The Dodgers Rotation Is Back on Top

Shohei Ohtani made his first start on the mound for the Dodgers one year ago today, following a nearly two-year recovery from Tommy John surgery. He threw 28 pitches, exited after the first inning as planned, and flashed great stuff, even if he looked occasionally frustrated with his command. He ramped up slowly from there, from one inning to two to three to eventually six by the fall. He stamped his health with a dominant, 10-strikeout performance in NLCS Game 4 to send the Dodgers to the World Series.

Ohtani has now made 25 starts (of some length) since his return. Not only has he excelled individually over the last year, but his renaissance has run parallel with that of the Dodgers rotation.

Let’s start there: The 2025 Dodgers weren’t a powerhouse. They were great, and I’m sure they’re content with their second consecutive World Series trophy. But they weren’t quite the behemoth we’d seen in the past. They didn’t lock up the NL West until game 159. They finished with their fewest wins since 2018 and “worst” pythag record since 2016. We can see their win rate over 162 games has steadily fallen from its peak of 118 wins in late 2022.

One reason for this modest step back was their pitching staff. It was merely very good last year rather than great. The Dodgers dealt with a rash of injuries and handed the ball to 40 different pitchers. Only Yoshinobu Yamamoto threw more than 120 innings. Even when healthy, their starters didn’t pitch deep into games, averaging fewer than five innings per start. To be fair, the Dodgers seemed to manage their pitchers — especially Ohtani — with an eye toward the postseason. But this meant abbreviated outings, openers, bullpen days, and all the various maneuvers teams employ to cover up a shallow rotation. It was high maintenance. A lesser team likely wouldn’t have gotten away with it.

Some version of this dynamic has existed for a few years now, and as I wrote in the preseason, that seemed likely to continue in 2026. While the Dodgers were projected by FanGraphs Depth Charts as the best rotation by WAR on a rate basis, they were projected in the bottom five by innings. The concern only grew when it was announced that Blake Snell would begin the year on the injured list. Sure, they held the highest ceiling in the league, but there were plenty of scenarios in which their actual performance would land closer to their floor. If something was going to limit the Dodgers in 2026, it was probably going to be this.

That simply hasn’t been the case. The Dodgers rotation has thrown the most innings in the majors through 73 games. We can see their average innings per start bottomed out about this time last year, and has grown steadily ever since:

Their starters have also been highly effective. In 2026, the Dodgers lead the majors with 8.3 WAR from their rotation and 11.4 WAR from their full staff. With a great collection of fielders behind them, they’ve allowed the fewest runs in baseball.

That’s not to say everything has gone smoothly. At the moment, the Dodgers are without their second- and third-best pitchers by preseason projected WAR. Snell made his first start of the season on May 9, but returned to the injured list after three innings to deal with his bodies. Tyler Glasnow pitched well for seven starts before hitting the IL with a back injury. Both are expected to return at some point after the All-Star break.

In their place, the Dodgers have scrambled together a six-man rotation.

It’s Ohtani leading the way. If you want to know more about how he’s dominating as a pitcher, Michael Baumann offered a great analysis last month. Ohtani hasn’t pitched enough to qualify for the starting pitcher leaderboards, but he’d rank eighth in WAR if he did.

Tom Tango’s version of Game Score presents a nice illustration of Ohtani’s early success. I like it as a hybrid between traditional line scores and DIPS theory. Unlike ERA or FIP, it credits pitchers for in-game longevity. And unlike WAR, it’s easily calculated on a per-start basis. Maybe it’s not the most objective stat out there — it’s not weighting by defense, opponent, or park, for instance — but it’s a nice compromise between actual and estimated runs.

Ohtani’s average Game Score of 68 is second in baseball, behind only Jacob Misiorowski’s average of 72. Ohtani has also been the most consistent starter in baseball this year, posting a score between 64 and 76 in each of his first 10 outings. His worst outing came last week, with an exactly average score of 50. In other words, Ohtani has yet to turn in a below-average start this year.

This tip-top success isn’t new for Ohtani. Baseball Savant publishes a rolling Game Score tool (which is tremendously fun to play with if you haven’t checked it out). It takes a pitcher’s average score over the last 1,000 days and gives more weight to more recent starts. This creates a daily ranking of every pitcher in baseball dating back to 1976.

There have been just 48 pitchers to place first on the leaderboard at some point over the last 50 years. Ohtani is one of them, having made it to the top just before his second UCL injury in 2023. Has he ever thrown enough innings for me to seriously consider him the best pitcher in baseball? Eh, no, probably not. But when healthy, his outings do at least inspire the question. We can see he’s already back to top 10 by this measure, and I wouldn’t put it past him to make it back to first at some point.

It’s not just Ohtani. Yamamoto has been effective again in 2026, as evidenced by a near-perfect game over the weekend. He’s tapered off the fastball usage — one of the 10 best four-seamers last year — for a gentle increase in everything else. His strikeout rate has dropped about five points, and his walk rate has dropped about three points, giving him a roughly identical K-BB% but a lot more balls in play. FIP isn’t impressed with these tradeoffs so far (who knows if they’ll stick), but he’s certainly been efficient, working into the seventh inning in more than half his starts. For what it’s worth, Yamamoto is 16th on the WAR leaderboard in 2026, and third by weighted average Game Score over the last 1,000 days.

Roki Sasaki’s line doesn’t look great, but as Jay Jaffe wrote for the site earlier this month, Sasaki has been quite good since changing his arsenal in late April. He recently turned in his best-ever MLB performance, striking out 10 in seven shutout innings over the Angels. He followed it up with a bit of a clunker Friday, allowing seven runs and three walks against the White Sox. It was the first time he’d failed to finish five innings since mid-April. As Jaffe noted, Sasaki isn’t going to challenge for the Cy Young this year even with these changes, but at the moment, he looks like a quality, mid-rotation arm.

Justin Wrobleski is second on the team in innings pitched. He was great in both long and short outings out of the bullpen last year, with lots of whiffs and strikeouts. In the rotation this year, he looks more like a crafty lefty, with the fourth-lowest strikeout rate and 12th-lowest walk rate in the majors among qualifiers. He’s also posted the fifth-lowest HR/FB rate of 2026, which is ideal given he’s a fly ball pitcher. It also implies he may be living a bit dangerously. Regardless, he’s currently tied for 30th on the pitcher WAR leaderboard. Maybe there’s something to his meticulous spreadsheeting.

Again, this group has thrown the most innings in the majors this year. But they’re not pitching deep into games simply because they can. The Mariners rotation, for instance, has thrown the second-most innings, but they’ve been bad late in games. The Dodgers on the other hand maintain their effectiveness with each turn through the lineup:

The one exception here is Emmet Sheehan. Now, if you’d told me the in the preseason that the Dodgers rotation was performing this well, I would have been certain it was Sheehan who’d stepped forward. But he’s had a few early exits following blow-ups, and even in his good outings, there’s often a late dinger or two that has soured his line. In his latest start against the White Sox, for instance, he gave up one hit and one walk with eight strikeouts through five innings. He was dominating! As soon as he got to the third pass in the sixth, he gave up a homer, a single, and a double, and was pulled before recording an out. The arsenal is nice and the slider is great, but the fastball doesn’t seem to be fooling anybody right now, especially after the first look.

I feel compelled to mention Eric Lauer as the sixth man. The Dodgers got him from the Blue Jays after Snell went down. He hasn’t been good, with a line similar to Wrobleski, just if the HR/FB rate were more than doubled. Lauer was solid for the Blue Jays last year after coming over from the KBO. He was especially good out of the bullpen, and that’s ideally where he’ll return when Snell or Glasnow get healthy.

It’s not a perfect group, but it’s arguably the best rotation in the majors right now, and it’s certainly the best rotation we’ve seen from the Dodgers in years. The next chart shows their monthly WAR splits, with the line reflecting the rolling six-month average. Note that I’m excluding 2020 and prorating June 2026. We can see they’re back to the level of excellence sustained at their peak. This rotation is just a skosh better than the Phillies’ by WAR over the last calendar year, and both are way, way ahead of everyone else.

The Dodgers were one of the top storylines I was interested in following this year — and not just their quest for a three-peat. As someone who sees regular-season, team-level excellence as the league’s crowning achievement, I was curious whether they could return to that elite, 105-win pace they set from 2017 through 2022. Are they still capable of that all-time, wall-to-wall performance in the regular season? Have they fallen to merely great? Or might they continue to slide further, with an aging core and a tenuous rotation?

Well, we’re nearly three months into the season. The Dodgers have scored the second-most runs in the majors and have allowed the fewest. They have the best offense by wRC+ and a top-five defense by Fielding Run Value. Their position players have accumulated by far the most WAR, and their pitching staff tops the WAR leaderboard, as well. They’re 46-27 and on pace to win 102 games. Their Base Runs record implies a 112-win pace. Their pythag record implies a 113-win pace. The behemoth is back.

Editor’s Note: All charts in the story are updated through the start of play Monday. All other numbers, including the data in tables, are as of Tuesday morning.