For 22 months, Walker Buehler dreamed about the moment he would next pitch in a major league game. As he woke up from elbow reconstruction surgery, as he muscled through exercises to strengthen the new ligament, as he endured setback after setback, he thought about climbing the mound. And then it turned out the part he liked best was actually descending it.
“The ceremony of it is done,” he said with relief after he had allowed three runs in four innings in a 6–3 Los Angeles Dodgers victory over the Miami Marlins. “Now I can kind of focus on trying to be good and helping our team.”
He did enough on Monday, although he got some help from the league’s best offense (Los Angeles, with a .806 OPS) and the league’s third-worst (Miami; .626). He allowed six hits and no walks, and he struck out four. He used all six of his pitches—a cutter, a four-seam fastball, a sinker, a knuckle curve, a slider and a changeup. And he surprised both himself and his manager with his velocity.
“I don’t expect to see 96, 97 [mph], where he was prior to the surgery,” Dave Roberts said before the game. Buehler had been closer to 95 mph in his rehab appearances, and he wondered whether those few ticks on the gun would return. But on Monday he averaged 95.9 mph and topped out at 97.6 mph.
“I think I could be O.K. if I was [throwing] 92, 94 [mph],” he said. “I think I'm confident that way. But it helps a lot if I can throw 96 or 97.”
The velocity came back before the command did. Buehler, 29, took the field to a lengthy ovation from the 44,970 at Dodger Stadium, made longer when leadoff hitter Jazz Chisholm Jr. stepped out of the box to extend it, a move Buehler called “kind of cool.” (He then added, of the flamboyant center fielder, “That’s one of the better things I’ve seen him do on a baseball field, at least for me personally.”) Buehler reached two strikes on each of the first two hitters but allowed hits to both. He gave up a homer in the second on a sinker that didn’t sink, and he was a half a step slow covering first base, allowing the next batter to reach. But he seemed to settle in and begin hitting his spots, and he escaped the next two innings with only a single and a hit by pitch.
“You could see the execution crisping up a bit,” said catcher Will Smith.
The velocity sagged in the later innings, but not because Buehler took something off to find accuracy; “I just got really tired,” he said. “I was just tired enough to throw it over there and they hit the top of it a couple of times.”
The whole thing was exhilarating. Since he last pitched in a game that mattered, Buehler turned 28, then 29. He and his wife, McKenzie, became parents; daughter Finley recently turned three months old. He will be a free agent after this season.
He is navigating a recovery almost without precedent. On Monday, Buehler joined some 100 other major leaguers who pitched again after a second Tommy John surgery; only about half a dozen did so with any real success as starters.
Buehler endured his first Tommy John surgery two weeks after the Dodgers selected him out of Vanderbilt in the first round of the 2015 draft; he made his professional debut just shy of a year later.
He tried to return down the stretch last year but shut himself down after just one rehab outing. He took it slow this spring but still encountered setbacks—a comebacker to his right middle finger that cut one outing short by some 50 pitches, spotty command that extended innings and forced him out of games early, a generally lackluster rehab assignment in which he admitted he never felt the adrenaline he weaponizes when he is at his best.
At one point, Buehler seemed to be the future of the Dodgers’ pitching staff, a budding ace who watched the 2017 World Series from the stands before helping anchor the rotation en route to the ’20 title. From ’18 through ’21, he was, by FanGraphs’ version of WAR, the seventh most valuable pitcher in the sport. It was easy to imagine that he would lead the charge through October for years to come.
But that postseason, Buehler started Game 4 of the National League Division Series on short rest. He made his next start on six days’ rest and was scheduled to start a possible Game 7 of the National League Championship Series on regular rest. But Max Scherzer, scheduled to start Game 6, was scratched the night before when he complained of arm fatigue. Buehler again took the ball on short rest. He lasted four innings and took the loss. He made it until June of the next year before his UCL tore. Neither he nor the Dodgers have publicly attributed the injury to that playoff run—and indeed the UCL rarely fails from one incident—but it’s hard to imagine he will start on short rest this October.
The Dodgers’ season could hinge on Buehler’s effectiveness this fall. Yoshinobu Yamamoto has pitched well after a disastrous debut, but this is his first season in MLB. Tyler Glasnow has been electric, but he has never thrown more than 120 innings in a season. James Paxton is 35. Gavin Stone is a rookie. Bobby Miller is out with shoulder inflammation. Clayton Kershaw is recovering from capsule surgery, which often ends players’ careers.
“I just want to win,” Buehler said. “I think for me, it's always been being a guy that 25 other guys want to have the ball when we need to win the game.” This October will mark nearly 36 months since he last pitched in a postseason game. He’s already thinking about climbing that mound.
