The Los Angeles Dodgers bullpen has had its up and downs this season after being a driving force of the team success in the playoffs last year.
The group is still plenty talented in 2025, with the Dodgers adding big-name free agent Tanner Scott as well as Kirby Yates. But both have failed to live up to expectations and currently are on the 15-day injured list.
Despite some of the recent rough patches, the bullpen was actually quite effective early on this season and performed a lot of heavy lifting to keep the Dodgers pitching staff afloat amid multiple injuries within the starting rotation.
The group has been worked to the bone this season and have led MLB in innings pitched for quite some time in 2025. They currently have thrown 516.2 innings, with a significant gap between them and the second-place Chicago White Sox.
For comparison, the San Diego Padres lead the Majors in reliever ERA (2.97) and rank 11th with 442.1 innings this season.
Heavy usage has seemingly resulted in a drop in performance for the Dodgers bullpen as a whole for the past month-plus.
Manager Dave Roberts acknowledged the bullpen’s workload dating back to last season has seemingly had some effects and sees the logic in that line of thinking. But at this moment, the why is not as important as finding a way to improve as the postseason approaches.
“I don’t know, that’s a hard one. I don’t necessarily think that’s the case. I think going deeper, there’s effects,” Roberts said.
“Evan (Phillips) wasn’t right, and you can go guy by guy, but up until the last couple, Alex (Vesia) has been fantastic all year. I think you can make that case with Blake (Treinen), who is just coming back. Kirby wasn’t with us, Michael (Koech) had a knee thing.
“That’s a good exercise, but I don’t think where we’re at right now, it really matters in the sense of they’re the guys that we have and we have a few guys coming back. They’ve got to pitch well.”
And with the performances Blake Treinen and Alex Vesia showed in the postseason last year, Roberts is confident in their ability to right the ship. The fact that many are also recovering from injury also affords the team a little leeway.
“Blake’s finding his way, getting Michael back for a month, getting Kirby healthy and knowing he’s pitched in big ballgames, Alex has pitched in a lot of high-leverage games for us, as has Anthony,” Roberts said.
“So I do feel that because of the track record, and it speaks to the offense too, as the games start to get a little bit more high intensity, the focus ramps up a little bit more. That’s just natural.”
Dave Roberts details vision for Dodgers bullpen
The main area of improvement Roberts would like to see from Dodgers relievers is retiring their respective first batter faced. Other than that, he believes the pieces will begin to fall in place once the group gets healthier.
“Again, I think Alex has been great,” he said. “I think Anthony (Banda) has kind of hit his stride, I think Ben (Casparius) is kind of coming back and hitting his stride, Alexis (Díaz) has been good for us in whatever role we have for him, which is mainly to get right-handed hitters out.
“So once we get Blake on track, we get Kopey back and Yates back, I think things will kind of line up. But as the days go on, we’re going to have some tough decisions. I think the bullpen is holding their own.”
Roberts emphasized no one can predict with certainty which bullpen arms will be available to the Dodgers by the end of the regular season, but he’s confident in the group he’ll have.
“You just never know as far as how injuries play out,” he said. “So I just think for me, whatever guys we have, you’ve got to feel good about those guys and I’ve got to put them in the best positions to have success, as any coach would say.
“And they’ve got to do their jobs.”
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