Despite playing two games and winning both against the Chicago Cubs at the Tokyo Dome, there is still a bit of a problem for the defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers, and it pertains to their starting pitching depth and what they will do with their roster for Opening Day in the states on March 27.
“What are they gonna do with all these guys? How are they going to pitch?” Ken Rosenthal asked on Foul Territory. “And that might prompt them to do something at some point. You can't stash Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin in Triple-A or in the bullpen necessarily. I guess you could put May in the bullpen. But they've got a numbers problem. And the numbers problem would indicate to me that at some point, yes, they would have to entertain things. But, they also have an issue of, well, the Japanese pitchers, Sasaki and Yamamoto and Ohtani as well once he starts pitching again, will be on an every six-day program, if not more. And their pitchers, let's face it, have gotten hurt over the years. It's been a repeated problem for them. So, they're going to be reluctant to trade off their depth, but at some point, it might be a situation where they are looking at it and saying, ‘what are we doing here? We've gotta get something for some of these guys and give them an opportunity to play and give us an opportunity to maybe rework our organization in other ways.”
https://twitter.com/Ken_Rosenthal/status/1902758239952884080
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It shouldn't be surprising that the Dodgers' problem is that they have too many good players. But that is the case, and there are unique circumstances, as Rosenthal mentioned, for Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki. And the injury concerns are valid, as the Dodgers lost much of their rotation last season, and won the World Series in spite of that. Players like Tyler Glasnow, Dustin May and others have injury histories.
It will be interesting to see what the Dodgers end up doing, and it will surely be unique to the rest of baseball.
