The Los Angeles Dodgers accomplished their goal of winning the World Series last season despite dealing with a plethora of injuries to their starting rotation.
Tyler Glasnow, Tony Gonsolin, Kyle Hurt, Clayton Kershaw, Dustin May, Shohei Ohtani, River Ryan, Emmet Sheehan and Yoshinobu Yamamoto were among the pitchers who either missed a significant amount of time or the entire 2024 season altogether.
That prompted Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman to acknowledge the organization appeared to have an unusual number of pitcher injuries, and it was an area they planned to research.
“We’ve spent a lot of time and we’re going to spend a lot more time on it,” Friedman recently said. “It wasn’t something that we set out to say, ‘OK, we got the answer!’
“It was more to take a critical look at everything and separate out amateur baseball and things that happen before they get into our system or to a system in Major League Baseball, and then what things look like when we acquire a player.
“We had a lot of different conversations and we’re going to continue to. I don’t know that we’re going to publish anything, but we feel better today than we did six months ago. And we’ll all be really disappointed if we don’t feel way better about it six months from now.
“So obviously, the most important thing is for results. We’re in a results business, and we understand that. So for us, it’s about continuing to get better, hopefully with seismic leaps. We’ve spent a lot of time and we’ll continue to.”
The Dodgers placed an emphasis on combatting pitcher injuries this past offseason while also bolstering the overall depth of their starting rotation. The team added Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki to an already talented group of pitchers that were returning for the 2025 season.
Meanwhile, the Dodgers are expected get back the likes of Gonsolin and Ohtani this year after they missed all of 2024 due to injury. May also fell into that category and he already has made significant contributions.
Unfortunately for the Dodgers, they have continued to amass injuries so far this season. Among those to have been impacted are Evan Phillips, Michael Kopech, Snell and Gonsolin.
Rob Manfred shares results of MLB’s study into pitcher injuries
The Dodgers were among several teams plagued by pitcher injuries last season, which unfortunately has been a growing trend in the sport.
Commissioner Rob Manfred cited a study during the offseason that shows higher velocities and spin rates as key contributors to the recent rise in pitcher injuries.
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