The Los Angeles Dodgers have been hammered by injuries, specifically to their pitching staff, over the last two seasons. It has gotten bad enough that the club plans to make notable changes throughout the organization to try and fix the issue now and in future seasons.
Los Angeles has one of the best records in MLB this season. Despite having an absurd 15 pitchers hit the injured list over the first few months. The injuries have forced their top offseason additions, Blake Snell, Kirby Yates, and Tanner Scott, to miss significant amounts of time this year. However, this is not a 2025 problem.
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Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Clayton Kershaw, and Tyler Glasnow also missed a significant amount of time in 2024 due to injuries. It was a topic of conversation between New York Post MLB insider Jon Heyman and Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes this week. And the GM claims the organization has taken a hard look at how it can fix the issue. Yet, there are no obvious answers.
“We’ve done a good job of keeping minor leaguers healthy. It’s when they get to the big leagues that the intensity amplifies,” Gomes said. “So it’s about building the best possible foundation. So we’ve re-examined how we’re building the foundation in the minor leagues… We’re far from having the answer. But I know we’re continuing to push to get better at it.”
The pressure and intensity at the major league level are what separates it from the minors — along with the competition level. So, unsurprisingly, the pressure cooker may be cooking up some pitchers in the system. However, Gomes believes that to better build up a resistance, he believes the franchise needs to make their prospects feel that unique difference earlier in their careers.
“I think a little bit of it is, we should be pushing them and challenging them more, and not less. I think we’ve been very conservative,” Gomes told Heyman.
This won’t be an overnight fight for the Dodgers. However, the sooner they can identify why their pitchers keep going down, the better chance they will have at repeating in 2025 and winning more championships over the rest of the decade.
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