Cody Snavely
LOS ANGELES — Heading into the 2025 Major League Baseball season, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ starting rotation was seen by many as a strength for an already stacked roster.
After rolling into last October with just three starters, the Dodgers front office, led by President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman and General Manager Brandon Gomes, opted to refortify their depth in the rotation.
First was a massive 5-year, $182 million contract with two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell, giving the Dodgers a much-needed dominant left-handed starter in their rotation.
The Dodgers were also getting back multiple arms from the injured list, such as right-handed pitchers Tyler Glasnow, whose season ended prematurely due to right elbow tendonitis, and Dustin May, who missed most of the last two seasons with multiple injuries.
Down the line, the Dodgers are also expected to see the return of veteran left-handed pitcher Clayton Kershaw and righty Tony Gonsolin, who’s expected to start Wednesday’s game against the Miami Marlins.
However, while the starting rotation was considered a strength at the start of the season, the cracks started to show in the first month of the season.
Lefty Blake Snell has been on the 15-day injured list since early April after only making two starts with left shoulder discomfort, and his return date is in the air. Tyler Glasnow, 31, left early in back-to-back starts, prompting the Dodgers to consider an injured list stint.
These two injuries, along with the Dodgers deciding to start both of their Japanese starters, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki, just once a week, as was the case when both players played in the NPB, have created some holes in the rotation.
So what’s the solution? Perhaps putting Ben Casparius in the starting rotation? It’s possible, according to Dodgers manager Dave Roberts.
“It’s a thought,” Roberts said of stretching Casparius out to start again. “He gave us four innings today. He’s unflappable. He flooded the strike zone. And he saved our tails today.”
After a strong spring and a reinvented pitching arsenal, Casparius won a spot on the Dodgers’ Opening Day roster and has not looked back. So far this season, Casparius has posted a 3-0 record in eleven appearances, striking out twenty-three batters while posting a 2.91 ERA, 0.923 WHIP, and 1.94 FIP in 21.2 innings pitched.
Casparius has already built a reputation as the Dodgers’ “long man” in the bullpen, where he has pitched the most innings in Major League Baseball this season. He has thrown over forty pitches in four of his last five outings, including fifty-four pitches yesterday against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Having a starting role would not be foreign to Casparius, who was drafted by the Dodgers in the 5th round of the 2021 Major League Baseball Player Draft as a starting pitcher.
Overall, Casparius started fifty-seven of his seventy-nine games in the Minors, including nineteen starts last season with the Triple-A OKC Baseball Club (Comets), and had a 3.35 ERA in those games before being recalled to the Majors.
The Dodgers are expected to play another bullpen game tomorrow against the Miami Marlins, but if Tyler Glasnow is injured, the team will need to decide on a starter to replace him in the rotation.
The Dodgers already gave right-handed pitchers Landon Knack, Bobby Miller, and lefty Justin Wrobleski a shot in the wake of Snell’s injury, and neither starter could have had much success.
It remains to be seen if the Dodgers will change course with Ben, indicating he’s just a bullpen arm on more than one occasion, but it wouldn’t be the first time someone stepped up to help fill a void in the rotation.
The Dodgers are set to play ten games in ten days, starting May 2nd in Atlanta and concluding in Phoenix, Arizona, for their season-long ten-game road trip.
So, the team will be unable to cut corners with the rotation and will need all their starters ready to make their starts. Will Casparius be an option? It sounds like it will.
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