Dodgers Interview: Tanner Scott “Flushing” 2025 to Recapture All-Star Form

CAMELBACK RANCH, AZ — Tanner Scott walked off the mound Saturday with another clean inning in his pocket, another step toward recapturing his 2024 form. The results matter, a little, but the bigger theme in his postgame comments was feel, repeatability, and getting his pitches to play the way he expects. Scott also opened up about how last season went sideways for him, and what he’s doing now to keep his delivery and command where they need to be when the games start counting next month.

2026 Focus

Scott said his focus right now is pretty straightforward: “Just making sure my stuff is playing exactly how I want it to be.” He explained that the work has been detailed and collaborative, adding, “Me, Connor [McGuiness], and Mark [Prior] have did kind of like a deep dive just throughout the spring and working on things and just going with it.”

When he got pressed on what, exactly, has changed from last season, he laughed and kept it close to the vest: “Can’t tell you the secrets.” Still, he acknowledged command is part of the picture: “Yeah, that’s a part of it. There’s some other things, but just knocking them out now. We have more time now than we did last year. I think last year was a sprint to get going and fell into some bad habits, and just making sure they stick.”

When the questions turned to where command issues begin, Scott pointed straight at the foundation: “Yeah, everything starts with delivery.” He also brushed off the urge to obsess over early spring velocity readings, saying, “I really don’t [worry about] velo in spring. By the end of it, you want to see your velo where it’s at, but right now not worried about anything.” Then he got candid about last year, after being reminded of a memorable line Scott used during the season (“Baseball hates me right now.”), he repeated his assessment of 2025. “A lot of things were not going right for me last year,” he said. “It was tough, but it’s a new year.”

Getting it right mentally

Asked how he handled that mentally, Scott boiled it down to a blunt, very Tanner Scott image: “Wash it, flush it like a toilet, and just let it be. It is what it is.” And when he got asked about comfort in the environment this year, he made it clear the setting never felt like the problem. “I felt comfortable last year,” he said. “It was just not locating pitches, leaving pitches in the middle of the plate with two strikes, and they can’t happen.”

Scott also talked about how he views his role, and it came through as a guy who embraces the messy parts of bullpen life. With the Dodgers’ relief depth, he sees flexibility as a feature, not a burden: “Our whole lineup [is] stacked, so anyone can pitch in any spot, so it’s cool to see.”

When the conversation drifted toward labels like “closer,” he steered it back to the situations that matter most. “I just like leverage innings,” Scott said. “It really doesn’t matter.” He pointed to his own career path as proof he’s been used in plenty of different ways: “In Miami I was a closer, and then I got traded to San Diego and I was any spot to try to face Shohei. I had to do that way too often.” He kept coming back to the same job description: “You still have to do your job and get three outs or more.”

Scott’s Secret Advisor

On the physical side, Scott tied last year’s discomfort to mechanics more than anything else. “My mechanics were out of whack,” he said, explaining how that can create odd stress points: “When something goes down the chain you feel [it] in different areas, and it happened to be in my elbow tricep area, and it is what it is.” When asked directly if the mechanics contributed, he didn’t hesitate: “100%. 100%.”

And when he was asked about the best advice Dave Roberts has given him so far, Scott drew a blank in the moment, then widened the lens to the support around him. “Talk to Orel,” he said, giving a nod to the former Cy Young winner: “We got some pretty special people here, and just to pick their brains a little bit is awesome. Especially Orel.”

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