ANAHEIM — An MRI exam could show Andrew Heaney that there’s nothing structurally wrong with his elbow, but it could do little to ease what’s been going through Heaney’s mind.

As the Angels left-hander has dealt with a second consecutive season of starting the season on the injured list, after missing most of two seasons with Tommy John surgery, he admitted that the entire process has at times become almost too much to bear emotionally.

“I’ll wake up and say ‘My body is a piece of (expletive),’ ” Heaney said. “Like it betrayed me. I hate myself. I hate my body. Like there are times that is like genuinely going through my brain, but that is not (expletive) healthy.”

Speaking to reporters for the first time since the news of his latest setback and the subsequent news that he was cleared to resume throwing in about a week, Heaney opened up for 20 minutes in a mostly empty Angels clubhouse Friday afternoon.

In a calm tone, with measured words sprinkled with expletives, and with his eyes moistening at times, Heaney described the emotional and mental struggles for a high-level athlete who is fed up with injuries.

“I would love to be standing here telling you guys about my first start of the season and not (expletive) talking about injuries,” he said. “Trust me. I don’t want to talk to you guys about this (expletive). But I’m trying to be honest, as honest as I can be with what I’m willing to put forth. … I would love to scream from the mountaintops everything that’s going on, but it’s not going to help anybody.”

Heaney, a 27-year-old who has been in the majors between injuries since 2014, received a cortisone shot earlier this week to deal with his latest round of elbow inflammation. The good news is that he dealt with the same issue last year, and the cortisone injection was sufficient to get him started and he pitched a team-leading 180 innings.

This spring, Heaney felt a similar issue with his elbow. In retrospect, he believes it he tried to pitch through it too long this time.

Heaney then launched into a soliloquy about the difficulty of distinguishing between normal soreness and injury.

“I know everybody thinks that we don’t know what the (expletive) we’re doing in here, but there is a balance to everything,” Heaney said. “And I think that if every guy shut it down every time that they felt any little thing like we wouldn’t have a (expletive) baseball league, like we wouldn’t have anybody playing baseball. So I think that people maybe don’t understand how difficult it is. People don’t understand. I don’t want to get on a soapbox, but it is a lot more difficult than, you know, what people see from the outside.”

Heaney added that he wished he could more accurately sense what’s going on in his body.

“Listen, I wake up every single day and wish that I could close my eyes and I had just a (expletive) bar graph of what my body was feeling,” he said. “What’s my hunger level at? What’s my fatigue level, hydration level, my pain level? I would love that. But that’s not a real thing.”

Heaney admitted that he hasn’t always been honest with trainers about what he was feeling.

“That’s extremely difficult, when it’s not evident that you’re about to drive off a cliff,” Heaney said. “It’s not easy. We all know throwing a baseball is not conducive to health. Your body wasn’t built to do that. It does take some real introspection, perspective, to understand. I’m trying. I’m really trying to get there.”

Heaney’s latest issue first became public after his March 3 start in spring training. He missed his next start, but then he tried to pitch again. He felt the issue again after pitching. He felt it again after a bullpen session on March 25, resulting in an exam and a CT scan on Monday. He then got the cortisone shot.

In retrospect, Heaney said he didn’t react properly to the signs. He now has a new plan, with the Angels medical staff, to prepare himself.

“We’re going to change some of the ways we do some treatments, some workload stuff,” he said.

He said he’s not sure how quickly he’ll be able to return to the rotation, admitting that he’s “the boy that cried Wolf, so I don’t really have the credibility to really dictate how I want things to go.”

While Heaney waits for his elbow to allow him to pitch, he continues to deal with the emotional struggles, admittedly while living in a world in which players don’t typically discuss these type of issues.

“Some guys talk about it, some guys don’t,” Heaney said. “You don’t go around the locker room, like ‘Hey, who’s in a really (messed)-up place right now? Come talk to me.’ You don’t do that.”

Heaney said he feels that all people who have physical issues go through the mental struggles he’s endured.

“I know I’m not the only person that feels that way, not even in baseball, just in life,” he said. “Every (expletive) day people wake up and say, you know, ‘I hate myself. I hate my body. I hate where I’m at, what I’m doing here on this (expletive) earth?’ ”

Heaney admitted that earlier in his career he came close to quitting. He said after frustrating stretches in the minors that he longed for simpler life.

“I remember going home and I called my wife and I talked to my agent and I said, ‘There are some days that I wish I was in Oklahoma sitting on the (expletive) Turner Turnpike just taking tickets in a toll booth so that I can go from 9 to 5 and go home and spend my day like everybody else does,’ ” Heaney recalled. “Then you snap out of it and you go, ‘I was blessed with an amazing ability and I owe it to myself and to everybody else to use that to the best of my ability.’ ”

Now, he just wants to be able to do that again, to pitch again. Asked if he feels “positive” about the latest diagnosis, Heaney said: “Feeling positive is a strong term.”

Optimistic?

“I generally see myself as a pretty realist-type person, so I think optimism isn’t something easy for me to come by,” he said. “For who I am, yes, I would say I’m optimistic.”

SIMMONS UPDATE

Andrelton Simmons said he felt better a day after coming out of a game with a stiff back, and he could have played on Friday night if Manager Brad Ausmus had put him in the lineup.

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Without Simmons in the lineup, David Fletcher played shortstop.

ALSO

JC Ramírez, who is rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, has thrown all of his pitches in bullpen sessions and is getting closer to being ready to face hitters, Ausmus said. Ramírez is expected back sometime in June or July. …

Shohei Ohtani continues to take batting practice on the field, but he’s doing so early in the day, before the rest of the team starting hitting in preparation for the game. Ausmus said batting practice gets “ramped up a little more” if a player is hitting with teammates, and the Angels are still trying to “avoid that right now” with Ohtani.