NEW YORK — At 2:37 p.m. on Tuesday, the Nationals announced they had placed righthanded starter Jeremy Hellickson on the 10-day injured list with tendinitis in his pitching shoulder. By 3:15 p.m., he was throwing long toss in centerfield.
“I feel good enough to pitch,” Hellickson says a day later, in the dugout. “But it’s not best for the team.”
Hellickson has a 6.23 ERA this season. The team added a reliever, righty Javy Guerra, to bolster a tired bullpen, and will likely use righty Kyle McGowin to start in Hellickson’s place. Hellickson insists he is truly hurt—that this is not, in the parlance of baseball players, a phantom injury designed to give his organization roster flexibility—but he understands why people might not believe that.