LA hasn’t had a qualified pitcher since 2022. Let’s look at the rotation depth chart, trying to figure out the team leader this season.
Gavin Stone led the Dodgers with 140⅓ innings pitched in 2024, and he won’t get a chance to defend that title, likely out for the entire 2025 season after shoulder surgery in October.
In 2023, Clayton Kershaw led the team with 131⅔ innings, and followed that with only seven starts last season after shoulder surgery and before a foot injury that prematurely ended his year.
Only four times in the 141-year history of the Dodgers have they failed to have any pitcher with enough innings to qualify for the ERA title, and they’ve all come in the last seven seasons — 2018, 2020, 2023, and 2024. But this is not an issue limited to the Dodgers. They were one of five teams in 2024 without a player with at least one inning per team game (along with the White Sox, Marlins, Rays, and Reds). In 2023, seven teams failed to have a qualified pitcher (Dodgers, Reds, Rockies, Red Sox, Angels, Guardians, Tigers).
This year the Dodgers have built impressive depth in their rotation, with a chance to have at least five frontline starters at any one time. A six-man rotation is expected to be used quite often at least in some form, especially once Shohei Ohtani returns to the mound after not pitching at all since September 2023.
Let’s look at the top eight starters on the Dodgers depth chart:
- Blake Snell has pitched at least 130 innings twice in nine years, and won the Cy Young Award in both times (2018, 2023).
- Tyler Glasnow pitched a career-high 134 innings in 2024, but didn’t pitch after August 11 with an elbow strain.
- Ohtani is coming off his second Tommy John surgery. He averaged 143 innings from 2021-23, topping out at 166 innings in 2022. He’s likely to join the rotation in May.
- Yoshinobu Yamamoto missed nearly three months in 2024 with a right rotator cuff strain. He averaged 186 innings in his final three years with Orix in Japan.
- Roki Sasaki’s high in innings with Chiba Lotte in Japan was 129⅓ innings. He pitched 111 innings in 2024, and has dealt with “right arm discomfort” and an oblique injury over the last two seasons.
- Kershaw hasn’t yet re-signed, but will. His availability is unknown after having surgeries in November on his left foot as well as his knee. Prior to his seven-start 2024, the left-hander averaged 126⅔ innings from 2021-23.
- Tony Gonsolin missed all of 2024 after Tommy John surgery. His career high is 130⅓ innings pitched in 2022.
- Dustin May missed all of 2024 after flexor tendon repair in his right elbow and revision of his 2021 Tommy John surgery, as well as a torn esophagus. He’s never pitched more than 56 major league innings in a season.
Today’s question to you is, what inning total will lead the Dodgers this season?