This would be my first thought as well, but the original article says that they are near-orbitally resonant. It seems possible to me that the regularly passing

This would be my first thought as well, but the original article says that they are near-orbitally resonant. It seems possible to me that the regularly passing nearby planets could apply enough of a torque to counteract the tidal locking---though I don't have a good sense of the order of magnitude of the forces, so maybe not.