The Dodgers will be activating right-hander Evan Phillips from the 15-day injured list prior to today’s game with the Rangers. In the corresponding move, righty Blake Treinen will be placed on the 15-day IL due to forearm tightness, as initially reported by The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya.
As manager Dave Roberts told Ardaya and other media members, Treinen has been feeling forearm discomfort for the last few days, and the discomfort increased yesterday during a bullpen session. The decision was then made to put Treinen on the injured list, and the reliever will undergo an MRI to determine the extent of the problem.
Any forearm injury naturally seems a little ominous, and it would be another blow for a veteran reliever who has already spent a lot of time on the IL in recent years. Los Angeles also signed Treinen to a two-year, $22MM contract last winter, and as logical as that investment seemed based on Treinen’s on-field results, today’s news underlines the risk of committing bigger money to a veteran reliever (Treinen turns 37 in June) with a checkered injury history.
Shoulder problems kept Treinen out for most of the 2022 season and the entirety of the 2023 season, as he eventually required labrum and rotator cuff surgeries to fully correct the problem. His planned return for the start of the 2024 campaign was delayed by a bruised lung in Spring Training, and Treinen also had a brief IL stint during last season due to a hip issue.
Through it all, of course, Treinen has been good to great when he has been able to pitch. The righty’s five seasons in L.A. have resulted in a 2.34 ERA, 28.4% strikeout rate, and 7.6% walk rate across 157 2/3 relief innings. Treinen also has a 3.24 ERA in 33 1/3 postseason frames during his time with the Dodgers, earning championship rings in both 2020 and 2024.
Just as Treinen goes down, however, the Dodgers’ remarkable depth chart allows the club to immediately replace him with another high-leverage reliever just back from his own IL stint. Phillips was left off the World Series roster due to multiple injuries, most prominently a tear in a rotator cuff tendon that then delayed his usual offseason preparations. As a result, L.A. placed Phillips on the 15-day IL to begin the season in order to give the reliever more time to properly ramp up, and he’ll now be ready to make his 2025 debut as early as today.
Phillips’ exact role will be interesting to monitor, as he was the Dodgers’ primary closer in the previous two seasons yet Tanner Scott has now assumed that role in 2025. The club’s four-year, $72MM deal with Scott underlines the team’s commitment to giving Scott plenty of looks in late-game situations, though in February, Roberts said Scott would only receive the “brunt” of save chances, not all of them. As circumstances, matchups, injuries, and performance will dictate over the course of the season and into the playoffs, the Dodgers figure to give multiple pitchers the chance to earn saves. The left-handed Scott, for instance, could be brought into a game prior to the ninth inning should a rival team have an imposing set of left-handed hitters coming to the plate.
It makes for a pretty nice “problem” to have when a team can pick and choose between its many elite relievers, and Phillips has moved into that category over the last three seasons. Claimed off waivers from the Rays in an under-the-radar move in August 2021, Phillips posted a 2.21 ERA, 29.6% strikeout rate, and 6.5% walk rate over 179 innings from 2022-24. He has 45 career saves out of 54 chances, all with the Dodgers except for one save recorded with Tampa Bay in 2021.