The Padres will give away a bobblehead made in the image of pitcher Michael King on Aug. 20 when they host the Giants.
After throwing 25 pitches in his first “full bullpen” session in nearly two months on Thursday afternoon, King was asked whether he might return from the injured list to pitch that night.
“I’ll be back well before that,” he said emphatically. “… That would be late.”
King won’t publicly state a timeline for his return from a nerve impingement in the area of his right shoulder that has sidelined him since mid-May. But his progress has been such that he and the medical staff were comfortable with him going harder Thursday than initially anticipated.
He even wore his full uniform, as starting pitchers do when throwing their between-starts bullpen sessions. He said he threw all his pitches, was pleased with the command of most of them and reached 91 mph with his fastball. That is just a couple miles an hour below his average.
“This one was supposed to be a touch and feel, but I definitely made it more of a bullpen, just to speed things up,” King said. “Because I’d like to progress.”
The steps in a rehabilitation from injury or the buildup after time off are like dominoes in that one tumbles into the next.
“I think it’s actually been a very aggressive buildup,” he said. “I pushed for that, obviously.”
King, who is also on high alert for the birth of his first child, which is expected any day, has a timeline for his return in mind even if he isn’t saying it and knows the team might have a slightly different expectation.
Once he was able to start throwing regularly and at an increased distance and intensity a couple weeks ago, King made a chart that included bullpen days and rehab starts. He even checked the schedule for minor-league affiliates.
“I think that’s called Type A,” King said. “I am that type of person. I wrote out my own program before the training room even did and brought it to them and said, ‘You can use this as a guideline.’ And they definitely came back and said, ‘That was pretty aggressive.’ So we’re trying to meet in the middle there”
Given his amount of time off, his return likely would not come too far before that Aug. 20 date.
King is not coming back from an injury such as a sprain or surgery, which means there is no real concern about a setback due to not being properly healed. His being able to ramp up his throwing program was a matter of the nerve “firing” properly again.
But he last pitched on May 19 and did not start playing catch with any real intensity for more than a month. So the issue now is time — time needed to build back his arm strength.
“Now it’s just like in an off season (where) you’ll be shut down for however long, you’re going to have to take some time to build up because you don’t want to immediately stress it and put too much stress on it,” King said. “So it’s just that buildup phase, which is honestly great, because I feel 100% healthy. And it’s just that build up.
“Now that I’m getting function back, it’s not like … you have to make sure it’s OK,” King said. “You have to make sure it’s responding to the workload. Like, all my tissue was great beforehand, so now it’s just making sure that I’m still operating correctly and I’m not compensating for anything. And — knock on wood — I haven’t been. Everything has been feeling great. So it’s more of an aggressive throwing program.
“I’ve been battling with them to make sure that it’s aggressive. But it ultimately falls on me and how I feel and being able to report (and) have good reports back after these days. So today was great, and hopefully tomorrow I recover well, and I can talk to (head athletic trainer Mark Rogow) to make sure that I can progress forward.”
