While I would have preferred keeping buhler and or flaherty to snell this sasaki signing was the target. Friedman is playing chess and here’s how
Tyler Glasgow. Signed through 2028
Snell. 2029
Yamamoto. Basically forever 2024 or so
Ohtani. Same
Sasaki. Team control through 2030
Those are 5 elite arms. Granted all injury risks. All with histories. All signed for 4 or more years.
That means la if they want to go 6 man needs to find one inning eater. Among Dustin may. Tony Gonsolin. Clayton Kershaw. Landon knack. Bobby miller. And stash the others in the DL or in AAA if they have options. I would guess with injuries they will need to use 3 of those guys. One as the 6th man and two others to fill in temp or permanently if we see a season ending injury. Which we will
It also means in the next four years la just needs one of those guys to really step up. Or river Ryan. Emmet don’t call me Ed Sheehan. And Gavin stone. Or anyone else in the system.
My suggestion formal since you can’t keep all that mlb read arm talent stashed. Is to identify guys they think can be elite. Like May was. Work them in. Ohtani won’t be pitching for 10 years. And all the other arms that are going to be stuck? Sitting? And aren’t elite? Like Bobby miller? Tony G? Perhaps Landon knack? When someone pushes past them on your internal scouting reports. Trade them before it becomes obvious to the rest of the world that they are sliding down the organizational chart or have been bypassed.
Every name that I wrote and mentioned has value because they are young cheap and major league ready arms. There’s a huge shortage of pitching out there because our modern style contributes to our injuries which means there are fewer and fewer MLB ready arms, healthy enough to throw. Bobby Miller or Tony Goslin are probably guys who can go out there and eat 150 innings for a team and do it with a 4.0 ERA that’s not good enough to pitch for a world champion, but that’s good enough to be a number three or four starter For about 3/4 of the teams in the major leagues which means they have value and once they are no longer in the Dodgers primary plans, they should be trade chips to get top level young players
Because la is going to now need to start developing young cheap guys. And they just lost their entiren2024 or 25 international signing pool. Poof. All gone
Kershaw is done. No doubt he was a monster back in his day, but he’s done. Let him pitch against the White Sox or another marginal team. If he can contribute 50 decent innings this season I’ll be very happy. Don’t even think about throwing him in the playoffs.