Need Pitching Help? The Dodgers Dial 8-7-7-GLAS-NOW

Over the weekend, the Dodgers hit the motherlode, signing Shohei Ohtani to a landmark 10-year contract. Turns out, though, MLB didn’t award them the 2024 World Series just for doing that. There’s still baseball to be played, and while the Dodgers certainly aren’t short on tremendous hitters, they do need some serious help on the pitching side. Enter the Rays:
BREAKING: The Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays are in agreement on a trade to send RHP Tyler Glasnow and OF Manuel Margot to the Dodgers for RHP Ryan Pepiot and OF Jonny Deluca — contingent on Glasnow signing an extension with L.A., which is expected, sources tell ESPN.
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 15, 2023
I’m not sure that I’m making a strong enough statement. The Dodgers need help on the pitching side, and they need it badly. Before this trade, their depth chart looked like this:
Pitcher | 2023 IP (all levels) | 2023 ERA (MLB) | 2024 Proj ERA |
---|---|---|---|
Walker Buehler | N/A | N/A | 4.34 |
Bobby Miller | 138.2 | 3.76 | 4.01 |
Ryan Pepiot | 64.2 | 2.14 | 4.77 |
Ryan Yarbrough | 89.2 | 4.52 | 4.79 |
Emmet Sheehan | 123.1 | 4.92 | 4.36 |
That’s dire. It’s a mixture of injury risk, light workloads, unproven arms, and pitchers who check multiple of those boxes at once. Ohtani obviously won’t pitch next year. Walker Buehler hasn’t pitched since June 2022, looked bad in that 2022 season, and is their nominal ace. Bobby Miller is the only other guy the team seems to trust, and they’ll need plenty of volume from him, but he made 26 starts last year to get to his 138.2 innings, so it’s not like there’s a ton more in the tank. If the Dodgers’ lineup is Boardwalk and Park Place, their rotation looks more like Mediterranean and Baltic Avenues. Read the rest of this entry »