Arizona Diamondbacks' Taijuan Walker heads to DL with right forearm inflammation

LOS ANGELES – Diamondbacks right-hander Taijuan Walker was placed on the disabled list with right forearm inflammation on Sunday.

Walker departed his outing on Saturday after two innings with the dreaded “right forearm tightness” diagnosis, but he didn’t sound like someone panicked about a significant injury.

“I feel strong,” Walker said after the Diamondbacks’ 9-1 win at Dodger Stadium. “Everything feels strong. Everything checked out good. I’m going to get some rest tonight and come in tomorrow and see how everything feels. I feel really good about it.”

Manager Torey Lovullo said Walker will undergo an MRI on Monday.

In the parlance of baseball injuries, “forearm” can often mean “elbow,” and pitchers who require significant surgeries, including Tommy John surgery, are often initially described as having “forearm tightness.”

Walker, though, said he is “not at all” worried about his health, not after going through a battery of tests administered by the training staff.

“They’ve been around for a long time and they know the symptoms of if it’s anything bad,” Walker said. “From what I was told, everything felt really strong and I feel strong right now.”

Walker said the tightness first popped up in the first inning and did not subsist when he took the mound in the second. At that point, with his velocity hovering in the low-90s – about 3-4 mph lower than it was compared to the first few hitters of the game – manager Torey Lovullo went to the mound with head trainer Ryan DiPanfilo. Walker remained in the game to finish the second but didn’t come back out for the third.

“I know Dip had a long conversation with him and said there was a little bit of tightness there and was hoping it could loosen up,” Lovullo said. “Once we got him back in the dugout it made a lot of sense to remove him.”

Walker said the decrease in velocity was a conscious choice.

“It was coming out when I wanted to, but I didn’t really want to push it and make things worse,” he said. “I could have stepped on it and kept going, but I was just kind of babying it a little bit. I didn’t want to do anything dumb and make it worse.”

Walker said he’d felt this sort of discomfort at least a couple of times in his career, once in 2012, another time perhaps two years ago. Neither instance led to a serious injury.

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