Sorting through the Dodgers pitching roster crunch

01/20/2025 01:35 PM

Signing Roki Sasaki and Tanner Scott gives LA two more high-end arms. Here's how the opening day roster might look if everyone is reasonably healthy

The phrase "you can never have too much pitching" might be overused, but it remains apt in baseball. The Dodgers seem hellbent on building a team with as many high-level arms as possible, and part of the task for Dave Roberts and company in 2025 will be sorting it all out.

The Dodgers ran out of starting pitching at the end of each of the last four seasons, and it contributed to an early October demise in the first three of those years. In 2024, the Dodgers won a championship with only three postseason starters, but they were buoyed by an offense that averaged roughly six runs per game and a deep bullpen pitching at its best.

Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki were added to the rotation this offseason, and now Tanner Scott joins an already strong bullpen. The Dodgers seem intent on giving themselves as many options as possible, hoping that enough of them will be healthy come the postseason.

Blast from the past

2013 might seem like forever ago, but it remains fresh in my mind as an example of the need for pitching depth. The Dodgers that spring had eight experienced starting pitchers under contract, but any question of how the team would be able to use all those starters mostly solved itself in camp.

Ted Lilly and Chad Billingsley began the year on the injured list. Aaron Harang opened the season in the bullpen but didn't pitch in his four games active before getting traded to the Mariners. Evan with all that rotation depth, the Dodgers still used their ninth starting pitcher of the season by only the 23rd game.

But how will the Dodgers sort out their several pitching options in 2025?

Sorting out the pitchers

Once Scott is officially signed, the Dodgers will have 25 pitchers on its 40-man roster. Sasaki will sign a minor league deal so he's not yet on the 40-man roster, but all expectations are that he will be by the end of spring training, so that's 26 pitchers.

As we've noted at times this offseason, five of those pitchers — Gavin Stone, River Ryan, Emmet Sheehan, Brusdar Graterol, and Kyle Hurt — will miss significant time in 2025, either most or all of this season after surgeries. Some of these pitchers will likely be placed on the 60-day injured list once spring training camp opens, to open up roster space for further additions.

Those injuries leave us 21 pitchers to work with. Shohei Ohtani will eventually make 22, but since his right elbow rehab is expected to extend into the season, we'll table his inclusion in this roster-sorting exercise.

6-man rotation?

Before we get into the roster breakdown, let's get into the logistics of potentially using a six-man rotation. I think this is most likely to happen in earnest once Ohtani is ready to pitch, because he is considered a two-way player and does not count against the 13-pitcher limit. Carrying six non-Ohtani starting pitchers on the active roster would require only seven relievers, rather than eight relievers with Ohtani in the rotation.

Extra rest lets Ohtani, Sasaki, and Yamamoto pitch on a schedule more akin to their workload in Japan. But a six-man rotation might not necessarily work for everybody.

"If you just look at the six-man rotation, it certainly makes a ton of sense. Then you have to bake in off days and sometimes in a span of 10 days there might be two off days. Then one extra day might be two or three for a particular pitcher," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said on the Dodgers Territory podcast on January 14. "Blake Snell is a guy who wants to pitch every fifth day, and he's done that and had success. But some days built in wouldn't be a bad thing."

To that latter point, the Dodgers start the season on Thursday, March 27, but their three-game home series against the Tigers ends on Saturday gives them the first Sunday of the season off. Then they have all four April Thursdays off, plus Monday, April 21. Until the final week of April, the Dodgers only have two stretches of six game days in a row (April 4-9, April 11-16). That could mean using a pitcher on four days rest twice, or using six different starting pitchers in each stretch.

The rotation

Spring training will tell us who will be available come opening day and who won't, but for now let's assume everyone is reasonably healthy enough to be ready by the home opener on March 27, to take stock of the roster.

Snell joins Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow atop the rotation, with Sasaki also starting. Then you have Tony Gonsolin, who missed 2024 after Tommy John surgery but pitched in rehab games at the end of the season, and Dustin May, who last pitched in May 2023 and as his rehab from elbow surgery was nearly complete he tore his esophagus in July and missed the rest of the year.

May has over five years of service time and can refuse any minor league assignment. Gonsolin has an option year remaining, but he was last optioned in 2020. He could technically be optioned, but if he's not sent down would only need 20 more days to accrue five full years of service time, which would then give him the right to refuse any minors assignment.

Landon Knack, Bobby Miller, Ben Casparius, and Justin Wrobleski all started games for the Dodgers in 2024. Nick Frasso is another option to start, after missing last season with shoulder and hip surgeries.

Bullpen arms

Scott was the second reliever signed by the Dodgers this offseason, after Blake Treinen got a two-year deal to return in December. They join Michael Kopech, Evan Phillips, and Alex Vesia to form a deep back end of the bullpen. Ryan Brasier and Anthony Banda were also perched on branches of Roberts' trust tree last season and into October.

Either through service time or being out of options, Scott, Treinen, Kopech, Phillips, Brasier, and Banda cannot be sent to the minors. Vesia technically has an option year remaining but he's also one of the team's best relievers. So they effectively have a fairly rigid seven-arm bullpen, if everyone is healthy.

Depending on the health of the rest of the roster, it wouldn't surprise me to see someone like Brasier or Banda traded, if only to add a little more flexibility to the roster. That would allow them to use spot starters if needed, and/or call up a fresh relief arm during period of heavy usage.

Edgardo Henriquez pitched in October, Michael Grove pitched 51 innings during the 2024 regular season, and left-hander Jack Dreyer was added to the 40-man roster in November. These three are relief options, as are perhaps a few of the extra starters listed above.

This is where things get tricky given the current situation of the roster. If the six main starters above are healthy, there's not much roster flexibility. Same goes for the seven relievers who can't or won't be sent down.

Most likely, not all of those 13 "locks" will be healthy by March 27. In reality, spring training is going to sort all this out. But it will be interesting to see how the Dodgers maneuver if everyone is available. I believe that's what Roberts would say is a good problem to have.