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New York Times
23-07-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Where the Dodgers' trade priorities lie nine days before the deadline
LOS ANGELES — The Dodgers started the final days before the July 31 trade deadline with their closer in an MRI tube, having lost 10 of their last 13 games. The worst stretch of baseball the franchise has produced in years provides a convincing argument to be aggressive despite a crowded and clouded market. Advertisement The club is fully expected to pursue additions to augment their bullpen over the coming days, something that was already the case before Tanner Scott left his outing on Monday night complaining of discomfort in his left forearm. It'll only continue to be the case now, even with general manager Brandon Gomes reaffirming his confidence in the current state of his roster. 'We'll see how these next few days come out and what everything looks like, but as of now our stance hasn't changed on needing to go out and get additional pieces,' Gomes said. Some of this is confidence in a roster that still projects to be one of baseball's best. Some of it is obvious posturing. The Dodgers are far from the only club looking at the variety of high-leverage relievers on bubble teams and rooting that the supply of pitchers actually moved can keep up with the demand. A front office that joked throughout the winter about wanting to avoid buying altogether and openly loathed being in the market for relievers at the deadline altogether (president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman has said it's his 'least favorite thing' to do) has grabbed its shopping cart. The bullpen is the club's most glaring need. That was the case before Saturday, when the Dodgers were among the several contending clubs who had a representative at 40-year-old reliever David Robertson's free-agency workout before he signed with the Philadelphia Phillies. This is a group that has logged the most innings in baseball this season (446 2/3) and ranks 24th in the majors with a 4.35 ERA. They are banged up. The Dodgers were still awaiting the results of Scott's MRI on Tuesday afternoon, but even the best of news means he will miss some time. Evan Phillips is already out for the season. Michael Kopech has hardly pitched this season, and Blake Treinen has been out since April. Brusdar Graterol hasn't pitched at all after coming off shoulder surgery. Advertisement 'I do think that, we've shown in the past, if there's a trade that needs to be made for a high-leverage guy, we'll do that,' Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. 'We've had some good success with that.' Of course, those deals have come with a cost. Yordan Alvarez's name lives in infamy even though Josh Fields proved quite effective in a Dodger uniform. Oneil Cruz's talent remains tantalizing even years after Tony Watson was one of the final pieces added to a pennant-winning bullpen. It took switching teams again, but Zach McKinstry was a first-time All-Star this month after the Dodgers once dealt him for Chris Martin. Those costs should be extreme this deadline period. Virtually all of the top relief arms bandied about — Minnesota's Jhoan Durán and Griffin Jax, Cleveland's Emmanuel Clase and Cade Smith, Baltimore's Félix Bautista and Pittsburgh's David Bednar, among others — come with multiple years of club control. With it, the already steep prices escalate. 'The prices are always crazy come the deadline,' Gomes said. That's especially true when the Dodgers' two most big-league ready position player prospects aren't seen as likely to be moved. The Athletic reported in May that Rushing is more likely to stay, continuing to back up Will Smith as the All-Star catcher enjoys a career year. Elsewhere, Alex Freeland, who has a .788 OPS in his first 422 plate appearances with Triple-A Oklahoma City, likely falls in the same bucket. Some of their internal pitching options that could help backfill or be used in trades aren't exactly at their top value, either, as Bobby Miller and Landon Knack have struggled in 2025 and Justin Wrobleski has had largely uneven results. The Dodgers are in many ways banking on health. Treinen could be back soonest of the bunch, though he still needs to check off the box of completing back to back outings in his rehab assignment before he's activated. Kopech was insistent last week he could've been back before he's eligible to on August 27. Advertisement There's a belief that Graterol could start ramping up for a rehab assignment sometime next month, though Gomes said Graterol wouldn't need much of a buildup to be ready for postseason action. The organization also hasn't closed the door on Kyle Hurt being an option for them, adding another name to the mix just more than a year after he had Tommy John surgery that ended his rookie season. If their rotation gets back to full strength or something resembling it (Blake Snell will have at least one more rehab outing before he's activated), perhaps one of those arms could kick into an October bullpen. They're also banking on Kirby Yates turning around his start to the season. He's already allowed twice as many home runs (six) than he did in all of his All-Star 2024 campaign, and came within a few feet of allowing what would've been the game-tying blast in Monday night's win. Yates' calling card, the splitter, has been the issue — opposing hitters are hitting .278 and slugging .519 against the pitch this season after minuscule numbers against it a year ago (.114 batting average, .139 slugging percentage). 'His track record, his compete, preparation, all that stuff, I just know that it's gonna turn and he'll get that split where it needs to be again,' Roberts said. The Dodgers have already gotten some trade business done on the reliever front, as former All-Star closer Alexis Díaz took Scott's spot on the active roster for his first true run of opportunity since arriving in a trade in May. The right-hander spent time in Arizona working with Dodgers officials to tweak his delivery, changing how he loads into his back hip along with tweaking his arm slot. The results have been a fastball that is much closer to the mid-90s velocity it was at at his peak form. The results in the minors have remained mixed, including seven walks in 6 2/3 innings. But he was acquired as a flier, and this is the Dodgers' chance to see where he's at. Adding a bat doesn't appear to be as acute of an issue, even given the club's current miserable stretch. Entering Tuesday, the Dodgers' .636 OPS in July was the second-worst in the majors. They dearly miss Max Muncy, who took batting practice on Tuesday and should be back sooner than the six-week time frame originally projected. Mookie Betts hasn't been right all season. Freddie Freeman hasn't hit since June. Teoscar Hernández has been playing at less than 100 percent for much of his time since returning off the IL in mid-May (a stretch where he's produced a .578 OPS entering Tuesday). 'I think the talent level is really high,' Gomes said. 'It just so happened a bunch of guys went into funk at the same time. We haven't been playing very good baseball. We're finding ways to lose and not executing in different facets of the game. Our guys are out there grinding. Sometimes that happens in a season.' Advertisement The Dodgers are focusing on activity, even if publicly they're banking on hope. 'If there's pieces here and there that make sense moving forward, we've never been afraid to make trades when we feel it's a need,' Gomes said. 'We'll continue to assess. We'll see what these next week to 10 days look like. 'But over the long haul, big picture 162 (games) and what a potential playoff team will look like, this group is really talented and I would argue it's better than the team that won the World Series last year.' (Top photo of Emmet Sheehan: Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images)
Yahoo
22-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Shohei Ohtani and Will Smith help restore some life to Dodgers' offense in win
It was quality over quantity for the Dodgers on Monday night. A bunch of empty at-bats, salvaged by a few emphatic drives that left the ballpark. In six innings against struggling Minnesota Twins starter David Festa, the Dodgers' slumping offense managed only four hits — doing little to quell the offensive concerns that have mounted during a puzzling month of poor all-around production. Three of the knocks, however, went over the fence, with a two-run blast from Shohei Ohtani in the first inning and a pair of solo homers from Will Smith in the fourth and sixth lifting the team to a 5-2 win at Dodger Stadium. Read more: From a day off to the leadoff spot, Dodgers try unraveling mystery of Mookie Betts' slump A course correction, this was not for the Dodgers' supposed powerhouse offense. Entering the night, the team had the third-lowest team batting average in the majors this month. As even president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman acknowledged during pregame batting practice, 'we've had more than half of our lineup really scuffle' for the last six weeks running. 'The offense scuffling the way it has,' Friedman added, 'was something that I didn't expect over this kind of protracted period of time.' On Monday, though, the Dodgers did rectify at least one issue plaguing their recent offensive struggles. After hitting only 19 total home runs in their first 15 games in July, they went deep four times against the Twins (48-52), with Andy Pages adding an insurance shot in the seventh inning against reliever Cole Sands. It marked only the fifth time this season they hit at least four homers in a single contest. Ohtani provided the night's first big swing, immediately erasing the leadoff blast he allowed to Byron Buxton in the top of the first while making his sixth pitching start of the season. In his second game occupying the second spot in the batting order, the two-way star wasn't forced to rush between the mound and the plate (something manager Dave Roberts hoped would be a side benefit of replacing him with Mookie Betts as the team's leadoff hitter). He was able to go through his normal routine of on-deck swings while watching Betts draw a five-pitch walk. Read more: New mural at Dodger Stadium honors Fernando Valenzuela Then, for the first time in his six games as a pitcher this season, Ohtani not only got a hit, but clobbered a hanging changeup in a two-and-one count, launching his 35th home run of the season 441 feet to straightaway center. From there, the Dodgers (59-42) kept playing long ball. Festa, a second-year right-hander who entered the night with a 5.25 earned-run average, retired the next nine batters he faced before Smith came up to lead off the fourth. Festa got ahead one-and-two in the count, before throwing a changeup that Smith fought off and missing wide with a slider. Festa's next pitch was a fastball left over middle. Smith, the one Dodgers hitter who has been swinging a hot bat of late, didn't miss it, going the other way to make the score 3-1. Festa was still in the game when Smith came back up in the sixth. Once again, the pitcher made a mistake, hanging a slider over the heart of the plate. Once again, Smith was all over it, sending a souvenir into the left-field pavilion for his 14th home run, and first multi-homer game since last July. With the two blasts, Smith raised his National League-leading batting average to .327. Since the start of July, he is 15 for 40 with a 1.163 OPS. By the time Pages added to the lead in the seventh, whacking his 18th of the season deep to left, the game was already in hand. Despite giving up plenty of hard contact and lacking the pinpoint command he'd flashed in his previous starts, Ohtani kept the Twins off the board over the rest of his three-inning outing, collecting three strikeouts over a season-high 46 pitches to finish the night with a 1.50 ERA. After that, converted starter Dustin May followed with a productive bulk outing from the bullpen, scattering five hits over 4 ⅔ scoreless frames. Read more: Pitching injuries continue to be an issue in MLB. How it's impacting pitchers at all levels The Dodgers did not get out of Monday unscathed. In the top of the ninth, closer Tanner Scott left the game alongside a trainer after walking one batter, hitting another and then spiking a slider that left him grimacing. As he left the field, he appeared to be flexing his left throwing arm — a potentially troubling sign for a Dodgers team that was already in need of bullpen reinforcements ahead of next week's trade deadline. But on Monday, at least, the team survived, with James Outman denying Carlos Correa a potential tying three-run homer off Scott's replacement, Kirby Yates, with a leaping catch at the center-field wall for the night's final out. Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
