Arroyo will attempt to rehab shoulder, return in 4-to-6 weeks

VIERA, Fla. - Bronson Arroyo thought three days ago his career was over. Now he thinks he may have one last shot to take a big league mound again after being told by Nationals doctors his right shoulder isn't as damaged as initially feared.

"It isn't often that you get a really, really bad prognosis," Arroyo said, "and call 30 of your closest friends and tell them: 'Man, I guess I got checkmated today. I'm taking it to the house.' And then a couple days later, they say maybe you've got a chance. Maybe it's like 'Forrest Gump.' "

After a wild week of emotional highs and lows, Arroyo now is prepared to battle through one final phase of rehab for what the Nationals have concluded is inflammation and a partial tear of tendons in his rotator cuff, not the more severe tear he initially was told he had.

If everything goes according to plan, the Nationals say Arroyo could complete the full rehab process in four to six weeks.

"Hopefully somewhere over the next, hopefully month-and-a-half or two months, I'll be ready to go," the 39-year-old pitcher said. "Or we'll prove that the shoulder's just not going to handle it anymore, and I'll take it to the house."

Arroyo hasn't pitched in a big league game since June 2014 with the Diamondbacks, after which he required Tommy John surgery for a torn elbow ligament and shoulder surgery for damage to the rotator cuff. He signed a minor league deal with the Nationals this winter, hoping to complete his long journey back and pitch one more season before riding off into the sunset.

But the shoulder pain he experienced after his most recent start - three perfect innings against the Astros on March 10 - was worse than he experienced in the past, so the Nationals scratched him from his next scheduled outing and had him get an enhanced MRI of the shoulder. Arroyo said Thursday that MRI revealed his rotator cuff was "significantly torn," leading him to conclude he most likely would need to retire from baseball.

The Nationals did want their own medical staff to review the latest MRI first and compare it to one taken on the same shoulder by the Diamondbacks in 2014 before deciding a course of action. On Friday night, FOXSports.com's Ken Rosenthal reported the MRI was "misread" by doctors, that the rotator cuff was OK and that the issue was inflammation of the bursa sac. The club immediately refuted the accuracy of that report and today announced Arroyo has "partial tears of the rotator cuff tendons that are similar to what they were in 2014," with no damage to the bursa sac.

"The report that we misread the MRI is inaccurate," general manager Mike Rizzo said. "It was misreported, by whoever reported it. ... We did not make a comment on it because we were waiting for the 2014 MRI and surgical report. Once we got that, we assessed it with our medical staff. We talked with Bronson and (manager Dusty Baker). And we put together the rehab protocol."

The plan now: Arroyo will be shut down for 10-to-14 days, permitted only to do cardiovascular exercises. He'll then begin a shoulder strengthening program, eventually followed by a throwing program. After the whole process is completed over 4-to-6 weeks, Rizzo said, the club and Arroyo will reassess the situation and decide how to proceed from there.

Given the 21 months of rehab he already has completed just to get to this point, Arroyo isn't fazed at all by the prospect of waiting another couple of months in a last-ditch attempt to finish his career on the mound instead of the disabled list.

"That's no big deal," he said. "I've lived a strange life, man. I was in the weight room as a 5-, 6-year-old kid pounding out weights. I have videos of me as a kid, 50 pounds, squatting 250 pounds, it's like a joke. So I don't know anything other than this. A couple more months is no big deal. If they told me: 'Bronson, the only way you're going to maybe have a chance to pitch is to go in and surgically repair it,' then I'm done. I'm not getting cut on again. So it's either going to go now or it won't. But two months is no big deal."