Francisco Cervelli is back in the Pittsburgh Pirates clubhouse. His return to the active roster might not be far behind.
Out since May 26 because of a concussion, Cervelli was cleared last week by neurologist Dr. James Valeriano to “resume all baseball activities,” Pirates director of sports medicine Todd Tomczyk said Wednesday.
“He’s running, throwing, catching, hitting (with) no symptoms,” Tomczyk said of Cervelli, the Pirates’ veteran catcher. “We will continue to put our heads together and plan out what the week or 10 days look like for Francisco, and then once we build the body back up, he will need to get cleared again by the doctor to actually play.”
The 7-10 day window for Cervelli to work out fully is about to expire, meaning he could return to playing MLB games. However, Cervelli has had several documented concussions in recent years, and Pirates general manager Neal Huntington has indicated the organization might want protect the competitive Cervelli from himself and be overly cautious not to push Cervelli back too quickly.
Good to see @fran_cervelli back on the field. Hopefully, he's back before too long. #Bucs #Tigers tonight at PNC Park at 7pm. pic.twitter.com/awQv0NtFdo
— Greg Brown (@gbrowniepoints) June 18, 2019
“The doctor will re-examine him, probably early next week, to see if his body’s responded to the workload, to the baseball activities,” Tomczyk said. “And there’s a lot of different people that are involved: Dr. Valeriano and the ‘body team,’ the front office and coaching staff. So a lot goes into that, and that can happen very quickly, but the most important thing is that we get clearance and Francisco gets clearance from the neurologist.”
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