The Los Angeles Dodgers placed Scott Alexander on the 10-day injured list with left shoulder inflammation and designated Andy Burns for assignment as the necessary moves on their active and 40-man rosters in order to select the contract of Josiah Gray.
The Dodgers’ top pitching prospect is scheduled to make his MLB debut on Tuesday night against the San Francisco Giants. Although Gray is a traditional starter, he will appear after an opener.
“He’ll come in and pitch a good bit of the game,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
This marks a second time Alexander is on the IL this season as he previously missed two months because of the same inflammation in his throwing shoulder. Alexander was initially expected to only miss a short period, but being shut down from throwing caused a delay in returning.
“In my case, it took about 10 days to finally start feeling better,” he explained last month. “There’s like a threshold of when you’re not throwing — as far as taking days off — there’s a little bit of a threshold to where you get to a certain where the layoff has been too long and you’re forced to do this throwing program to build back up.
“The injury, 10 or 14 days, I was feeling good. But because of that non-throwing, I had to go through essentially a Spring Training buildup, and that’s basically what’s taken so long.”
Alexander is 0-2 with a 2.93 ERA in 18 games this season. He appeared in Monday’s loss, throwing one-third of an inning and allowing two hits.
Burns made history with Dodgers
Burns joined the active roster in June and went on to make Dodgers franchise history by getting a hit and pitching in his first game with the team. Burns’ time with the Dodgers marked a return to the Majors since last playing for the Tampa Bay Rays in 2016. Burns went 3-for-11 with three walks over nine games with L.A.
Should he clear waivers, the Dodgers would have the potential to send Burns outright to Triple-A Oklahoma City.
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