Julio Teheran resumed throwing and said the plan is for the Braves veteran to start Friday against the Padres on the first day he’s eligible to come off the 10-day disabled list.
Perhaps more significantly, he acknowledged Sunday that he’s dealt with general arm soreness at times throughout the season.
Teheran went on the DL Tuesday after jamming his right thumb while batting in his Monday start at San Diego. He didn’t pick up a baseball for four days before he was cleared for a light throwing session Saturday before the Braves’ game at Dodger Stadium.
He ramped up the throwing to 90 feet Sunday.
Braves manager Brian Snitker already said Teheran wouldn’t require a rehab assignment if he was ready to pitch immediately after the 10-day DL minimum.
“That’s what we’re planning,” Teheran said of starting Friday’s home game against the Padres. “I don’t want to go down there and throw a minor league game. Skip one start and I don’t think that is going to affect me at all.”
In fact, Teheran hopes the extra rest from the turn he’s missing will help alleviate arm soreness he’s had during the season, which he said has contributed to reduced velocity in several starts including last Monday at San Diego.
He threw fastballs mostly in the range of 85-87 miles per hour in that game, several ticks below his normal velocity.
The five-time Braves opening-day starter is 4-4 with a 4.31 ERA in 13 starts and has 56 strikeouts with 33 walks in 71 innings this season, which would be easily the worst strikeouts-to-walks ratio that would be the worst of his six full seasons in the majors.
He’s allowed 14 homers, third-most in the National League before Sunday and the most by any NL pitcher not on the Cincinnati Reds.
Teheran is 1-3 with a 6.11 ERA and eight home runs allowed in 28 innings over his past five starts. The former two-time All-Star is on pace to allow more than one homer per start for the first time in six full seasons.
“My arm has been sore,” Teheran said Sunday morning, the first time he acknowledged there had been soreness on at least a semi-regular basis. “Obviously as a pitcher you have games where you don’t feel 100 percent. This year for me it’s been kind of up and down.
“Whenever you’re fighting through soreness, one day you feel good and the next day you don’t. You still go out there and compete; I don’t think it’s a big deal. But working on it, we’ll see if this couple of months we’ll get my velo back.”
Teheran left an April 27 start at Philadelphia after three innings due to tightness in the trapezius muscle behind his shoulder, but said soreness at other times has been in variety of areas of his arm. He characterized it as general soreness, not pain that was a sign of possible injury
“No, it’s been all over. I’m getting old now -- I feel like that,” he said, laughing. “Right now I feel like one of the old guys, one day you feel soreness in one spot and the other day you feel it in the other (spot). I’ve been pitching for a long time, I think that’s normal. But we’ve got to take care of that and it’s a good thing that it’s nothing bad.”
He’s only 27 but has pitched over 1,000 innings in the majors since making his debut at age 20 in 2011.
Teheran had a 2.89 ERA in a career-high 221 innings in 33 starts during his age-23 season in 2014, his second full season and first All-Star berth. He also topped 200 innings (200-2/3) in 33 starts in 2015, then slipped to 188 innings in 30 starts in 2016 and 188-1/3 innings in 32 innings last season, when he allowed a career-high 31 homers and had a 4.49 ERA that was his highest in a full season.
