Dodgers manager Dave Roberts announced to reporters that right-hander Gavin Stone is still experiencing shoulder soreness and is “very unlikely” to return this year. Alden González of ESPN was among those to relay the news on X.
Stone landed on the IL September 6 due to right shoulder inflammation. The plan was for him to be shut down for about ten days, at which point the club would decide on a path forward based on how he felt. It seems that not much progress has been made and so the path back to the club has narrowed.
Prior to this injury, Stone was the most reliable member of a rotation that had suffered a great number of injuries. He tossed 140 1/3 innings over 25 starts, with both of those figures still leading the team. The only player close to him in those categories is Tyler Glasnow, who is also unlikely to come back this year, so Stone will finish 2024 as the team leader in those two categories. He had a 3.53 earned run average in that time as well as a 20% strikeout rate, 6.4% walk rate and 44.2% ground ball rate.
The health of the Dodger rotation, or lack thereof, has been an ongoing story throughout the year. Dustin May, River Ryan and Emmet Sheehan each required season-ending surgeries earlier in the campaign. As mentioned, Stone and Glasnow are both on the IL and unlikely to be healthy before the season’s done. Tony Gonsolin and Clayton Kershaw are also on the IL but still could contribute in the coming weeks. More on them below.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto also missed about three months due to a rotator cuff strain, though he is now back on the active roster. That’s a bit of positive news amid all the negative stuff, though there are questions there as well. Yamamoto returned before being fully stretched out and has only thrown four innings in each of his two outings since coming back. The kid gloves are apparently going to stay on, as Roberts said the club will continue to give him more than four days of rest between starts for the rest of the season and maybe into the playoffs as well, per Jack Harris of the Los Angeles Times on X.
Around Yamamoto, the rest of the rotation has recently consisted of Jack Flaherty, Landon Knack, Walker Buehler and Bobby Miller. Miller has an 8.52 ERA on the year and is being optioned today, per Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic on X, Miller’s second optional assignment of the year. Buehler has also struggled, with a 5.54 ERA on the year. Knack has a strong 3.70 ERA but in just 56 career innings at the major league level. Flaherty is having a great year but there are some health concerns with him as well, as he had back problems with the Tigers that reportedly scuttled a deal to the Yankees before the Dodgers acquired him instead.
Whether the Dodgers will replace Miller in the rotation or simply use bullpen games to finish the year remains to be seen. They are off on Monday, which could perhaps help them get by with just four starters, though Yamamoto’s restrictions complicate things. The club is a virtual lock for the postseason but the remaining games on the schedule are still meaningful. They are only 3.5 games up on the Padres in the West and only two games ahead of the Brewers for the second bye through the Wild Card round, with the Phillies currently holding the top spot.
Even if the Dodgers are able to cruise into a first-round bye, building a playoff rotation is going to be a concern. Perhaps Gonsolin or Kershaw could help out, depending on how things develop over the next few weeks. Kershaw has been on the IL since late May due to a bone spur in his left big toe. He threw an 84-pitch bullpen session today, per Gonzalez on X, which is perhaps a good sign that he could still be a factor soon but the next steps aren’t clear.
As for Gonsolin, he underwent Tommy John surgery in September of last year and is currently on a rehab assignment. His first outing lasted two innings and the second went 2 2/3. Per Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register, Roberts says Gonsolin will try to get through four innings in his next outing and then the club will talk about where to go from there. “It’s still a longer shot,” Robert said. “But I’m really impressed that Tony has taken this really seriously as a potential opportunity. He’s gonna take another one, and we’ll see from there.”
There are lots of moving parts and the club still has a chance to have a solid rotation consisting of Yamamoto and Flaherty with perhaps some combination of Knack, Buehler, Kershaw or Gonsolin in behind the front two. There even seems to be some non-zero chance that Shohei Ohtani takes a mound before the season is done, though that still seems like a real long shot.
The club and its fans know very well that a flimsy rotation can sink an otherwise strong season. Just last year, the Dodgers won 100 games but were quickly swept out of the playoffs by the Diamondbacks when injuries reduced their postseason rotation to Miller, Lance Lynn and an obviously-injured Kershaw. That will make their swirling rotation a key storyline in the coming weeks.
Jinxed it by joking about the Mets’ Scott going down being the fault of the Dodgers FO
Yeah thanks for that.
No Stone gets unburned…
So doesn’t very unlikely mean there’s a non-zero chance of him pitching again this year? More analysis required.
Spot on!
So you’re telling me there’s a chance!
The odds of spontaneous combustion Dave?
Well if non-zero is a chance worth discussing as possible, then so is very unlikely.
He’s going to need to shut down and then build back up. If he aggravates the shoulder again, then it’s going to overlap into his offseason routines and possibly effect next season.
Zach Greinke or Trevor Bauer.
wouldn’t be playoff eligible
…nor smart.
If either of them put on a Bobby Miller jersey and pitched, they’d likely get much better results. That would be a dead giveaway that it wasn’t Bobby Miller.
Well….so much for having Stone as potentially the #3 guy, and certainly #4 at some point in Oct.
Assuming Kershaw’s toe doesn’t do an about-face, it looks like Yamamoto, Flaherty, Buehler, and Knack.
Nail-biting time. The bats had better not go cold like last year.
A toe doing a about-face is a wonderful mixed metaphor.
“I never metaphor I didn’t like…”
Thoughts and prayers for a speedy recovery, Gavin.
– Carl Winslow AKA America’s Dad
Hey Carl, what happened to your youngest daughter, Judy. She just disappeared. You’re a cop. Was she kidnapped? It’s like you didn’t even care. You just let her go!
a 2 man rotation with a few questionable….ermm, laughable options ready to rumble in the playoffs, that is if they don’t get swept by the fish and lose the division and wildcard. Comedy
Back in my day, they’d pitch until their arms were hangin’ by a thread, none of this ‘soreness’ stuff keepin’ ’em out.
When was your day, the 19th century?
Get off your own lawn Old York.
Is this a rumor, or set in Stone?
Either way, it’s just more of the Dodgers’ bad Lux. …
Cey it isn’t so!
Ugh…wrong era…
Leave no Stone unturned
dodgers have Baker’s dozen on IL
maybe why Dusty wore the number 12.
It’s borderline criminal what’s happening to all of these Dodger pitchers
Oh those darned things. They are complicated — and they develop too!
Man Kershaw just won’t go away. Like the guy personally but so sick of seeing him claw back onto the roster and refusing to play for anyone else; and every time he’s supposedly done he’ll come back to do anything to help his daddy Dodgers out. Respect, I guess? But also, enough already.
I am … I can’t look away at this comment. The Dodgers are his daddy? Your mad he won’t change teams?
How do you arrive at these opinions? This is really something.
I said I like him personally. 100% HOF. But it feels like he re-signs just so the Dodgers can say that one of their 85 superstars is “homegrown.”
Knack rebounded nicely from his bad outing Friday.
Kershaw threw a long bullpen session and seems to be on track for a return next week. But he’s often overoptimistic about injuries.
I’m not sure where optimism comes into it because he isn’t the one who gets to decide whether he’s ready for the game. We don’t know what the coaches and trainers saw in the side session, but they do.
Bring back Julio Urias!
Sorry, he’s still on the Restricted List. No action yet on any suspension by MLB presumably because his legal issues remain unresolved.
guess you missed the video just released of him beating on his girl. not deserving of anything.
I don’t know anything about a video. I know only that the charges against him were reduced to a misdemeanor, but apparently these charges have yet to be fully resolved for some undisclosed reason. MLB can’t begin an investigation of its own until the legal process is completed, though I suspect any suspension he receives will be mooted by the year and a half he’s already spent on the Restricted List. Whether any team is interested him after all this is resolved remains to be seen, but a lot of it is up to the player himself.
Urias is the first 2x offender under this policy, unchartered waters in terms of discipline, MLB isn’t even done with their investigation. Without a contract in 2024, I have to think his penalty won’t take into consideration “time served”. The misdemeanor is hugely important, it’s challenging for felons to travel to foreign countries let alone get jobs.
Regarding Stone, the LAD at no time in 2024 had enough starting pitching for the regular season let alone October. There wasn’t a single active pitcher they had who’d thrown 180IP in a season on the active roster, the top was in fact Stone at 130 IP combined AAA/MLB in 2023, he worked 120 IP in 2022 almost exclusively as a starter with 23 and 19 starts respectively.
They needed to ease Buehler back into the rotation, they needed to have a plan for Yamamoto who previously worked on 6 days rest not 5, Paxton was never an innings eater even in his prime (max 150 IP in 2019) and 2yrs removed from TJ and of course if they wanted Glasnow to pitch in October they’d need to manage his workload too.
Ideally and to a lesser extent the same could have been said about managing Stone’s workload, the 2024 struggles of Bobby Miller being the cautionary tale of how he was ramp up in 2023. Dodgers just never really had the luxury given how their staff in its entirety was constructed.
If not for the NYY having a question on Jack Flaherty’s medicals the LAD don’t even get him at the deadline. LAD only acquired 1 starter, that’s crazy and a failure on the part of the LAD front office given the October goals for this team
MLB cannot even begin a discipline investigation on a player until any law enforcement issues have been resolved. This is why MLB isn’t done with their investigation of Urias — because they have not even started one. Why the legal situation hasn’t been closed a year and half after the incident we simply do not know. So you can invent all kinds of discipline scenarios but they are quite meaningless. Guesswork at best.
All we know is most players who accept their suspensions and take responsibility for their actions have made it back into the game. Second time around is different? Maybe. We just don’t know, and maybe never will in this case. Uncharted waters, as you say.
As for pitching, you are falling into the trap of claiming to know the future after it happens. In reality, a list of pitchers who haven’t missed significant time due to injury after a five or more years of professional play would be a much shorter list than the ones who have. These injuries are extremely common, essentially random, and consequently virtually impossible to predict. At least, before the fact. After the fact lots will say they knew.
Seems like four man rotation of Flaherty, Yamamoto, Knack and Buehler are set barring injuries. And for NLCS/WS you’d need a #5 if you want to stay on 5 days plus rest. Dare they pitch Bobby Miller as the #5 or go some type of bullpen game with Kershaw and/or Gonsolin out of the pen.