Max Scherzer explained to reporters what his road back to the mound looked like in terms of his recovery from a strained oblique, but some of the math behind his rehab was a bit confusing to track.
"Half the battle is getting back to 90 percent, and the second half of this battle is from 90 percent to 100 percent," Scherzer told reporters on Tuesday. "The trainers here, we've done a good job getting to 90 percent, but I'm still in the fight here to try to get back to 100 percent.
"We've done good work to get to this point, but I've still got a lot in front of me."
Being at 90 percent and still only halfway to a return sounds puzzling, but perhaps more importantly, Scherzer hopes to throw a live batting practice at some point this week, and, hopefully after that, will pitch a rehab start. He hopes he would only need one, but he knows obliques are tricky and it could go very differently if he isn't careful.
"I could go out there for a rehab start and feel good, but it tightens up more than I thought it would and all of a sudden, you need two or three," Scherzer said. "I don't want to fully say it's gonna be one or two. You literally have to take this day by day."
Scherzer was throwing on the field before Tuesday's game, and recent reports suggested he could return on the earlier side of his 6-8 week timeline after suffering the injury, which would be in about two weeks. But Scherzer isn't putting any updates or estimated timeline on his return, even if he is 10 percent from feeling 100 percent, yet only halfway there.
"You can feel good, go out there and not feel any symptoms whatsoever, and you can overdo it at that point, overload the muscle and then you can have a setback," Scherzer said. "I can see very easily how you can have a setback…so you gotta be very incremental on how you increase the load on the oblique."
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