Cody Snavely
LOS ANGELES— While the Los Angeles Dodgers are riding high after kicking off their 2025 regular season with an 8-0 start, the best of any World Series champion and the best start in franchise history since the team moved to Los Angeles; they’re expecting two more key players back in the coming weeks.
Right-handed pitchers Tony Gonsolin and Evan Phillips are expected to begin their minor league rehab assignment with the Triple-A Oklahoma City Comets tonight.
Both pitchers threw simulated games at Dodger Stadium this past weekend and are set to begin the final steps inching closer toward their return.
Gonsolin, 30, missed all of last season’s rehabbing from Tommy John‘s surgery, which ended his 2023 campaign. While the righty was inching closer to a late-season return, given the Dodgers’ trouble with the starting rotation in October, the team instead shut him down.
Entering spring training this season, Gonsolin and fellow righty Dustin May were unofficially competing for the final spot in the Dodgers starting rotation.
Gonslin would make two appearances this spring, throwing three scoreless innings, but was absent from all games after due to a back injury sustained in the weight room.
Due to the injury, Dustin May ran away with his opportunity and won the fifth spot in the Dodgers rotation. On Tuesday, he looked filthy in his 2025 regular season debut against the Atlanta Braves.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts stated that Gonsolin would be a starter when he returns and would be built up as one through his minor league rehab assignment. That said, expect Gonslin to get a few more starts in the minor leagues before any activation.
According to Alex Freedman, Gonsolin is expected to start the game on Thursday and pitch two innings.
Phillips, 30, is much closer to returning than Gonsolin but is likely expected to make more than one appearance in the minor leagues.
Last October, Phillips battled a strained rotator cuff injury, which forced him off the Dodgers’ postseason roster by the time the team played in the World Series against the New York Yankees.
Over the offseason, Phillips received PRP injections to that shoulder and missed all of spring training, but he stated the injury was not season-ending and that he was expecting a mid-April return.
Overall, Phillips’s timetable seems to be lining up as we are in the first week of April, with him expected to rejoin the team later this month.
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