Doolittle's return halted by oblique injury

Sean Doolittle spent weeks trying to rediscover the form that made him one of the best relievers in baseball. And then just as he seemed to find it, the Nationals left-hander suffered an injury that could bring an abrupt end to his season.

Doolittle injured his right oblique muscle throwing a pitch in the top of the ninth during Thursday's 7-6 loss to the Braves, manager Davey Martinez revealed after the game. Though the club didn't know the severity of it in the immediate aftermath, Martinez's preliminary assessment was not upbeat.

"I'm concerned," he said during his postgame Zoom session with reporters. "That's a tough one for any athlete."

Doolittle took the mound for the top of the ninth, trying to keep the deficit at one run and give his teammates a chance to rally in the bottom of the inning. He threw only three pitches, all to Nick Markakis, and got the veteran outfielder to ground out harmlessly to second base.

But as Josh Harrison was fielding that grounder, Doolittle winced, went to touch the ride side of his torso, hunched over and immediately signaled to the Nationals dugout. Martinez and head athletic trainer Paul Lessard came out to check on him and wasted little time helping the left-hander leave the field with noticeable discomfort as he walked off.

"Hopefully it's not too bad," Martinez said. "But I saw him leaning over, and I just started running out there. When you see somebody injured like that and hunched over, it scares you. You don't know what the problem is. I honestly at first thought it was his knee. But I went out there and he said it was his oblique."

Doolittle made two stints on the injured list in the last 13 months with knee ailments that may have played a role in his declining performance. After reporting to summer training with diminished fastball velocity, he opened the season with a string of shaky performances, losing his status as a trusted member of the back end of the Nationals bullpen and ultimately landing on the IL and reporting to the club's alternate training site in Fredericksburg to get himself right again.

Since returning Aug. 30, Doolittle had looked much more like his old self. He didn't allow an earned run in six appearances, allowed only four of 18 batters faced to reach base, saw a slight increase in his fastball velocity and learned how to locate that pitch (plus his rarely used off-speed pitches) in different quadrants of the strike zone.

"His last few outings have looked really good," bullpen mate Tanner Rainey said. "It looked like he's more so back to normal. That's the Doo we always expect to see. And then to see him go out there tonight and have to come off the field, it's never a good thing."

The Nationals won't have a clear idea of Doolittle's rehab timetable until they learn more about the severity of this injury. But even a mild oblique strain can take several weeks to heal. And with only two and a half weeks left in the regular season, the odds of a return seem slim.

That raises the question of Doolittle's future. A free agent this winter for the first time in his career, the soon-to-be 34-year-old could be entering a difficult market on the heels of his mostly disappointing 2020 season.