CINCINNATI — A.J. Burnett had had enough. Fed up with his decreased velocity and his tight, stiff right elbow Thursday night, Burnett began throwing as hard as he could.

“Hey, if it’s going to go, it’s going to go,” Burnett said. “I was just kind of letting it go. Seeing what was left.”

Burnett was referring to the ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow. Burnett, who went on the 15-day disabled list Friday because of elbow inflammation, said he thinks either the UCL or the flexor tendon is the issue.

“The soreness is a lot better, the stiffness is a lot better,” Burnett said. “I don’t expect it to go away and I don’t expect it to get better.”

Pirates team doctors will examine him Monday. If tests find structural damage, though, Burnett said he won’t have surgery - at least not right now.

“It’s just a matter of doing enough treatment and doing it where it’s tolerable again and building up some pain tolerance so I can stay on the mound in the stretch run,” he said.

Burnett said he never got loose in his start Thursday against the Cincinnati Reds, when he allowed eight runs, seven earned, and 10 hits in 4 1/3 innings. He had allowed 10 or more hits in three consecutive starts. His fastball velocity, usually 90-91 mph, was in the mid- to high-80s in the early innings before drastically increasing later.

“I’m not going to be coming out of the game unless I can’t pick up a baseball, so I was going to see where I was at,” he said. “I’ve stayed around 90, 92 all year pretty much. That’s where I pitch at, that’s where I’m comfortable at. I couldn’t even get to that the other day. So I was just, enough’s enough, and seeing where I was at. I guess it didn’t go. It might have went, I don’t know. We’ll see.”

The UCL connects the bones in the upper and lower arms and handles a lot of stress during a pitching motion. When it frays or tears, it can be replaced with a tendon from another part of the body in a procedure known as Tommy John surgery, which Burnett had in 2003 while pitching for the Florida Marlins.

“The doctor marveled at A.J.’s toughness and pain threshold,” Burnett’s agent, Darek Braunecker, told the Associated Press at the time. “He said it was probably one of the more remarkable things he’s seen in medicine - A.J. throwing as hard as he was with a completely torn ligament in his elbow.”

No diagnosis has yet been made for the current injury.