CINCINNATI – As has seemingly been the case for the Milwaukee Brewers all year, any good news on the injury front coincides with not-so-good news.
While starting pitcher Wade Miley is on track to return well ahead of the initial six-to-eight week timeline with a left lat injury, the right elbow that forced outfielder Tyrone Taylor to miss the first month of the year is bothering him again.
Miley, who left his start on May 16 in St. Louis early, threw a successful bullpen in Toronto and is aiming to miss only four weeks. He will throw another bullpen Sunday in Cincinnati, then another at home next week. If both of those go well, he’s lined up for a rehab start tentatively scheduled for June 11 and a return to the rotation after that.
“I’m beating that six to eight weeks,” Miley put it bluntly.
Miley’s goal from the outset was to return earlier than anticipated, and the Brewers have given him the ability to set the terms of his rehab provided he was feeling good and recovering well.
“Thankful they allowed me to go off how I felt rather than go get images every five days,” Miley said. “We had a long talk about once I started throwing, if I felt good I could progress at the rate I wanted to progress at.”
Said Brewers manager Craig Counsell: “We’ve got a plan in pencil for him that looks pretty good. I don’t know the exact days that he’s missed already but we’ve got the second half of June in play here. He threw a bullpen yesterday – a healthy bullpen. Once you do that, you feel like you can set the days and know when you’re going to be back.”
Tyrone Taylor scratched from the lineup with elbow soreness
Taylor, meanwhile, isn’t progressing as he had hoped.
A right elbow sprain that bothered the outfielder going all the way back to last season required a PRP injection that sidelined him until the beginning of May. And since his return, Taylor hasn’t looked the least bit like himself, batting just .160 with a miniscule .419 OPS in 27 games since returning.
He was scratched from the lineup for Friday’s series opener against the Reds after reporting discomfort in the elbow.
“His right elbow, the same thing from spring training, is bothering him,” Counsell said. “We’re going to see what that entails, but it’s probably going to entail a doctor visit again.”
Taylor opted to go with the injection and rehab in spring as opposed to surgery, which likely would have ended his 2023 season. He made it through the rehab process, a weeklong stint of games at Class AAANashville and now a month in the majors, but hasn’t progressed as needed.
“I think he’s been dealing with varying levels of it,” Counsell said. “He rehabbed. The rehab took a little longer. It’s there. He got to a point where he thought he could compete with it. At this point it’s still there. It’s there every day, especially on the hitting.”
Working his way back from a concussion suffered last Friday when he was hit by a foul ball in the dugout, Brewers shortstop Willy Adames is with the team’s High-A affiliate, the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, to do workouts this weekend.
There had been a chance Adames could have joined the Brewers in Cincinnati, but was never going to play in games. Instead, the Brewers opted to keep him from having to fly and he will instead spend a few days going through baseball activities in Appleton.
Adames will not appear in games with the Timber Rattlers.
“Everything has gone great,” Counsell said. “He’s got no symptoms, so he’s progressing. It really doesn’t change the schedule he’d be on. We just figured don’t fly. Every day is a little more. Today he will do baseball stuff for the first time. This can go fast but every step has to be no symptoms. We’re at five days in and there’s no symptoms, but that’s the requirements of this.”
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Brewers starter Wade Miley on track for early return from injured list