The Dodgers have finalized their roster in advance of their Opening Day tilt with the Cubs. Los Angeles officially added Roki Sasaki to their 40-man roster. They also selected the contract of veteran reliever Luis García, who had been in camp as a non-roster invitee.
Brusdar Graterol and Michael Grove were placed on the 60-day injured list to create the necessary 40-man openings. Grove underwent season-ending shoulder surgery last week. Graterol is recovering from a labrum procedure in his own shoulder and will not be back until the second half of the season at the earliest.
Los Angeles placed an additional seven pitchers on the 15-day IL: Tony Gonsolin (back tightness), Edgardo Henriquez (left foot fracture), Kyle Hurt (rehabbing Tommy John surgery), Clayton Kershaw (rehabbing toe surgery), Michael Kopech (shoulder impingement), Evan Phillips (rehabbing rotator cuff strain), and Emmet Sheehan (rehabbing Tommy John surgery). With Gavin Stone and River Ryan landing on the 60-day IL during Spring Training, the Dodgers have 11 pitchers beginning the season on the injured list. Each of Kershaw, Sheehan, Hurt and potentially Henriquez figure to land on the 60-day IL eventually.
By and large, these are procedural moves. The only real decision is their call to carry García in the bullpen. The hard-throwing righty inked a minor league deal that came with a $1.5MM base salary if he made the team. He didn’t have a great camp, allowing three runs with a trio of strikeouts across 5 1/3 innings. The Dodgers were nevertheless encouraged enough by his stuff to add him to Dave Roberts’ middle relief group.
García divided his 2024 season between the Angels and Red Sox. The 38-year-old pitched reasonably well for the Halos, working to a 3.71 earned run average through 43 2/3 innings. He posted roughly average strikeout (22%) and walk (7.7%) rates with a strong 51.2% ground-ball percentage. Things went sharply downhill in Boston. García missed a couple weeks late in the season with elbow inflammation. He was tagged for 15 runs across 15 1/3 innings in a Sox uniform. That pushed his season ERA to an unimpressive 4.88 mark through 59 frames.
Sasaki was not previously on the 40-man roster as a quirk of the international amateur system. The same age restriction that capped his signing bonus to a modest $6.5MM also limited him to signing a minor league contract. The Dodgers were never going to send him to Triple-A, of course, but he was technically in Spring Training as a non-roster invitee. Sasaki took the ball twice in exhibition play. He fired seven scoreless innings with seven strikeouts and three walks.
The touted 23-year-old righty will make his major league debut on Wednesday night in his home country (3:10 a.m. Pacific in the U.S.). He’ll go opposite Justin Steele in the second game of the season. It’ll be a matchup of Japanese-born starters Tuesday night at the Tokyo Dome, with Yoshinobu Yamamoto taking the ball against Shota Imanaga.
If they didn’t would he have had to have gone through waivers?
No as it was like almost a minor league contract that didn’t require to be on MLB roster
@bigmike0424. Yeah but almost bet, he was only interested in teams that would give him a guaranteed roster spot.
Someone here owes me $20.
They better not try to Welch out on that $20
Yet “they” and “someone ” are completely different usernames with distinct commenting styles.
@toptim
It was HEHEHATE you made the bet with..
You are welcome.
Thanks Bivouac!
What was the bet?
It has to do with your mom.
Kyle Hurt. Perfect name for a guy on the IL.
Maybe when healthy, he brings the Hurt?
Frank Thomas enters the chat.
“By the way, she’ll like it too.”
I hope he loses 20 games. And it’s certainly possible considering he makes the worst decisions.
Speaking of bad decisions, your ancestors are likely experiencing some serious regrets.
Yuki- I don’t think he’ll have enough starts to lose 20 after he wins 14 en route to ROY.
Stay positive though. I’m sure somebody loves you.
“I’m sure somebody loves you.”
Evidence please.
Just guessing. His mom?
I see Roki’s haters in the Japanese press have followed him stateside…
Just the one.
Yuki: Your comment shows that, as the old saying goes, it takes one to know one.
Is this guy any good? Can’t find any minor league data on him. Maybe an innings eater?
Rumor is he has a splicked witter.
There were probably at least 4 or 5 National League teams that would have beaten the Yankees in last years World Series. The Dodgers were merely one of them.
Guess those teams should have beaten the Dodgers in the earlier rounds then eh?
Sadly the dodgers and their buy every player money can buy and no other team can afford will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
BOYS AND GIRLS. Enjoy the very long lockout that is coming in 2027
There is no way in hell that the owners will agree to any cba without an salary cap and there is no way in hell the greedy overpaid I need to go on the 10 day injury list because I hurt my ego and have a hangnail players will accept a salary cap
The only reason there is any parity and baseball because they expanded the playoffs to 14 teams if they dropped it down 8 teams it would be the same eight teams over and over again
There is a reason why there is so much parity in the NFL and NHL. Hard salary caps
Unfortunately the nfl is a single position league. Salary caps mean jack if you do it have that franchise QB
The NBA has a cap but the owners have no power and the superstars run that league. The nba is market driven
The NHL has a cap max and a cap floor and it works. It has worked for years. If teams spend themselves into cap hell it is on them. The league even gave them two buyouts not counting to the cap a few years back and 4 teams in cap all took them used them and then used the money to sing more bad contracts and went right back to hell
@soccer_ref
Happy Opening Day to you too.
Many fans seem to cling to the fantasy that those who are responsible for creating the MLB financing system are, for some mysterious reason, unhappy with it. Where this idea comes from, I cannot imagine, but it sure does lead down a lot of funny rabbit holes.
Soccer ref whines like a soccer player. MLBPA is the most powerful union in sports. They are never agreeing to a cap and owners will fold. You really think cheap owners care what the dodgers payroll is when the gate revenue stops coming in and it starts hurting their wallet lmao. For all the Dodgers stuff the second most recent world series was Rangers Dbacks. Salary caps are a scam to allow owners to pocket more money. It is not a good thing Connor McDavid makes less than relief pitchers. Baseball brought the 700 million dollar contract and its not ending soon
I wonder how the dynamic of this debate would change if player salaries were secret and team profits were public.
There will be a lockout. There will not be a lost season. The teams that would like a cap are the ones that can’t afford to go without revenue.
They’ll complain about it but will cave and settle for some modifications to the luxury tax. The biggest contentions will come over tiered payments of revenue sharing for teams not spending enough.
They finally got tv figured out, they aren’t messing that up now.
Soccer
Why do you say that the players are greedy, but you do not say the monopoly owners are also greedy?
No salary cap unless owners completely open their books and also agree to a floor.
The system mostly works well now. Probably would have been better for the system to have no dollar limit on Roki’s salary. He still would be a Dodger just he would have had a ten year, $250 million deal (very rough figure).
Many fans seem to cling to the fantasy that those who are responsible for creating the MLB financing system are,… unhappy with it.
========================
And they never say why. In fact, half the fans think the players are so unhappy that they are going to strike. And half think the owners are so unhappy that they will lock out the players.
And half the fans think the problem is that the big-market teams are outspending the small-market teams, while half think that their owners are just being too cheap to spend.
Greed is a much over-used word imo. Everyone employee in here wants as much as they can make, within reason. Every employer in here wants to pay as little as they can, within reason. Everyone in here that uses their services wants the lowest price possible, within reason.
Both players and owners are doing exactly what 99% of us would do.
Ah yes, the NFL: the league of parity.
Of the last 6 Super Bowls, two have been Chiefs vs Eagles, another two have been Chiefs vs 49ers. Only one of the last 6 hasn’t included the Chiefs. A total of 6 different franchises have played in a Super Bowl in the last 6 years compared to 9 different franchises in the last 6 World Series’.
I was going to add that, as a Raiders fan, I haven’t been feeling the parity for the past 20 years or so.
You don’t need league parity, you need ownership Parity…
The ones who want a cap will be required to spend more money. And they will want subsidizes from bigger teams. It’s never happening no matter how much the Rockies owner crys
We know “the system works” because all of the team owners are running profitable businesses. The mistake many fans make is in thinking the MLB finance system has a different objective.
The sole purpose of a cap is simply to shift more of the game’s revenue from players to owners and thus guarantee them a better return on their investment. No fan should delude themselves into believing that it has anything to do with improving competitiveness. This is why the players will never agree to one.
MLB fan discovers the NL winner plays the AL in the world series
Should just kept Ryan Brasier IMHO
There are so many little goofy roster rules in baseball. It always cracks me up. This guy can go to triple A and not need to pass through wavers because he was born in February 31st. This other guy must stay on the major league roster all season or be offered to a team in Egypt because his sister was born under a blue moon down by the dock of the bay.
I admire all the writers and readers and fans of your teams that can keep track
Well done, sir. I got a good laugh outta that. MLB does have seemingly hundreds of obscure, byzantine rules. I imagine a good front office is full of rule book geeks.
He signed a minor league contract and was called up to the majors. Pretty straightforward.
The rules for this mini-series are different because it is a unique series. Once the regular season starts, the rules are a lot simpler.
This article is about the 40-man roster but by reference Garcia being added to the 40-man also means that he is technically the first player to be added to the active roster. He will probably also be the first one to be removed from it.
As soon as a spot is needed, I’d imagine Garcia is the first to be offed.
Yep. Though soon after I posted this I realized that Sasaki and Garcia were added to 40-man so their minor league contracts were the first two selected.
Looks like I’m paying.
excellent