Torey Lovullo: Corbin Burnes is targeting an early-September return

It’s been a long road back to baseball for Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Corbin Burnes, who underwent Tommy John surgery over a year ago, but he’s optimistic about an early-September return.

“I had a nice, hour-long visit with him this past weekend before he hit the road on this long road trip, and he said, ‘Torey, I’m telling you, I want to be there the first week of September,'” D-backs manager Torey Lovullo told Arizona Sports’ Burns & Gambo Friday. “He’s got a lot of work between now and then.”

Lovullo said Burnes is throwing out to 90 feet right now, and the next step is throwing on flat ground.

“He’s aching to get back out there as soon as possible and help us win some baseball games,” Lovullo said. “So hopefully early September, and then we’ll make an adjustment from there.”

However, a key in Burnes’ ramp-up is not pushing too hard because he’s already had a setback. In early June, the Diamondbacks pitcher suffered a teres major strain in his right lat, which put his season in jeopardy at the time.

Lovullo said he’s not worried about Burnes pushing too hard to cause another setback as long as the team doctors are “totally in charge.”

“The medical team is gonna be totally in charge of all that, but I think the wrappers are off and he’s gonna start getting after it,” Lovullo added. “I think there’s evidence of everything healing the right way.

“If that’s the case, I think we can be as aggressive as possible, and we’ll see it through Corbin’s eyes based on what he’s given us after every throwing program that he has.”

Lovullo provides injury updates on Diamondbacks’ Zac Gallen, Michael Soroka

Lovullo said Gallen started his throwing program a couple days ago and he’s thrown out to 75 feet. He’ll have a repeat MRI in early August.

“At that point, find out how aggressive we can be, and then it would be very similar to what Burnes is doing when you’re talking about the flat ground and then getting on a mound,” Lovullo said. “But the fact that he’s throwing a baseball, he’s feeling really good and we’re super excited about that.”

Soroka will throw a simulated game on Saturday, going two innings on 35 pitches, and then Arizona will likely target a camp game after that, Lovullo said.

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