Cody Snavely
With the beginning of the 2024/2025 Major League Baseball offseason upon us, the Los Angeles Dodgers plan for their roster, and a chance at a repeat is starting to take shape.
Last week was the first significant step in the offseason. The General Manager Meetings were held in San Antonio, Texas, and all thirty clubs began their preliminary discussions about what direction they would take their clubs in 2025.
Los Angeles Dodgers General Manager Brandon Gomes spoke with the media about a variety of topics, including re-signing Teoscar Hernández, moving Mookie Betts back to the infield for the upcoming 2025 season, and alluding to the possibility of the team shifting to a six-man starting rotation; a similar message that Dodgers President of Baseball Operations Andrew Freidman highlighted a few weeks earlier.
The concept of a six-man rotation is nothing new, as a few teams across the league have tried implementing it. The Houston Astros, Baltimore Orioles, and Los Angeles Angels have been mentioned as potentially using a six-man rotation, often utilizing this strategy to manage pitcher workload during a tough stretch of games or to accommodate returning injured starters; however, most teams primarily stick to a five-man rotation in Major League Baseball.
The Dodgers’ decision to incorporate a six-man rotation makes sense, given the team’s struggles with starting pitching health during the last two seasons.
In 2024, the Dodgers, despite acquiring a multitude of starters through trade and free agency, still had a league-high nineteen arms start a game for them while also using plenty of scheduled bullpen games, as we saw in the 2024 postseason.
Last year, the injury bug hit the team especially hard down the stretch. In the final month of the season, the Dodgers lost nearly half of their rotation, losing right-handers Tyler Glasnow and Gavin Stone to arm and shoulder injuries and veteran lefty Clayton Kershaw to a season-ending toe and knee injury.
By the time October rolled around, the Dodgers only had one pitcher in their rotation who was on their Opening Day roster, rookie right-handed pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who also missed over two months with a strained rotator cuff.
The Dodgers defied all odds this October despite having only three “healthy” starters in the postseason, riding that wave all the way to the franchise’s eighth World Series championship. However, it is a style of pitching they do not want to replicate in 2025.
As a collective unit, the Dodgers have ranked the fourth worst in the National League in innings pitched from their starters in 2024 (797.2) and 2023 (801.2) and haven’t ranked in the top five since the 2021 season (843.1).
Gomes also stated that it’s just not common to find someone to eat that many innings in a rotation anymore, as the game has changed so much.
I don’t even know what ‘sure’ innings are anymore; I think we’re going to continue to look at talent and what the best way to improve the overall team is. I do think to your point the scarcity of pitching in general and (there are) not that many humans that can take down 180 (innings). It’s constantly something that we’re talking about and we’re going to look to continue to add pitching talent. How that all pieces together, the market will play that out.
Looking at the current Dodgers rotation as constructed, you have Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who missed significant time with a shoulder injury. Tyler Glasnow, whose season ended due to an elbow strain, has battled durability issues his entire career. A delayed Shohei Ohtani is coming off his second career Tommy John Surgery and offseason labrum surgery. Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May missed all of last year rehabbing their various arm, elbow, and throat injuries. And to make matters worse, the Dodgers will already be without River Ryan, Emmet Sheehan, and Gavin Stone for most, if not all, of the 2025 season.
Injuries do happen, even if the Dodgers make a move for a few starters this offseason. Suppose the Dodgers do bring back Walker Buehler and Clayton Kershaw. In that case, those are two starters who have also battled injuries, and the only free-agent starter on the market who has pitched above the 180-inning mark is Corbin Burnes, who will likely get a massive multi-year contract north of $180 million.
Then, when Ohtani came back when he was with the Los Angeles Angels, he pitched only one day a week. With the idea of adding top Japanese free agent Rōki Sasaki to the fold, it only makes sense to add the six-man rotation, as that is the standard in the Nippon Professional Baseball League.
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