KANSAS CITY -- Royals pitcher Kyle Wright faced a small setback during his rehab assignment from right shoulder surgery, experiencing shoulder fatigue during his second rehab start on Wednesday with Double-A Northwest Arkansas.
Wright was recalled from his rehab assignment but stayed on the 15-day injured list, with the Royals announcing Friday they plan to have him skip one or two starts before sending him back out to an affiliate and continue building up. He was in Kansas City on Friday and played catch.
Wright needed 49 pitches to get through two innings for the Naturals on Wednesday, allowing four runs on four hits with one walk, one hit batter and one strikeout.
“I didn’t want to try to be a hero,” Wright said. “I kind of felt when I went out for that second inning, I felt like my delt was tired, so I kind of noticed my velo was dropping just a touch. Means I was protecting. Just wanted to not do anything dumb. Overall, I felt good. First inning felt good. Just got tired.”
Manager Matt Quatraro said the club doesn’t “believe it’s serious at all,” and that a hiccup like this is to be expected after how long of a layoff Wright has had. The 29-year-old missed all of last season after right shoulder surgery in October 2023, and the Royals acquired him in November of that year knowing they wouldn’t get him back in the Majors for over a year.
After building up in Arizona through Spring Training and into the first month of the season, Wright finally began a rehab assignment on May 2 and had made one start before Wednesday.
“In general, in a long rehab process, the likelihood of everything going smoothly is not real high,” Quatraro said. “I think especially with somebody that had the severity of the shoulder surgery he did, it’s not uncommon to have a little bit of a hiccup in the rehab process. But I think we feel really good about the fact that it’s not serious and it’s nothing structural. It’s just a little tightness.”
Wright said he’ll play catch the next couple of days at Kauffman Stadium and see how he responds before he and the training staff determine the next steps.
His goal remains to be back with the Royals as “close to 100 percent” as he can be when he does finally get activated off the IL.
“If I was in season, I’d probably keep pitching,” Wright said. “But in rehab, the objective is to feel as good as possible when I get back here. So I didn’t want to push through stuff and make it worse for when it is time for me to be activated.
“You kind of forget these things happen in season. So just knowing that we still have some time, take the extra days now and let things calm back down. And hopefully get back in there later.”