The Los Angeles Dodgers lost another member of their starting rotation on Tuesday, May 13, as Roki Sasaki was placed on the 15-day injured list with a right shoulder impingement.
This marks the first time Sasaki has been placed on the IL in his MLB career. He became the third member of the Dodgers’ Opening Day rotation to land on the injured list, joining Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow.
Sasaki has seen his velocity decline throughout the early stages of the season, and the right shoulder issue is believed to be connected to that. Sasaki did not immediately report his right shoulder trouble to the team.
“Everything that we know is there’s an impingement in his shoulder that is similar to what he had last year,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “We became aware of this after his last start in Arizona.
“From what we gather, is he’s felt some discomfort for the last few weeks, but given where we were at as a pitching staff, he wanted to continue to go, persevere and fight through everything until he felt that his performance was going to be compromised. So that’s when he let us know where he was at physically, and at that point in time we wanted to make sure that he was taken care of physically, so we had some scans [Monday] and it showed an impingement in the shoulder.
“So with that information, benign as it is, we felt — as we’ve done with most of our pitchers, potentially all of our pitchers — is err on the side of caution. So that’s why we felt to put him on the IL, let this thing calm down and build him back to where he can be 100% and get him back out there.”
In the meantime, Sasaki will be shut down from throwing, but there’s no clear timeline for how long that will be.
“If we’re going to put him on the IL to make sure the impingement calms down, that makes a lot of sense,” Roberts noted. “I don’t know how long he’s not going to pick up a baseball, but there is going to be a point of no throwing. Certainly.”
The Dodgers are not concerned about Sasaki’s long-term health at this point, but they did stress to him he shouldn’t have pitched through the injury and instead was better off mentioning it to the team immediately.
“I think there’s just not a player in the big leagues that probably wouldn’t do the same thing and feel that they can kind of persevere and plow on,” Roberts acknowledged.
“Appreciating what we’re going through as a staff, he wants to contribute. I respect that. He’s a great teammate. We’re very grateful with the scans that we took, that it is similar to what he’s already been through before, so something familiar to him.
“We just feel that with some rest, getting the strength back, getting back to his normal delivery, that he’s going to be just fine.”
From the positive side of things, the Dodgers and Roberts believe this can be somewhat beneficial to Sasaki by helping him prevent the innings on his arm when they already likely needed to limit them, and it allows Sasaki to work on his mechanics, build up his strength, and address some of his issues.
Dodgers plan without Roki Sasaki
Sasaki was scheduled to start on Thursday, but that’s now likely going to be a bullpen game for the Dodgers.
As for the longer-term, it will allow Knack to remain in the rotation, and it could eventually lead to another pitcher, such as Justin Wrobleski or Bobby Miller, joining the roster.
Clayton Kershaw is also expected to make his return on Saturday, May 17, which will further help the Dodgers’ rotation.
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