What Do You Get the Team That Has Everything? Relievers

Look, I get it. You’re up in arms about the Roki Sasaki deal. The rich got richer and we’re all tired of the Dodgers signing every free agent (even you, Dodgers fans) — can they at least make it seem like it’s a level playing field? If that’s how you’ve been feeling this week, though, I’ve got some bad news for you, because I think the two moves the Dodgers have made since signing Sasaki might be bigger deals for 2025. Over the weekend, they signed the top reliever on the market, Tanner Scott. Now, they’re reportedly working on an agreement with Kirby Yates. As Yates’ signing is still pending a physical and has yet to be finalized, let’s cover Scott first, then ruminate on Yates at the end.

Scott’s deal, for four years and $72 million, befits an elite reliever, and that’s exactly what he is. He’s compiled a 2.04 ERA (2.53 FIP) across 150 innings over the last two years, using a lights-out slider and excellent fastball in roughly equal measure. We’re not talking about smoke and mirrors here; both of our pitch models think his fastball is one of the best handful in the game. His gaudy swinging strike rates provide supporting evidence. He sits 96-98 mph and touches 100. Sure, he walks his fair share of batters, but he’s a reliever – that’s just part of the bargain you accept sometimes.

If you’ll recall, the Dodgers leaned heavily on their bullpen in the 2024 postseason. Some of that was because of injuries to the starting rotation, but plenty of it was by choice. The Dodgers assembled a unit with four late-game options, and they used those options aggressively and opportunistically. Best opposing hitter up in the sixth inning? Send in a closer. Starter in a jam and the game on the line earlier than you expected? Send in a closer. Save situation? Fine, sure, we have a few left over anyway, send in a closer.

The four pitchers I’m referring to – Michael Kopech, Blake Treinen, Evan Phillips, and Alex Vesia – are all still on the Dodgers. Brusdar Graterol will be back in the second half of next year. The starting rotation is so full of stars that young pitchers like Gavin Stone, River Ryan, Bobby Miller, and Emmet Sheehan will spend time as relievers too. This was already a stacked bullpen.

Why add Scott, then? It comes down to reliability. Relievers just aren’t predictable from one year to the next in the same way that most other players are. Kopech was amazing in his half-season in Los Angeles, but he has extended stretches where he can’t find the strike zone, and he’s only a year removed from being one of the worst pitchers in baseball as a starter. He’s hardly a stable closer. Treinen, who I had as the second-best reliever on the board before he returned to the Dodgers, is 37 and has serious injury issues in his rearview mirror. Phillips and Vesia have been steadier, but you could have said that about Daniel Hudson or Ryan Brasier in past years, and they fell off quickly.

You don’t win next year’s World Series with this year’s bullpen, and the Dodgers are taking that message to heart. Their postseason bullpen plan was a revelation, a clear place where they got an advantage over the competition by sheer volume of relief options. Heading into 2025 with the same options a year older would feel like going backwards, and that’s just not something the Dodgers do these days.

It’s silly to consider what a playoff bullpen might look like on January 21. Pitchers and catchers haven’t even reported to spring training yet; there’s a long time for career arcs to bend upward or downward before October. But I’m pretty sure that the Dodgers are going to be in the playoffs, and I’m pretty sure that Scott, if healthy, will be their best lefty option.

Los Angeles’ bullpen threw 82 innings during last year’s playoff run. If the team plans on winning another World Series, a similar workload is likely in store. The 2024 iteration worked because the offense was able to take the pressure off more than a few times, letting low-leverage relievers cover the innings that the top quartet couldn’t handle. But even then, everyone was stretched to their limit. Adding Scott to the mix just makes the tolerances wider; now they can handle one more reliever injury, or pitch in a handful of extra close games, without running out of impact arms.

Here’s another way of thinking about it: For all the hype around the Dodgers’ rotation, I’m not exactly convinced they’ll all be throwing into the seventh inning in the playoffs. Sasaki is changing continents and leagues coming off of injury. Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow aren’t exactly famous for being workhorses. Shohei Ohtani is returning from an injury of his own, and the team will surely treat him with kid gloves on the mound. Yoshinobu Yamamoto only pitched into the sixth in one of his four playoff starts.

Particularly for a team like the Dodgers, building to avoid risk is an excellent decision. The bullpen not repeating its 2024 success was an obvious risk; it’s hardly hyperbole to say that the Dodgers have gone as far as their bullpen can take them in plenty of Octobers. Given that they already had pretty much everything else – a constellation of stars led by the best player in the game – and given that they’re basically a lock to make the playoffs, I think that shoring up the bullpen by adding the best reliever available was an excellent decision.

The terms of the deal don’t change my view on that much at all. Scott’s four-year, $72 million pact has the usual Dodgers bells and whistles – a $20 million signing bonus and $21 million deferred on an as-yet unannounced schedule. It’s not a bargain signing or a wild overpay. It’s reasonable top-of-the-market money for the best free agent at his position. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be amazing in year four – the odds are against a reliever fighting regression and remaining elite for that long. Four years ago, Scott was struggling in Baltimore and Kenley Jansen was holding things down at Dodger Stadium. Liam Hendriks, Jonathan Loáisiga, and Giovanny Gallegos were top-five relievers by WAR. Life comes at you fast in the late innings.

So be it. Contracts for relievers are all about concentrating value in the present, and Scott undoubtedly provides that. He’ll almost certainly perform well in the regular season, or as the Dodgers call it, warm-ups. He’ll be the tip of the spear of one of the best bullpens in the playoffs. That will probably be true next year as well. The rest is just gravy. When you’re built around stars like the Dodgers are, you can always just go sign the next Tanner Scott if the current one declines in the future.

Want proof that reliever dominance is fickle? Look no further than Yates, also reportedly heading to Los Angeles. In 2018 and 2019, Yates was the best reliever in baseball. That’s not hyperbole, or me playing fast and loose with “best.” He was just the best. He pitched 123.2 innings, and his 1.67 ERA was the best in the game by a lot. His 1.93 FIP was perhaps even more impressive. He struck out nearly 40% of his opponents, barely walked anyone, and generated grounders and popups when his opponents managed to get a bat on the ball. Then he spent the next four years throwing just 70 innings, with a 4.93 FIP and negative wins above replacement.

Now, were injuries a big part of the story here? Definitely. Yates only threw 11.1 innings from 2020-22, and he was rusty when returning to full-time service in 2023, running a 15% walk rate that was nearly double his previous career average. He didn’t return to his dominant 2018-19 form until 2024, but he returned with a vengeance. His 1.17 ERA was the best mark of his career (narrowly beating out a 1.19 mark in 2019 — seriously, he was ridiculous at his peak). He again struck out more than a third of the batters he faced. His splitter looked more natural and more deceptive than it had in years.

The risk with Yates is staring you in the face – he was alternately unavailable and unexciting for four of the last five years. But the upside is too – in three of the last seven years, he’s been basically unhittable. I think his signing, assuming it gets done, is just more of the same idea as the Scott signing, albeit with different risks. With Scott, the biggest “risk” is the tail end of the deal. With Yates, the risk is in what you’ll get in 2025. But the reward in both cases is the same: a lights out bullpen that Dave Roberts can summon at will in sticky situations next fall.

These deals undoubtedly come with headaches for the Dodgers in the regular season. They’re stocking their bullpen with veterans while also running a six-man rotation, which is going to create some roster pressure. For one, it’s going to make running a bullpen shuttle more difficult – as best as I can tell, the only Dodgers reliever with an option remaining is Vesia. But realistically, some of these guys will miss time with injury, easing the crunch, and “we have too many relievers” is a better and easier problem to solve than “we don’t have enough relievers.” It’s worth noting, and some enterprising teams might be able to snatch up a Dodgers reliever on the cheap when the team wants to call up reinforcements, but it’s a small price to pay for a bullpen of this caliber.

The final verdict? It’s easy to understand why the Dodgers are working on building an even better bullpen after watching the way they managed the 2024 playoffs. If you’re a Dodgers fan, you should love this deal. The Dodgers aren’t just blindly throwing money at their roster – they’re throwing money at their roster while thinking critically about where it will be most valuable. Meanwhile, plenty of their prospective rivals are thinking about the most effective way to shed salary or defray future commitments. Snell and Sasaki might be the headliners, but Scott and Yates are the free agents that most clearly demonstrate how the Dodgers are leaning into their position as baseball’s juggernaut.