Early Hits to Pitching Staff Have Dodgers in Vulnerable Position

The back-to-back World Series-winning Los Angeles Dodgers already look like they need a shot in their arms because the pitching staff has taken a ton of early hits.

And if anything could derail the Dodgers from a three-peat, it’s injuries to the pitching staff.

L.A. still has a formidable group intact, as reigning World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, and two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani have been the club’s best performers on the mound.

Ohtani is 2–0 and has great metrics—a 0.38 ERA, a 0.75 WHIP with 12 hits, six walks, and 25 strikeouts in 24 innings pitched. Glasnow is 3–0 with a 2.45 ERA, a 0.70 WHIP, and leads the team in fewest pitches per inning at 14.79, while Yamamoto (2–2) is right behind him with a 2.48 ERA, a 2.89 WHIP, and averages 14.82 pitches per inning.

Unproven Justin Wrobleski, who is in his third season in the big leagues and has cracked the rotation this year, has started out 3–0 with a 1.88 ERA. The only left-hander in the group, however, has to prove he can sustain this early success.

Emmet Sheehan—a 2–0 record but a 5.85 ERA—has been inconsistent, but the biggest problem in the rotation has been the up-and-down innings from the much-heralded righty from Japan, Roki Sasaki.

The second-year hurler doesn’t look like the star he was in Japan, and spoke to the media about a lack of confidence and other factors as reasons for struggles so far. He is 0–2 with a 6.11 ERA, a 1.87 WHIP, and has allowed 21 hits in 17.2 innings.

Tokyo-based baseball writer Jason Coskrey of The Japan Times said Sasaki’s scuffling moments have come despite the fact that the 24-year-old added a slider to his repertoire in the offseason.

“Roki is a two-pitch pitcher who only really has one consistent pitch right now, and that one even is not what it once was, for whatever reason,” Coskrey told The Epoch Times via email.

“His splitter has not been sharp, and so batters can just sit fastball. He’s got such good velocity normally; he could muscle his way through, which happened when his command was spotty in NPB. But batters are hitting the fastball, too lately, and the slider isn’t there yet as a third pitch.”

And because his command overall has been unreliable, Sasaki spends long innings and expends a lot of energy before returning to the dugout. His 19.25 average pitch per inning is the highest on the Dodgers among starters, and opponents are hitting .340 when they put the ball in play against him.

“He’s not getting as many whiffs, he can’t throw the split for strikes, and his fastball isn’t playing as well as it used to,” said Coskrey, who has been covering Japan pro baseball for about 20 years.

“He’d probably be OK in the bullpen, where he could go all out with the fastball, but with some other injuries, they kind of need him in the rotation if they are committed to doing a six-man to keep Ohtani in the mix.”

Sasaki touched on his lack of confidence during media availability last month. That seems to be part of the reason he hasn’t been consistent on the mound.

“Well, I wasn’t confident,” he said about the spring training season after his March 30 start against the Cleveland Guardians.

“And, honestly, I think I probably had the most anxiety of anyone. But there’s a limit to what I can control, so I just focused on that and went out and pitched,” he said after allowing one run over four innings against Cleveland.

“I think some of it is probably mental, because I don’t think he just forgot how to pitch, and some may date back to some of the physical issues he had in Japan, because he never really pitched 130 innings in any season in Japan, either,” Coskrey said.

The Dodgers entered the season with a few question marks about their pitching staff.

Right-hander Gavin Stone had shoulder inflammation prior to the season and is on the 60-day injury list (IL). Other early-season injuries include two-time Cy Young Award-winner Blake Snell, River Ryan, and the bullpen, which took a huge hit when Diaz recently went to the injured list with loose bodies in his pitching elbow. He is expected to miss three months.

Meanwhile, righty reliever Ben Casparius is also out because of shoulder inflammation, and while he might be back next month, Landon Knack, Evan Phillips, and Bobby Miller are all on the 60-day IL with a murky timetable for their return.

Snell is set to make rehab starts in the minors and might be back on the mound in a matter of days for the Dodgers. But with so many injuries to their pitchers, the path for other teams to topple the Dodgers is there, if they can keep L.A. from scoring an abundance of runs. That’s the challenge.