David Price Surprised With How Well His Elbow Feels
BOSTON (CBS) -- The good news continues to roll in on the David Price front.
The Boston lefty is moving along with his recovery from left elbow soreness, and said he's feeling good after throwing the last two days. Price added that he's surprised with how good his elbow feels after weekend throwing sessions when chatting with reporters on Monday morning down in Fort Myers, Florida.
"It feels good. It's been getting better every day. Kind of surprised that it's reacted the way that it has," Price said Monday, via The Boston Herald's Evan Drelich. "If you asked me a week ago I'd have said it felt OK. And I feel really good right now. Today is the best it's felt. Just everyday activities. I don't feel anything in there right now. So that's coming after two straight days of throwing baseballs into the net so it's responding really well."
Price told reporters that he stopped taking anti-inflammatory medication last Thursday, but there is still no timetable for when he'll throw off a mound for the first time since being scratched from his first spring start nearly two weeks ago.
"I got to take it day by day," he said. "If I set a timeline or a date that I want to pitch in this game or whatever it is, that's, you can have a lot of bad things come from that I feel like. So this is, I show up, we figure out what we're going to do today, whatever we do today we want to make sure you know I want to be able to bounce back and feel good tomorrow. It's been something that's gone a lot better than what I anticipated to be completely honest. With the progress I've made right now, honestly it's out of my mind. It's been comforting the way the past probably three days have gone."
On Sunday, the 31-year-old threw 25 pitches in the batting cage down at the team's Spring Training facilities.
"The range of motion is close to normal as it could be," Price said. "You know, all the pain that was in there, that's, I mean that's gone. I can bend and straighten. Three days ago, I could do it but I would feel it. And now, this is the best it's been."
Price said he usually feels some soreness in Spring Training when the injury was revealed two weeks ago, but this year's pain was a little more intense. That prompted the lefty to pay a visit to Dr. James Andrews and Dr. Neal ElAttrache, who told him he would not require surgery (a bit of a surprise, given that a visit to Dr. Andrews usually leads to Tommy John surgery). The specialists told Price that had he been 21 or 22, and not dealt with such pain in the past, they would have recommended surgery.
Once surgery was off the table, Price said he decided to "shut his brain off," and couldn't even tell reporters what his injury actually is on Monday.
"When I heard, 'Take some meds, rest it for 10 days, see how it feels, no surgery, no injection,' I shut it down. I just sat back on the couch and I don't know where I went. I went to my own little happy place," he said. "They used medical terms. I don't even know half of the names of the stuff in my arm. I don't know it. Like I said, when they said no surgery, no injection, just give it some rest, I literally shut my brain off."
Price, who went 17-9 with a 3.99 ERA with Boston in 2016, is entering the second year of a seven-year, $217 million deal he signed with Boston last winter.
