by Cary Osborne
In his morning address to his players early in Spring Training, Dodger manager Dave Roberts noted the number of pitchers who appeared in a game for the Dodgers in 2024.
The number was 40 — a franchise record number of arms.
The point to all the players in the room was “stay ready.”
Justin Wrobleski and Landon Knack were two of the players in the room, and two examples of the stay-ready mentality.
Now Wrobleski starts for the Dodgers in Washington today, and Knack might not be too far behind as the team responds to Blake Snell’s left shoulder injury and navigates usage paths for Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki.
If it appears quick — especially considering the arms the Dodgers have on the 40-man roster — consider last season.
The Dodgers went into the 2024 season seemingly with considerably more pitching depth than the year before. But as any season will remind any Major League team, the high attrition rate for Major League pitchers is a fact of life.
Knack made his Major League debut 21 games into the 2024 season. Wrobleski was farther down the road, making his debut on July 7.
Combined, the pair made 18 starts for the Dodgers.
Now Wrobleski makes a start for the Dodgers 13 games into the season after Snell’s addition to the injured list on Sunday.
Back in Spring Training, Wrobleski and Knack saw the writing on the wall that opening the season with the big league club stateside would be difficult. The Dodgers were going to begin the 2025 season with an abundance of experienced starting pitchers. But …
“I think the same thing kind of happens every year where I’ve learned it’s just stay ready because crazy stuff can happen up there,” Wrobleski said in February. “And the next thing you know, you’re up there for three months, and who knows what you do with that time.”
There’s an echo.
“You need a full roster,” Knack said. “As many people as we had starting games last year, it kind of showed you that things don’t always go smoothly. During the course of a season, people go down, and things like roster moves happen all the time. And so you’re going to get your opportunities as long as you stay ready for them. And so it just kind of taught me to always just kind of stay ready.”
Seventeen different pitchers started a game for the Dodgers in 2024. That was tied for the third-most in the Majors last season. The Major League average was 13 starting pitchers per team.
The right-hander Knack was on the 40-man roster before the 2024 season, putting on the doorstep of a Major League callup.
The left-hander Wrobleski wasn’t on the 2024 big league Spring Training camp roster, nor was he on the 40-man roster until his Major League callup. It made him a bit of a surprising name when he took the mound at Dodger Stadium on July 7.
It wasn’t a surprise for him. He felt ready to make the leap.
“I think that’s a big part of the reason why I ended up getting there is because I just had that belief and knew that I could pitch in a big leagues,” Wrobleski said. “In my mind, it was 100%. But I’m sure to a lot of other people, honestly probably to the majority of the world it was not super realistic (that I would pitch in the Majors in 2024). But I think if your goals are realistic, then I just don’t think that’s a good way to go about it.
“I think it’s the same old adage of shoot for the moon, because if you miss, you’re in the stars. I think that’s kind of the way to go about it.”
Wrobleski appeared in eight games for the Dodgers last season and had a 5.70 ERA and 1.38 WHIP in 36 1/3 innings over eight games. But his Sept. 1 start at Arizona (5 1/3 innings, 10 earned runs) clouds that number. He had 2.90 ERA and 1.23 WHIP in the other nine games.
Knack had a 3.65 ERA and 1.10 WHIP in 69 innings. After leaving National League Championship Series Game 2 with a bad taste in his mouth (two innings, five runs allowed), his four innings in Game 4 of the World Series helped give the Dodgers the ability to empty the bullpen in Game 5.
Now the two pitchers could be factors early this season. Knack already appeared in one game, earning the victory with two scoreless innings on March 19 in the Tokyo Series.
There are those words again.
“Obviously, you want to start on that Opening Day roster, and that’s the goal, of course,” Knack said. “But obviously you never know how the roster is exactly going to shake out. So you just kind of again, stay ready. Because last year, obviously I came up mid-April, so it happens quick.”
Said Wrobleski: “Whenever I get the call, just be ready and kind of use what I did last year to kind of help me this year.”
For two Dodger pitchers, it’s the stay-ready mentality was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.