Reliever Cory Wade expects to be out at least a month after shoulder surgery

Reporting from Phoenix — 

Dodgers reliever Cory Wade said Thursday that he will start his rehabilitation immediately after having surgery on his throwing shoulder but that he won’t throw a baseball again for more than a month.

“A month to six weeks, something like that,” Wade, his right arm in a sling, said during a brief visit to the Dodgers’ spring-training complex during their game against the Chicago Cubs at Camelback Ranch. “I think they talked about six weeks being the marker for that.”

Wade, 26, had the 55-minute procedure Wednesday in Los Angeles in hopes of ending more than a year of discomfort in the shoulder after his strong rookie season in 2008, when he pitched a team-high 71 1/3 innings in 55 games.

“We’ll start doing the rehab right away, tomorrow,” he said. “The first few steps are just moving it around for a week or so, getting the blood flowing,” and then exercising to rebuild the shoulder’s strength.

“That’s really the key for the first couple weeks,” he said. Beyond that, “we’re not particularly going with a time frame” on his recovery, Wade said. “Whenever the time is right, I’m going to come back and be ready to go. It’s not going to be extremely long, but it’s not going to be short.”

Anderson’s progress

Garret Anderson is off to a decent start in his bid to make the Dodgers’ roster, but the veteran still faces a long 2 1/2 weeks to prove himself before opening day.

“I’m not where I need to be right now,” Anderson, 37, said before he hit a double and a single in Thursday’s 7-3 win over the Cubs. The .295 career hitter has four hits in nine at-bats in spring-training games.

Anderson, the longtime Angels outfielder who played for the Atlanta Braves last year, is hoping to be another left-handed hitter off the bench for the Dodgers. The Los Angeles native also started in left field for in two Cactus League games this week, including one against the Angels in which he drove in a run.

“I know there’s history there [with the Angels] and I played a lot of years there, but here … you don’t really pay attention to your opponents,” he said.

But in joining the Dodgers, “there were familiar faces coming here as opposed to last year, when I went to Atlanta and I didn’t know anybody,” Anderson said. “It makes the transition a little easier.”

Kuo’s return

After the disappointment of not being able to pitch in his native Taiwan last weekend because of elbow soreness, Dodgers reliever Hong-Chih Kuo said he hopes to play again as early as Friday night.

The left-hander was scheduled to start one of the games played by a partial Dodgers squad that traveled to Taiwan for a goodwill series, but he was scratched as a precautionary move when the elbow problem surfaced.

But Kuo, 28, said he threw a bullpen session of 20 to 25 pitches Wednesday without discomfort and that if his arm continued to feel good, he hoped to pitch in the Dodgers’ Cactus League game Friday night against the San Diego Padres.

And finally

Manager Joe Torre said he would announce his opening day starting pitcher this week. The four contenders in the rotation are left-hander Clayton Kershaw and right-handers Chad Billingsley, Vicente Padilla and Hiroki Kuroda, who started on opening day last year. The first game is April 5 against the Pirates in Pittsburgh.

james.peltz@latimes.com