The Dodgers can’t blame their horrific string of starting pitching injuries solely on bad luck

The party line for the Los Angeles Dodgers is that there’s no one way to win a World Series. The 2023 Texas Rangers won the championship by pitching Max Scherzer at less than full strength in Game 3 and Andrew Heaney in Game 4. The 2021 Atlanta Braves did it with bullpen pitches in Games 4 and 5.

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

Given the decimated state of their rotation, it would be one of the greatest baseball things ever if this were the year the Dodgers conquered their October demons and won their first full-season World Series since 1988. A third straight Division Series knockout, though, seems just as likely. And wouldn’t it be the most Dodgers thing ever if they moved Clayton Kershaw and his sore toe up to get blown out in Game 3?

The latest blow to the rotation, the loss of Glasnow to a sprained right elbow, was hardly a shock. Glasnow, 31, has never been a model of durability. Past injuries are the best predictor of future slumps. The Dodgers knew they were taking a gamble when they acquired Glasnow from the Tampa Bay Rays for right-hander Ryan Pepiot and outfielder Jonny DeLuca, then gave him a five-year, $136.5 million contract.

What the Dodgers got out of Glasnow — 22 starts and 134 innings, both career highs — was pretty much what they expected. They expected him to miss time during the regular season, such as in July with lower-back stiffness, but the goal was to get him through October. Glasnow started only once on four days’ rest. Fourteen of his starts came on five days’ rest, seven of them on six or more.

And yet he couldn’t finish the season.

It’s easy to look back and say the Dodgers would have been better off signing left-handed free-agent prospect 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 that there were other motives at play.

As it turned out, Snell remained on the market for another 3 1/2 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 that eventually targeted Snell, looking for a bargain. In Glasnow, they thought they already had one.

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

After signing Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers still needed multiple starting pitchers, knowing the two-way superstar wouldn’t be able to pitch in 2024. When they acquired Glasnow, they had already lost Aaron Nola and hadn’t yet signed Yamamoto. Glasnow would be nearly three years removed from the Tommy John surgery that has been the source of most of his subsequent physical problems, in the eyes of the Dodgers and others. For the Dodgers, his potential as a No. 1 starter was worth the gamble.

That gamble could still pay off in the future, and things wouldn’t 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 on a rehab assignment certainly fits that description. But the Dodgers can’t blame this terrible run on bad luck alone, and they know it. Andrew Friedman, their president of baseball operations, recently said the team will spend this offseason “reinventing” its pitching development and protocols.

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

Teams prioritize swing-and-miss to reduce the chance of random outcomes on balls in play. The Dodgers, with their recent tortured postseason history, are perhaps even more determined to leave little to chance. No matter what they do, it doesn’t work. And while they’re not the only team facing a pitching crisis, they are the only team to have spent more than $1 billion in free agency last offseason, including nearly half a billion on pitching. So they have the most to lose.

Their bullpen is relatively healthy at the moment and could be bolstered by the return of Tony Gonsolin from Tommy John surgery. The Dodgers also haven’t ruled out bringing Kershaw and Gavin Stone back to pitch this season. But Bobby Miller has regressed significantly at a time when a number of the team’s other young arms have faltered. Walker Buehler, fresh off his second Tommy John, was slightly better on Sunday night but hardly resembles the pitcher who started Game 1 in three of the Dodgers’ four series during their 2020 championship run.

Even the Dodgers’ top options come with questions. Yamamoto, making his second start Monday night after a nearly three-month layoff with a strained right rotator cuff, is still rebuilding. 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 think of what could go wrong for the Dodgers than what could go right. Creative paths to 27 outs will likely be necessary, putting pressure on manager Dave Roberts, whose decision-making has come under scrutiny in recent Octobers.

The counterargument is that if rotation quality were the determining factor for postseason success, the Braves would have won more than one World Series and 14 consecutive division titles. This is how the Dodgers rationalize losing Glasnow, relying on relevant historical examples to emphasize that all is not lost.

Maybe not. Winning the World Series this way will be a lot harder. The Dodgers’ reasons for acquiring Glasnow were not unfounded. But when a team that can’t keep pitchers healthy takes more risks, it shouldn’t be surprised if it all backfires.

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