TORONTO (AP) -Roy Halladay is already plotting his return to the Toronto Blue Jays’ rotation.
Halladay, who was placed on the 15-day disabled list Friday after an appendectomy, is one of nine Blue Jays players on the DL.
Doctors have told the former Cy Young Award winner to take it easy for two weeks, limiting himself to playing catch and riding a bicycle. Halladay hopes to be pitching again within four weeks.
“If I can start doing strenuous stuff in two weeks, I hope it doesn’t take that long,” Halladay said Monday. “I’ve never been through it but a lot of guys who have had it done said that they bounced back relatively quick.”
Halladay is 4-2 with a 4.37 ERA in eight starts. He lasted only five innings and was hit hard in an 8-0 loss to Boston on Thursday, after giving up a season-high nine runs in an 11-4 loss to Texas in his previous start.
“After (Thursday’s) game I felt some twitching and stuff,” said Halladay, who turned 30 on Monday. “It wasn’t painful but next morning I felt sharp pain.”
By the time he arrived at Rogers Centre on Friday afternoon, Halladay was pale. He told trainer George Poulis about pain in his lower right abdomen. Poulis recognized the symptoms and took Halladay to a hospital, where surgery was quickly scheduled.
Knowing how much the last-place Blue Jays are struggling made it hard for Halladay to accept his situation.
“You always feel like maybe I can take something and continue to maybe get over it some other way,” Halladay said. “But after the fact I felt a whole lot better about the decision I made and that it was the right thing to do.”
Jesse Litsch, who was 5-1 with an 0.96 ERA in six starts with Double-A New Hampshire, will make his major league debut when he starts in Halladay’s place against Baltimore on Tuesday.
“It’s definitely a good experience to be a big leaguer,” Litsch said. “It’s a different experience here.”
Halladay, who won the AL Cy Young in 2003, missed nearly three months in 2005 with a fractured left tibia and was shut down early last season after suffering a strained forearm.
“It’s definitely frustrating,” Halladay said. “I’m due for a couple of years of not having to deal with this.”
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