4:47pm: Kershaw has been diagnosed with a “mild disc herniation” in his back, the team announced. He is not expected to require surgery, per the announcement, but his recovery timeline remains unclear.
11:23am: Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw received an epidural injection to treat his ailing lower back yesterday and will be placed on the 15-day disabled list, manager Dave Roberts told reporters, including Andy McCullough of the L.A. Times (Twitter link). He adds that the team is hopeful that Kershaw will be ready to be activated following the All-Star break, though MLB.com’s Ken Gurnick tweets that Roberts said he’s uncertain if Kershaw would be ready after the minimum 15 days. There hasn’t been a decision made regarding the starter for Friday’s game, when Kershaw was scheduled to take the hill.
[Related: Updated Los Angeles Dodgers depth chart]
For the Dodgers, Kershaw is the latest in a deluge of injuries that have contributed to the team’s second-place positioning behind the division-leading Giants. Kershaw will join fellow starters Brett Anderson, Brandon McCarthy, Hyun-jin Ryu and Alex Wood on the disabled list. On the position-player side of the equation, the Dodgers are currently without Andre Ethier and Enrique Hernandez, and there’s a possibility of Joc Pederson landing on the DL as well following a collision with the outfield wall on Monday night that has left his shoulder with extremely limited mobility.
Kershaw is in the midst of a historic season, having worked to a 1.79 ERA, 10.8 K/9, 0.7 BB/9 and a 49.8 percent ground-ball rate through an MLB-best 121 innings thus far. He’s on pace to shatter Phil Hughes‘ MLB record for strikeout-to-walk ratio (11.63), having posted an otherworldly 16.1 K/BB ratio to this point. Kershaw appeared to be a lock to start the 2016 All-Star Game in San Diego, but this injury obviously takes that honor off the table.
From a broader perspective, the injury to Kershaw merely underscores the Dodgers’ need for pitching help. Without Kershaw atop the starting five, Los Angeles is looking at a rotation consisting of Scott Kazmir, Kenta Maeda, Julio Urias, Brock Stewart and a yet-undetermined fifth starter. (Mike Bolsinger and Carlos Frias stand out as possible internal options.) That group will be thinned even further following the All-Star break, as the expectation is that Urias will be shut down for a time in order to avoid a significant increase from last year’s limited 80 1/3 inning workload.
The Dodgers have already seemed like a probably candidate to pursue rotation upgrades on the trade market, with Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports connecting them just yesterday to Rays right-hander Erasmo Ramirez. A three-start absence for Kershaw (the best-case scenario) doesn’t necessarily mean that the Dodgers need to target an ace-caliber pitcher to insert into the top of their rotation, but it could certainly hasten the front office’s efforts to add a reliable option for the back end of the starting mix.
Sucks that he is hurt. Hope he comes back just as strong as he was before the injury. I’m livid with our front office. They say back and let the Giants snag two good pitchers this offseason while we got Kazmir and Maeda. Yes, Maeda has worked out but he’s not Cueto and Kazmir sucks bad! This front office for being so smart doesn’t seem to smart to me! You’re wasting the best years from one of the best pitchers ever!
They have 5 pitchers on the DL. I’ll admit I wasn’t a huge fan of the Kazmir signing but how many teams could lose as many key members as the Dodgers have and still have the 4th best record in the NL? For as much flak as the front office gets, their plan was to build massive depth and it has helped the team sustain a bevvy of injuries early in the season..
How many teams with a 250 million dollar payroll could lose as many key members
I’d hope they have depth with that kind of money.
Sustain what exactly? Mediocrity?
How many games has this “depth” actually won? Bolsinger? Tepesch? Stripling? Stewart? Kazmir?
Dylan Hernandez sets out the case against Friedman and his failed depth experiment:
latimes.com/sports/dodgers/la-sp-dodgers-kershaw-h…
That pitcher list on DL would be a rotation for most teams!! Not a Dodger fan but that sure hurts bad. Especially when you look at teams record in games not started by Kershaw. Don’t remember exact record but it’s under 500. Does team become sellers??
I wouldn’t expect them to sell. They do have the farm to get some reinforcements until they get their guys back. A guy like Hellickson or Ivan Nova could probably eat enough innings until Kershaw and one other guy came back.
Plus, who would they really sell? I’m sure they have every intention of resigning Jansen. I guess Utley and Turner could be moved, but that 2nd wild card is attainable.
Only barely, and not worth the cost at this point. I say they trade Jansen and Turner, fire Friedman, and try to figure it out again next year with someone who knows how to assemble a competitive roster for $250M.
It’s a competitive roster now. They’re the first wild card would the season end today. Let ’em play.
That’s because of Kershaw…
Absolutely. When Friedman gets to spend 250 mil, and it fails miserably, I’ll be totally on board. However, 129 mil of this season’s payroll was spent by someone else. Of that 129 mil, 31.5 mil is paid to guys who aren’t on the team – a bitter pill to swallow, and easily the money that could have gone towards a bigger pitching acquisition. This was the price to be competitive in the near term while building for the long term – it was Kasten’s decision to take on those onerous contracts to get Agon, not Friedman’s.
No, not every move has worked. Kenta’s contract is a thing of beauty, Essentially getting Wood, Montas, and Thompson for Olivera and lower tier prospects, was great. Not bowing to the pressure and hanging on to Seager was the best non-move they could have possibly made. Anderson’s been hurt, so that 16 mil sucks, but at least it’s just a one year deal. McCarthy’s been hurt, so that money sucks at the moment as well. Some good, some bad, but the farm system is absolutely stacked.
When Friedman actually spends 250 mil, and it’s a tire fire, I’ll lead the lynch mob. Until then, I’m fine with making the playoffs, while cleaning up the detritus from a litany of bad decisions by the previous regime, while rebuilding the farm system from the ground up.
Not really. This team was designed to be mediocre. Some of us made that call before the season started. Lo and behold, at the halfway point, they are mediocre, and for as long as they are without Kershaw, they will be worse than mediocre.
None of the rebuilding of the farm required Friedman to forego signing a legitimate #2 starter or fixing the broken middle relief. Those were huge mistakes that are hurting the team now and will sink them later even if they manage to sneak into the playoffs through the wildcard back door. It’s time for Friedman to own his work, which is far from spotless, no matter how you slice and dice it.
I like how you skip over the fact that over half the current payroll wasn’t even spent by Friedman. Kudos. The bullpen has the best ERA in the National league, and the second best in baseball, so that’s a non-starter (geddit?).
We’re just getting over enormous, onerous contracts, and right when financial flexibility is on the cusp, they held off on handing contracts to guys that will pay them into their mid 30s. I’m fine with that. I’m not going to call Cueto’s contract a win 3 months into a 6 year deal. And I don’t want to hear about the opt out – if he doesn’t opt out, it’s because he’s garbage or hurt, and the other 80 mil is a sunk cost. I’ve had enough of those.
With Machado, Harper, and Fernandez becoming FAs in 2018, it would suck to have overpaid pitchers in their mid 30s preventing an acquisition of one or more of those guys. With better steroid testing, it’s a young man’s game. There’s a song about all this – waiiiiiiting is the harrrrrdest parrrrrrrrt.
Good points. It ain’t a mediocre team. It ain’t the Cubs, but they’re holding their own.
And, Dodger fans didn’t have to endure what the Cubs did while rebuilding the farm. After Theo was hired, they lost 101, 96, and 89 games. Then they won 97. Now they’re the best team in baseball. I’m cool with giving someone a real shot to effect their plan.
They’re not selling. They’re the first wild card at present, with the fourth-best record in the NL. Lotta season left, too.
The ERA of the bullpen was one of the worst in the NL until Roberts stopped using the useless Baez, Hatcher, Howell and Coleman in pretty much any situation that isn’t a mop-up. That’s how the bullpen improved, and not because those pitchers are gone, which at least two of them should have been before the season started. When Roberts runs the four who can relieve out of gas before the end of the season, who are you going to blame? Lemme guess, it isn’t going to be the guy who put them on the roster and left them there.
With revenue of at least $400M a year, this club has masses of financial flexibility already. They simply choose not to use it. More profit for them, and if the customers don’t complain about mediocre product, then more fool us. It mystifies me no end why some fans do so much caring about tending to the profits of Dodgers Inc. and so little about them fielding winning teams. After 28 years it isn’t about patience.
And if you want to talk about a bad contract… Kazmir, anybody?
Again, that’s very heavily skewed because of Kershaw. If he misses any extended period of time, they are done.
Having overpaid pitchers in their mid 30s wouldn’t prevent the Dodgers from acquiring anybody they really wanted. They have the money to spend if they want to.
Not sure that money to spend is really true. They’ve got a historic payroll as is. They’re doing pretty well with the roster at present, and have much money coming off the books after 2017, along with a number of maturing prospects.
Kazmir’s contract is fine. With next season’s pitching market so thin, he’ll opt out and get real paid–by someone else. And Roberts is managing the bullpen pretty well. He’s not Joe Torre. Like all bullpens, they’ll be tired come September.
Thank you for getting it. In general I see a failure to appreciate how much the Dodgers are reliant on one exceptional player, and also a lack of understanding of the immensity of their financial resources..
Revenue is easy to estimate. Conservatively, $400M a year.
Kazmir’s contract is all the risk of Cueto without the benefits. If he continues to pitch the way he has all season, nobody will pay him more. He is not going to opt out, the Dodgers will be stuck with him for two more years, and he will block someone better. What they pay him I don’t care about at all, if only because I know they can easily afford it. What I care about is the poor performance and the roster damage.
At least three of the members of the bullpen are completely unserviceable and should be gone. If a manager can use only half of his bullpen in situations that matter, the others get worn out that much more quickly. Wait for that criticism of Roberts, you know it’s coming. Credit where credit is due and blame where blame is due.
Baez is still used in high leverage situations, so that’s wrong. Hatcher’s regular high-leverage use basically ended when we turned the calendar from April to May. Thanks to fangraphs’ sortable leaderboards, we can find that, in April, the Dodgers had the 16th best bullpen ERA, which is a far cry from worst. It’s league average. At least do a little research before making a claim like that.
As for having money and choosing not to spend it – how can you ignore the 90 mil they dropped on international prospects? That’s not part of the 250 mil payroll, but it’s certainly money spent. They definitely spend it, they just don’t choose to spend it on long contracts for pitchers that carry into their mid 30s.
As for the unlimited profits, according to Forbes, the Dodgers had an operating income of -73.2 million in 2015. 73.2 million in the red. If you’d like to read that, here you go:
forbes.com/teams/los-angeles-dodgers/
Kazmir’s contract is fine, it’ll be over quickly. His performance, however, has not been fine, so it might suck to have him for 3 years. Only 3, not 6.
Lastly – 28 years. Yep, I’ve been here this whole time, and longer. The Dodgers invented the rookie of the year. Player development has been the hallmark, going all the way back to Branch Rickey. They went away from it for a long time, and now it’s the focus again. The gap is 28 years because of bad processes. When something is wrong for 28 years, you can’t fix it overnight, much as we’d like to. 26 years worth of bad management isn’t Friedman’s fault.
I ignore nothing, but you ignore the actual performance of the team. You ignore the lack of effort by this front office to deal with roster deficiencies that everybody and his grandmother knew had to be addressed last year, let alone this one, if the team was to be competitive. We are where we are for a reason. Several of them.
It is ironic, in a bizarre sort of way, for you to suggest that the Dodgers are somehow getting more from Kazmir than the Giants are getting out Cueto, because though Kazmir definitely stinks, we will “only” be stuck with him for three years of stinkatude. But the Giants will be stuck with winning the division and having a postseason ready team, and maybe, somewhere down the line, have to deal with a pitcher who might not perform up to his contract. Boy, that’s a tough choice. Now, I wonder why some teams win championships and others don’t? Not.
I never suggested “unlimited profits,” so your point is a classic reduction to the absurd.
On the bright side, we both seem to agree that the “Dodger Way” was wrecked by two successive ownerships. Fair enough. And I cheered when the new ownership seemed committed to rebuilding the franchise from the bottom up and fielding the competitive team that this fan base has so long been denied. My cheering stopped when they hired Friedman. His commitment does not seem to extend to the on-field product. So yes, a dysfunctional bullpen is his fault. Entirely. The lack of a legitimate #2 starter is his fault, entirely. Nobody else makes those decisions. The bad trades at the deadline last year? His. Firing the entire coaching staff so it could be remade in his image? His decision. No skating.
But you know, before this season even started I said that this was a rebuilding year in all but name. Ownership isn’t going to admit it because they wanted raise ticket prices, but it’s a fact nonetheless. And when is that rebuilding project going to be over? One more year? Two, three? You tell me, because I sure don’t know when this FO is going to be prepared to put together a complete roster. They sure have missed every opportunity so far.
Trade proposal: Dogers get Cueto while Giants get Kazmir.
This should be a great deal for them. Stuck with 3 years of a pitcher instead of 6!
Suggesting that Kazmir was a better deal should suffice as the ‘delusional fan test’ and waaaaaaay too many Dodger fans say it.
That’s brilliant, thanks. Could have saved myself a lot of words. 🙂
Kazmir plus cash and a GM to be named later.
The team’s performance is good. They’re in position for the first wild card. That is, by definition, not mediocre. There’s no dollars to wins ratio, as much as people would like to believe that.
Bullpen is not dysfunctional. It’s tops in the NL. Rotation is fourth in the NL, Team’s got the fourth best record in the NL. The on-field “product” (eesh) is good.
It’s a competitive team, as much as people don’t want to believe it.
Again if you get your head out of the trees for a second and look at the forest, you will readily see that the team’s performance without the one exceptional player is indeed mediocre, which is what I would charitably call a losing record in games not started by that player. You will also see that at least three members of the bullpen should not be on a major league team that hopes to compete, a problem that leads inevitably to the overuse and burnout of those who are good enough. Noting your unresponsiveness to the question of why they are still on the roster, among other points I raised.
And yes, what they put on the field is in fact a product. It’s what they are selling to us, the paying customers. As much as some people don’t want to believe it (probably because they are more interested in betting on baseball than watching it), the game is still a form of entertainment.
You’re a combative little monkey.
You can’t judge a team by one player, my friend. Team sport. Their record speaks for itself.
Roberts is managing the bullpen just fine. The bullpen itself is first in the NL, last I checked. Every bullpen in the league will be tired come September. It’s certainly not mediocre, nor is the team.
They’re doing just fine, with a lot of room to maneuver and improve. Up here in the trees, the sky isn’t falling, I assure you.
As for your comment about product, I heartily disagree. It must be rough to buy wins with your ticket and not get them every time. Recipe for misery, my friend.
Cheers.
You absolutely can judge a team by one player when that one player is as ridiculous as Kershaw. Put him on any team in the league this year, and he probably wins 15+ games. He’s that good. They’ve won 14 of his 16 starts so far this year, which means their record is 30-35 when Kershaw isn’t pitching. They’re a bad-to-mediocre team when he’s not on the mound. It’s really that simple.
Yeah. Mike Trout’s the best player in baseball. The Angels are one of the worst teams. Keep digging.
Nice.
Cheers yourself.
Well the White Sox tried to get Puig before the season started, and they still need an outfielder/DH, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they come calling again.
This is the reason small to mid market teams do not usually spend big money on the top starting pitchers. For the large market teams, they can survive the loss of production due to injury and basically eat several years of large contracts if they player does not recover. Put the same contract on a team other than Boston, the New York teams, the Chicago teams and the LA teams and they would be destroyed for several years paying dead money on all of those years. remaining. Fans, this is why your owner and GM does not spend huge money on premier players.
One of the “Chicago teams” doesn’t belong in that group. Far from it.
I hope for baseball’s sake that Kershaw spends the minimum time on the DL and we never hear of this back ailment again.
On a side note, that sucks for the All-Star game. The NL needs as much help as they can get to be able to get that home field advantage. Kershaw would have definitely been the NL starter. Luckily, the NL is pretty strong on the SP side. Honestly, The AL would be smart to fill their roster with RP for the ASG. They are stacked in that area.
Probably just put him on the DL to avoid the all star game.
Since the season for Angels is about over, they have a surplus of pitchers available… Just call Arte or Eppler and choose’n’pick…
The Angels aren’t exactly the best targets for a pitching upgrade–partially because of Arte and Eppler.
Kershaws situation could be quite negative for his future.
Such a shame to interrupt a tremendous season from Kershaw. Not since Pedro have I so enjoyed watching a pitcher work his trade. Get back soon, CK.
sure glad they didn’t sign iwakuma..that would have made too much sense
Don’t understand that. They got Kazmir and Maeda instead. Kazmir’s season is pretty comparable, and Maeda has been better. Neither of them is injured. . . .
sure glad they didn’t sign iwakuma