Tyler Glasnow Gives One Word Answer About Returning to Dodgers This Season

Maren Angus-Coombs | Sep 2, 2024

Ed Szczepanski-USA TODAY Sports

The Los Angeles Dodgers aren't positive whether Tyler Glasnow will return during the regular season or not.

However, the right-hander feels "confident" in his return to the starting rotation in September after playing catch on Saturday for the second consecutive day.

#Dodgers Tyler Glasnow played catch again today. Said his elbow feels better. Hopes to throw off a mound in a few days. “Confident” he will be back in the rotation to make starts before the end of the regular season

— Bill Plunkett (@billplunkettocr) August 31, 2024

Glasnow was placed on the 15-day injured list with elbow tendonitis on Aug. 16 and hoped to only miss the minimum 15 days which would have brought him back at some point during the current four-day series against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

“Everything feels clean, timing and mechanics feel good,” he said. “I just gave it a couple days and it feels good.”

All of these are positive signs considering Glasnow was scratched from a scheduled session of catch on Tuesday before resuming throwing on Friday.

“I just think it was like tightness,” he said. “When you don’t throw for a while, everything kind of goes back to like a normal arm.”

Glasnow is aiming to make "a couple more" starts but knows he doesn't have a ton of time to check off all the boxes on his comeback list. Before the Dodgers feel comfortable bringing him into the rotation, he has to throw full-intensity, flat-ground tosses, bullpen sessions and either a minor-league rehab assignment or live at-bats against hitters in simulated games, if not both.

“I don’t have a ton of time,” he acknowledged, “but I think it will be enough.”

If there is any kind of "silver lining" to Glasnow's second IL stint this season, it's that he taking this time to rectify some mechanical issues that he felt before getting hurt.

“If there is any silver lining, I think taking the time off, you kind of get your body, it like resets back to normal,” he said. “Before I got hurt for a while there, I don’t think I was mechanically in a very good spot. I wasn’t moving how I used to move. Now, kind of going back to zero and then ramping back up, I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s the feeling I’m trying to feel.’ I think once I iron out a lot of that stuff, a lot of the other issues go away.”

Glasnow isn't done for the season and feels capable of carrying a heavy load in the postseason. After all, that's why he signed a five-year, $136.5-million contract with his hometown team in the offseason.

“That’s why I came here,” the 31-year-old said. “That No. 1 priority is just the World Series. That’s like all I think about now, at this point in my career.”