LOS ANGELES -- As he neared the end of a 20-month-long rehabilitation from a second Tommy John surgery, Walker Buehler encountered one final obstacle he struggled to shake: adrenaline.
Channeling the adrenaline of pitching in a major league game, an important step in pronouncing himself ready to return, proved difficult for someone who had grown so accustomed to performing on baseball's grandest stages. Buehler's version of game environments was elusive.
"To be completely frank with you there's not a whole lot of that for me [in the minor leagues]," he said. "I wish there was. I wish it was easier for me to get going. I wish it didn't sound so like s---ty to say that. But I think getting the adrenaline of pitching in the big leagues is something that I've been looking forward to for a long time."
Buehler will finally get that chance Monday, when he makes his long-awaited return to the Dodgers' rotation in a home start against the lowly Miami Marlins.
The road back was treacherous.
Buehler, who had his first Tommy John surgery shortly after he was drafted in 2015, then again in August 2022, tried to come back for the stretch run of the 2023 season but essentially ran out of time. He began another rehab assignment near the end of March and wound up requiring six starts.
Buehler's third outing ended prematurely, when a comebacker struck his right middle finger and ended it after just 27 pitches, about 50 short of his goal. His next two starts saw him allow 11 hits and issue six walks in a stretch of 6⅔ innings, his command clearly lacking. His last start, though, saw progress. Buehler, a 29-year-old pending free agent, threw five scoreless innings in Oklahoma City on Tuesday, running his pitch count to 75. It marked the first time he had recorded 15 outs.
"Five innings is a big mark, I think, in terms of rehabbing to start games in the big leagues," Buehler said before the start of the Dodgers' homestand Friday. "If you can't do that, it's hard to say you're ready. There's always things I'm working on; I've kind of always been a tinkerer. Healthwise, I feel great now. It's just kind of getting all the rhythm back.
"And I think -- big league, big-game environment will definitely help me in terms of hopefully a little velocity but I think more than anything the tempo and the delivery works better when you're amped up a little bit. I'm looking forward to that."
When the world last saw Buehler, he was one of the most electric pitchers in the sport and also one of its best big-game performers. From 2018 to 2021, he went 39-13 with a 2.82 ERA and 620 strikeouts in 564 innings during the regular season. But his signature moments came in October, particularly 6⅔ scoreless innings in a tiebreaker game against the Colorado Rockies in 2018, seven shutouts in Game 3 of the ensuing World Series and, most notably, a stretch in which he allowed one run in 12 innings over the final two rounds of the 2020 playoffs, helping the Dodgers capture a championship.
What he will be now, in the wake of a second repair of his ulnar collateral ligament, is anybody's guess. There isn't much precedent for starting pitchers thriving after multiple Tommy John surgeries. The Dodgers will be careful with Buehler and will use what is essentially a six-man rotation to keep him fresh, but they have declined to set a strict innings limit for him this season.
"I think that's gonna be open-ended or read and react," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said when asked if he can ride Buehler in the rotation for the rest of the season without the need for a break before the playoffs. "Obviously his health is most important going forward. There could be a situation where from Monday onward he makes every start. There could be a time when he might need to take a blow. I don't know. It's gonna be contingent on how he's feeling, for the most part.
"But how we kind of use rest and built-in starters and spot starts and things like that, I think we can manage the workload. But I don't think anyone can say right now what that number [of innings] is."