Dodgers News: Tony Gonsolin Injury Update is Less Than Ideal

Dodgers pitcher Tony Gonsolin has been on the injured list since August 29 with a right forearm strain, and while the original reports were that the team caught it early and only expected Gonsolin to miss the minimum 15 days, the optimism seems to have been misplaced.

Last week, we got news that Gonsolin’s arm wasn’t “responding” the way they had hoped, and he went for an MRI. The MRI came back clean, but we got word on Tuesday that the righty’s recovery is going more slowly than they had hoped.

#Dodgers Tony Gonsolin played a little bit of catch today. Wasn’t completely letting it go. Dave Roberts said they’re still optimistic Gonsolin will have enough time to build up, but acknowledged that he’s not progressing as quickly as they initially thought.

— Juan Toribio (@juanctoribio) September 6, 2022

With Gonsolin’s IL stint backdated to August 26, he will be eligible to return to the active roster on September 10. Now, with this announcement four days before that date, it appears that the goalposts have shifted a bit. Instead of aiming to have him back on September 10, the hope now is to have him back in time to get ready for the postseason.

Dave Roberts acknowledged that Tony Gonsolin isn’t progressing as quickly as they’d originally hoped, and that the calendar to get him back is tight, but said he still has confidence Gonsolin can come back and be fully stretched out to start.

— Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) September 6, 2022

Assuming they’d want Gonsolin to get three starts before the postseason, we can count backwards. The last start could come on the final day of the season, since the Dodgers will have a bye in the first round and probably wouldn’t be planning on Gonsolin for Game 1 anyway. So if Gonsolin were to return sometime during the series with the Cardinals on September 23-25, that would give him time to get three starts before the end of the season.

That’s almost three weeks, so Gonsolin playing catch on Tuesday is probably a good step in that direction. We won’t be seeing him as soon as we had hoped, but it still seems likely we’ll see him in October, when it really matters.

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