg, the former Brewers reliever who missed the entire 2017 season with the Red Sox due to shoulder surgery. “Because I had the opportunity coming up with the Brewers and I think the last thing that anyone would have wanted for him was just to be here (in Boston) and not starting every day, not getting an opportunity to play against lefties.
“And who knows if he would have ever had that season? And then you had Rafael Devers coming up right behind him (at third base), who knows what would have happened to his career? And now it’s just a completely different route and he could take off and I mean he could be a starting third baseman playing every day for a while now.”
Thornburg’s classy comments at Winter Weekend at Foxwoods Resort Casino on Saturday only emphasized the quality of competitor the Sox received in December 2016 in exchange for Shaw and two minor leaguers — infielder Mauricio Dubon and righthanded pitcher Josh Pennington.
Currently, Thornburg is recovering from surgery to help treat thoracic outlet syndrome, which is fairly rare among big league pitchers, and he remains cautiously optimistic that he could be ready to throw his first pitch for the Red Sox sometime this April.
Comments made by the right-hander about his funky shoulder, which he’s spoken truthfully about since the trade, re-emphasized just how risky that trade was for the Sox.
“I’ve been having symptoms of it for a while,” Thornburg said. “I told them that when I came here. And obviously there’s no possible way to ever know what’s really going on in there, me either, but yeah I’ve always had a little bit of an issue, I think maybe dating back to like 2012, ’13, just when it first started.”
The Sox were also aware of his elbow issues, which needed a platelet-rich plasma injection in 2014 while causing him to miss six months, though he avoided Tommy John surgery.
Thornburg was frustrated with the shoulder in spring training last year, when he had to be shut down.
“I had a bunch of things going on in there,” he said. “Two of the neck muscles were incredibly hypertrophied, like overgrown, and they just started squeezing on the brachial plexus, where all the nerves run down. I’d be sitting there watching a game and a nerve thing would hit me and I’d almost get knocked over by it. As well as the first rib was getting pulled up and my hand would just turn red some days if I was just standing there, cutting off the blood circulation. Then all the scar tissue and buildup along the nerves they had to go and dissect all that off there.”
When the doctors finally operated on him last June, he was encouraged by the definitive findings.
“For him to say, 100 percent, ‘I know this is what the issue was because there was so much going on,’ was really revealing,” Thornburg said.
With surgery almost seven months behind him and spring training a few weeks away, Thornburg is hoping to show the Red Sox why they gave up so much to get him.
“Right when I get (to Fort Myers), they’re going to watch me throw a couple of times, see how far away I am from throwing bullpens,” he said. “And then just go from there. Hopefully they’re impressed with the velocity. And I’m sure that’s going to be a huge thing, is I haven’t thrown like off a mound or hard for a while. So it might be trying to take a while to build up a little bit of velocity. But I mean that’s what spring training is for most guys anyway.”
Opening Day remains a possibility for Thornburg, who is making $2 million this year and under team control for two more seasons before he’s eligible for free agency.
“I want to get in there as much as possible,” he said. “But I have to play it semismart if I feel like I’m not quite there yet.”