season-ending lumbar microdiscectomy procedure on Monda<\/a>y, will be a free agent after this season. He said he \u201cabsolutely\u201d is considering signing with the team again. <\/p>\n\u201cI love this clubhouse,\u201d he said. \u201cI told pretty much everyone that we\u2019ve had a conversation about that, I told them I love this place and I\u2019d love to be here. We\u2019re going to get the operation done and kind of see where this takes us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The pain, Eflin said, has landed him on the injured list at least once every season, but an MRI this year showed the injury is worse now and that the disc is pushing against a nerve. Doctors tried an epidural first, but that didn\u2019t work. <\/p>\n
The pain comes and goes, Eflin said. In Cleveland, during his second-to-last start, he pitched five innings with his back feeling as normal as it could. But five days later against Toronto, in what would end up being his last start of the season, he wasn\u2019t comfortable at all as he allowed four runs in 4 1\/3 innings. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been disappointing, depressing,\u201d Eflin said. \u201cJust to try to throw a baseball, that I wasn\u2019t necessarily comfortable all the time and it\u2019s not a really good place to be. … I don\u2019t like thinking back because I didn\u2019t necessarily feel good at times when I threw, but I also didn\u2019t pitch well at the same time. So I feel like I owe this team a lot more than I gave them, but at the end of the day I have to take care of my back. I got to get something done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Part of his motivation too, he said, is how much this is impacting his life outside baseball. He has four young children, including a 6-month old. <\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to get this done because it doesn\u2019t necessarily only affect me here,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ve got to be a dad. I\u2019ve got to be able to pick up my kids and stuff. So I think with this operation it\u2019s going to help me be a better dad too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eflin doesn\u2019t know the timeline \u2014 he said it can be anywhere from four to eight months \u2014 but the hope is after 12 weeks he can resume normal offseason activities so he can be ready for spring training. This procedure should provide a permanent fix to the pain. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s more so going to be how much I stay on top of the rehab for it, and the core work that goes along with it is going to be a huge part of my career moving forward,\u201d he said. \u201cEverything that I\u2019ve read and have seen that other guys go through, it takes all their pain away as long as they stay on top of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eflin, who will be 32 next season, has a career ERA of 4.28 and nearly nine years of service time. The Orioles, who will need starting pitching help, could make him a qualifying offer, which last year was a one-year deal worth $21.05 million. The 2026 value has not been announced. <\/p>\n
Although he likely would want a longer-term deal, taking a qualifying offer would give him a larger one-year sum than he would probably get on the open market and a good season could help him earn more after the 2026 season. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not much has gone right this season for right-handed starter Zach Eflin or the Orioles. Eflin, expected to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[58124,363,99],"class_list":["post-84053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-featured-extrawide","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}