The Los Angeles Dodgers completed five deals at the MLB trade deadline this season, but did not make the impact move many expected despite being connected to several of the top names that were available.
The Dodgers most notably acquired Joey Gallo from the New York Yankees, along with Chris Martin from the Chicago Cubs, while trading away Mitch White to the Toronto Blue Jays, Garrett Cleavinger to the Tampa Bay Rays and Jake Lamb to the Seattle Mariners.
One area the Dodgers didn’t address was their starting rotation, but they are expecting to get Walker Buehler, Dustin May and Danny Duffy back before the end of the regular season.
“I guess maybe we’re quiet outwardly, but there was a lot going on,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said when asked if he wasn’t as aggressive because of the players coming back from the injured list.
“That being said, talked about this a lot, my goal in every offseason is to do everything I can for us not have to go into July with acute needs that we have to address. It is the most expensive time in the year to acquire players. And we felt really good about the team that we have in place.
“Obviously our offense and our pitching staff have been very high-performing. And for us, with some combination of the arms that we potentially have come coming back and August and September, between Brusdar Graterol, Victor González, Tommy Kahnle, Walker Buehler, Blake Treinen, Danny Duffy, Dustin, May, we have a really talented group, that some combination of those guys come back.
“And it’s really high end to add that quality to the guys that we have in place now. And so it just spoke to having a high bar. We feel really good about the potential for what our pitching staff could look like in October.
“We’re not relying on all of them coming back and being great. Some combination of that, I think puts us in a really good position to have a really strong October pitching staff.
“So with the way our guys have performed, with the guys we have coming back, we felt really good about that group. And then on the position-player side, we felt like adding something to help lengthen that group what would be helpful.
Friedman maintained confidence the Dodgers pitching staff will look considerably different in October. “I think our pitching staff is really good and will most likely get considerably better,” he began.
“And so we’ll figure out through August and September, what that looks like. I feel very confident that we will have a really, really good 13-man pitching staff in October. Exactly how that gets deployed and roles, we’ll take these two months to kind of determine.”
Kershaw back injury adds uncertainty to Dodgers rotation
Friedman’s comments came before Clayton Kershaw was removed from his start against the San Francisco Giants due to lower back pain. Kershaw was subsequently placed on the 15-day IL, but Dodgers are confident he will return relatively quickly.
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