Coming off a season in which they played to the last possible day, the Los Angeles Dodgers went into Spring Training mindful of lessening the workload on some of their regulars. That same strategy has now carried into the first few days of the regular season.
On various days throughout the four-game Opening Series with the San Francisco Giants, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts provided Logan Forsythe, Yasmani Grandal, Kiké Hernandez, Matt Kemp and Corey Seager each with a day of rest. That’s soon going to apply to Yasiel Puig.
“We’ll give Yasiel a day off on Wednesday, and the only other guy that we have to think through is Chris Taylor,” Roberts said. “But outside of that we’re trying to give guys a day off.”
The Dodgers open the season with seven consecutive games before their first off day. It’s sandwiched between the conclusion of a three-game road series with the Arizona Diamondbacks and the start of a weekend set at AT&T Park.
“You look at Spring Training and how we used Logan and all of our players, it’s kind of every other day, a couple back-to-backs, so to get a guy trying to go seven straight games out of the shoot, probably a little excessive,” Roberts explained.
Even with Justin Turner on the 10-day disabled list as he recovers from a fracture in his left wrist, the Dodgers are able to provide players with rest seemingly at will, because of the remarkable depth and versatility president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman has assembled.
In what can best be described as an anomaly, the Dodgers have five off days during April, their most in any calendar month this season. After Thursday, breaks in the schedule come Monday, April 9, Thursday, April 12 and every Thursday during the month that follows.
While Roberts is looking to shuffle some of his position players in and out of the lineup, he won’t use the first off day of the season to juggle the starting rotation. That leaves Hyun-Jin Ryu, Clayton Kershaw and Alex Wood to face the Diamondbacks.
Meanwhile, Kenta Maeda, Rich Hill and Ryu are slated to pitch against Giants.
