The Dodgers can’t blame awful run of starting pitching injuries solely on misfortune

The party line for the Los Angeles Dodgers is that there isn’t one way to win a World Series. The 2023 Texas Rangers became champions pitching Max Scherzer at less than full strength in Game 3 and Andrew Heaney in Game 4. The 2021 Atlanta Braves did it going with bullpen games in Games 4 and 5.

The Dodgers, even without Tyler Glasnow and all of their other injured starting pitchers, figure that Jack Flaherty and Yoshinobu Yamamoto and whoever else they start in the postseason will be sufficient, and that their offense, defense and bullpen might be good enough for them to prevail over a wide-open field. Maybe they’re right. But at this point, what else can they say?

Considering the decimated state of their rotation, it would be one of the most baseball things ever if this was the year the Dodgers overcame their October demons and won their first World Series in a full season since 1988. A third straight Division Series knockout, however, would appear just as likely. And wouldn’t it be the most Dodgers thing ever if they rolled out Clayton Kershaw and his aching toe to get swept in Game 3?

The latest blow to the rotation, the loss of Glasnow to a sprained right elbow, was not exactly a shock. Glasnow, 31, has never been a picture of durability. Past injuries are the best predictor of future breakdowns. The Dodgers knew when they acquired Glasnow from the Tampa Bay Rays for right-hander Ryan Pepiot and outfielder Jonny DeLuca, then awarded him a five-year, $136.5 million contract, that they were taking a gamble.

What the Dodgers got out of Glasnow — 22 starts and 134 innings, both career highs — was actually about what they expected. They factored in that he would miss time during the regular season, as he did in July due to lower back tightness, but the point was to get him to October. Glasnow started on four days’ rest only once. Fourteen of his starts were on five days’ rest, seven on six or more.

And still, he couldn’t finish the season.

It’s easy to look back and say the Dodgers would have been better off signing free-agent left-hander Blake Snell and keeping Pepiot, who has a 3.76 ERA in 115 innings. But when the Dodgers acquired Glasnow in mid-December, they believed the price for Snell was too high, and other motivations were in play.

As it turned out, Snell lingered on the market for 3 1/2 more months before agreeing to a two-year, $62 million contract with the San Francisco Giants that included an opt-out after one year. The Dodgers, who love nothing more than acquiring distressed assets at their preferred price, were among the teams on Snell at the end, angling for a bargain. With Glasnow, they thought they already had one.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto will make his second start Monday after missing three months with a strained rotator cuff. (Kiyoshi Mio / USA Today)

After signing Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers still needed multiple starting pitchers, knowing the two-way superstar would be unable to pitch in 2024. At the time they acquired Glasnow, they already had lost out on Aaron Nola and not yet signed Yamamoto. Glasnow on Opening Day would be nearly three years removed from the Tommy John surgery that was the source of most of his subsequent physical troubles, in the view of the Dodgers and other clubs. To the Dodgers, his upside as a No. 1 starter was worth the gamble.

That gamble still might pay off in the future, and it would not look so bad this season if enough of the team’s other starters had stayed healthy. Injuries are always partly the result of bad luck. Dustin May’s esophageal tear while working toward a rehabilitation assignment certainly fits that description. But the Dodgers can’t blame this awful run solely on misfortune, and they know it. Andrew Friedman, their president of baseball operations, said recently the team this offseason will spend time “reimagining” their pitching development and protocols.

Pitching injuries are an industry-wide problem, but the Dodgers this season have placed 12 different starting pitchers on the injured list. In June 2023, Baseball America reported that the hardest-throwing staff in baseball belonged not to a major-league club, but the Dodgers’ Double-A affiliate in Tulsa. Four of that team’s six starters — Nick Frasso, Emmett Sheehan, Kyle Hurt and River Ryan — since have undergone major arm surgeries.

Teams prioritize swing-and-miss to reduce the odds of random outcomes on balls in play. The Dodgers, with their recent tortured postseason history, are perhaps even more hellbent on leaving little to chance. Whatever they’re doing, though, isn’t working. And while they are hardly the only team facing a pitching crisis, they’re the only one that last offseason spent more than $1 billion in free agency, including nearly a half billion on pitching. Thus, they have the most to lose.

Their bullpen, at the moment, is relatively healthy, and could be reinforced by the return of Tony Gonsolin from Tommy John surgery. The Dodgers also are not ruling out Kershaw and Gavin Stone pitching again this season. But Bobby Miller has regressed significantly at a time when a number of the team’s other young arms have broken down. Walker Buehler, coming off his second Tommy John, was somewhat better Sunday night, but barely resembles the pitcher who started Game 1 in three of the Dodgers’ four series during their 2020 championship run.

Even the Dodgers’ best options come with questions. Yamamoto, who will make his second start Monday night after missing nearly three months with a strained right rotator cuff, is still building back up. Flaherty has a career 3.60 ERA in 25 postseason innings, but is carrying his heaviest workload since 2019.

When assessing the rotation, it’s easier to envision what might go wrong for the Dodgers than what might go right. Creative paths to 27 outs likely will be necessary, adding to the pressure on manager Dave Roberts, whose decision-making in past Octobers has drawn scrutiny.

The counterargument is that if the quality of a rotation was the overriding determinant of postseason success, the Braves would have won more than one World Series while capturing 14 straight division titles. This is how the Dodgers are rationalizing the loss of Glasnow, banking on relevant historical examples to reinforce that all is not lost.

Maybe it isn’t. Winning the World Series, though, will be a lot more difficult this way. The Dodgers’ reasons for acquiring Glasnow were not unfounded. But when a team that can’t keep pitchers healthy takes on more risk, it shouldn’t be surprised when the whole thing starts to backfire.

(Top photo of Tyler Glasnow: Harry How / Getty Images)