The longest offseason of Jorge De La Rosa’s career has begun.
De La Rosa, who underwent Tommy John surgery on June 3, left Sunday for Scottsdale, Ariz., where he’ll spend the next five months splitting time between his home and the Rockies’ spring training facility at Salt River Fields at Talking Stick.
Typically, Tommy John surgery, in which doctors take a wrist ligament and transplant it in the elbow, requires a one- year recovery period, but De La Rosa is ahead of schedule. How far ahead?
“I’d like to be ready for opening day,” De La Rosa said.
But that won’t happen and De La Rosa knows it. He’s too valuable to the Rockies to rush back. There’s no precise timetable for his return, but the Rockies would be happy with a return by late May.
De La Rosa will launch a throwing regimen Friday. Rockies manager Jim Tracy had a meeting with him this weekend with a very clear message: One step at a time.
During his days with the Dodgers, Tracy spent considerable time with Dr. Frank Jobe, the former Dodgers surgeon who developed the surgery that came to be named after longtime major league left-hander Tommy John.
“I told him about Dr. Jobe and the importance of following the program and don’t deviate from it,” Tracy said. “Don’t try to speed it up. If you follow the program and don’t try to speed it up, you’ll feel like you have a bionic arm. It will completely heal and you’ll basically have a brand new elbow.
“The guys who end up suffering severe setbacks are those who want to try to speed up the process. They feel great, but there’s still a process between feeling great and actually being where you used to be. I learned that firsthand from the master, the guy who invented the surgery.”
