PHOENIX — It’s been 648 days since Dustin May last appeared in a game. His right elbow has twice been cut into and repaired. Last summer when, as he neared a return to pitching, he tore his esophagus when a piece of lettuce was lodged into his throat and required life-saving emergency surgery. Those 648 days might as well have been a lifetime until Sunday when he appeared in the Cactus League for the first time for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
May threw 15 pitches in a scoreless first against the San Diego Padres, allowing a single and hitting a batter with a pitch before getting a double-play ball and striking out Oscar Gonzalez with an elevated fastball. As he did so, May leaped off the mound before burying his head in his glove.
“A huge, huge weight lifted off my shoulders,” the pitcher said. “I’m alive. I’m glad I’m here. … It was just a breath of fresh air. Like a new beginning.”
He’s 27 years old and in his final year before free agency despite just 191 2/3 career innings to his name. The promise in his twice-repaired right arm remains. May’s fastball sat 94 to 95 mph on Sunday and still has late life. He’s tinkered with his slider this spring training, finding a shape that keeps its wicked horizontal movement while adding some depth.
“It’s still pretty electric and pretty unbelievable what comes out of that arm,” Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior said.
He’s the same Dustin May now, he says. He looks much like the same right-hander who was once the most prized pitching prospect in the organization. May’s elbow ached throughout his rehab from his Tommy John surgery in 2021, so much so that it gave way again on May 17, 2023, and required another surgery to repair his flexor tendon.
Dustin May opened came in a competition for the fifth starter job. (Joe Camporeale / Imagn Images)
His elbow hasn’t hurt while throwing since. May feels like he did last July 10, when he was wrapping up his rehab and out to dinner with his wife, Millie. He felt a piece of lettuce lodge into his throat while eating a salad, then quickly tried to wash it down. It sent pain throughout his body.
May went to the hospital, underwent testing and was in surgery by midnight. Seven hours later, he was lying in a hospital bed with a scar near his stomach. He remained hospitalized for 11 days. Had he not gone in, he said, he wouldn’t have made it through the night.
So began a fresh perspective, and with it, a desire to finish his rehab for days like Sunday.
“I would’ve fought tooth and nail to come back,” May said. “The only way that would’ve stopped me is if I would’ve been 6 feet under.”
And now, he’s battling Tony Gonsolin and others for the fifth and final rotation spot for this loaded Dodgers club out of camp. Gonsolin is coming off Tommy John surgery, looking sharp in his Cactus League debut. The two have been linked for years as promising pitching prospects in the Dodgers’ system. Now, whoever doesn’t start in the rotation is likely destined for the bullpen to start the year.
It’s a good issue to have. For once, the focus is on May actually pitching.
“S—, I hope so,” May said. I don’t know what else I need to do, but I really, really hope that this is just pitching from now on forward.”
You could hear Shohei Ohtani before you could see him. The crowd at Camelback Ranch roared to life well before the Dodgers star zoomed by on the back of a golf cart. There Ohtani was, bat and helmet in hand, to complete the latest stage of a multi-faceted recovery.
Just 24 hours prior, he’d been on a mound, touching 95 mph for the first time since his second major elbow ligament reconstruction. He started mixing cutters into his bullpen session. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts called it “a big step” in Ohtani’s progress toward pitching for the first time in a Dodgers uniform.
Then came Sunday. Nicolas Cruz, a 20-year-old who signed with the Dodgers in the 2022 international signing class out of Venezuela and has thrown 32 career professional innings stateside, became the first pitcher to face Ohtani this spring. The reigning National League MVP, just three months after undergoing labrum surgery in his non-throwing shoulder, saw 32 pitches. He swung at 18 of them, lacing a would-be double into right field and, later, a jam-shot single on his final hack.
Such is a weekend’s work for Ohtani.
Sunday was a key marker as a hitter. It was the first post-labrum surgery chance for Ohtani to get his timing back making his Cactus League debut late next week. Consider it a first step after much of his spring has been focused on his rehab as a pitcher.
The pitching work has continued in earnest, as well. There’s at least one notable tweak: after almost exclusively pitching out of the stretch as an Angel, Ohtani has started to incorporate the windup in his bullpens.
“I do want to explore different options, different avenues, to see if I could grow as a player,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton. “I do that on the pitching side as well as as a hitter.”
“He wanted to feel some energy,” Prior said. “It wasn’t something that I necessarily brought to the table, it was something that he did. I like it. … I like it when guys have some athleticism and some rhythm in their delivery. I think it helps their timing. And so I think that’s what he’s messing around with right now.”
The Dodgers’ batch of toys in their newly opened indoor lab aren’t just limited to the hitters. The lab, which debuted fully last spring and houses the Dodgers’ Trajekt Arc pitching simulator among other advanced technologies, also has found some use this spring among pitchers. While Gonsolin threw his bullpen on the main set of mounds on Sunday afternoon, Japanese right-hander Roki Sasaki was inside, throwing 30 pitches inside the facility as the Dodgers sought to learn his baseline biomechanic metrics.
“That’s the beauty of that big building,” Prior said, looking at the facility adjacent to the Dodgers’ home clubhouse and weight room at Camelback Ranch. The building became fully operational when the Dodgers arrived last February, and the organization’s player development staff has spent the past few months looking to maximize its use.
Much of the technology isn’t all that different from what the Dodgers already have at Dodger Stadium, including the pitching machine and the KinaTrax motion capture technology.
“We can kind of get in the weeds on some stuff,” Prior said. “We’re trying to use it — I think if I was trying to be honest, I think next year when we have more of a normal spring training we’ll see more of our big-league guys go in there.”
Odds and ends
- The hope is that Evan Phillips isn’t too far behind his fellow relievers as he works his way back from the rotator cuff issue that cost him a spot on the World Series roster last October. Phillips threw 15 fastballs off the mound on Friday, his first bullpen session of the spring, and touched 90 mph at “moderate intensity,” he said. While Opening Day, either in Tokyo or Los Angeles, doesn’t seem to be a possibility, Phillips was encouraged. “If you were to say Opening Day was just the domestic Opening Day, then it could potentially be one week, two weeks, could be missing like two road trips,” Phillips said. “All those things, there’s no date in mind yet.”
- Roki Sasaki will pitch in game action this week, but his Cactus League debut is not immediately clear. Prior said Sunday that Sasaki will face the White Sox in a “hybrid, type-B situation” featuring some minor leaguers on one of the Dodgers’ main fields.
(Top photo of Dustin May: Joe Camporeale / Imagn Images)
