A’s reliever R.J. Alvarez, who was going to have a tough time making the A’s opening day roster, will start the season on the disabled list.
The club said Friday morning Alvarez, a right-hander whose fastball reaches 97 mph when he’s right, had developed some bone chips in the right elbow and those will be removed Tuesday by A’s team orthopedist Dr. Jon Dickinson in the Bay Area.
“They’ve been bothering him for a while now,’’ manager Bob Melvin said of Alvarez’s bone chip issue. “In his last game, he threw 18 or 19 pitches and the bone chips really started to bother him.