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Dodgers Place Brandon McCarthy On 10-Day DL; Activate Hyun-Jin Ryu

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The Dodgers have placed right-hander Brandon McCarthy on the 10-day disabled list due to a blister problem, the team announced.  In a corresponding move, Hyun-Jin Ryu will be activated from the DL in time to start Monday night’s game.  Kenta Maeda will take McCarthy’s place in the rotation on Tuesday night against the Twins.

McCarthy has long battled injury problems throughout his career and this season has been on different.  This is the right-hander’s third DL stint this season, all with different issues — McCarthy’s previous DL placements were due to shoulder soreness and right knee tendonitis.  This finger blister took McCarthy out of a start last month and has apparently been bothering him since Spring Training, the righty told MLB.com’s Ken Gurnick and other media, though he threw a 40-pitch bullpen session today and wanted to pitch on Tuesday.

When McCarthy has been able to pitch this season, the 34-year-old has posted some strong results, notching a 3.84 ERA and 2.64 K/9 rate over 86 2/3 innings.  While McCarthy’s 6.9 K/9 indicates that he isn’t missing many bats, he also isn’t allowing batters to do much damage when they do put wood on the ball, with just a 28% hard-hit ball rate and a 5.7% home run rate.

The Dodgers rotation has been a revolving door of injury situations this season, with Ryu, Maeda, Rich Hill, Alex Wood and (as of today) ace Clayton Kershaw all missing time to the disabled list.  Ryu, for instance, is returning from a left foot contusion and also had a DL stint earlier this year due to left hip contusion.  (Not to mention the fact that Ryu missed almost all of 2015-16 recovering from shoulder injuries.)  Despite all the health problems, however, Los Angeles leads all of baseball in starting pitcher ERA (3.33) and fWAR (12.1) thanks to superlative work from Kershaw and Wood, plus good-to-solid contributions from everyone else.  Given all of the injuries and with Kershaw now possibly out of action, however, the Dodgers have been looking at adding starting pitching at the trade deadline.

Dodgers Place Hyun-Jin Ryu On 10-Day DL

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The Dodgers have placed lefty Hyun-Jin Ryu on the 10-day DL with what the organization is calling a hip contusion, per a club announcement. He’ll be replaced on the active roster by righty Josh Fields.

It seems that the injury was incurred when Ryu attempted a slide while running the bases, per skipper Dave Roberts (via J.P. Hoornstra of the Southern California News Group, on Twitter). The hope, though, is that he’ll miss just one start.

With an off-day coming up, Hoornstra notes, the move won’t really cost the Dodgers much at all — so long as Ryu is indeed ready to return after the minimum absence. But the team will be able to enjoy an added reliever while he’s off the active roster.

Ryu, 30, is off to quite a promising start after missing the vast bulk of the past two seasons. Through five starts, he owns a 4.05 ERA across 26 2/3 innings with a strong 9.8 K/9 against just 2.7 BB/9. He’s sitting between 89 and 90 mph with his average fastball, just under his prior level, and so far has managed a career-best 12.1% swinging-strike rate.

Ryu, McCarthy Named To Dodgers’ Rotation; Wood To Bullpen

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MARCH 29: Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register tweets that McCarthy has, indeed, been tabbed for the final spot in the rotation. Roberts told the L.A. media today that McCarthy will start the fourth game of the season in Los Angeles, with Ryu getting the nod in Colorado in the following contest. Those decisions land Wood in the bullpen, though certainly, given the injury concerns that constantly surround McCarthy, Ryu and the currently-injured Scott Kazmir, Wood could find himself with a rotation opportunity at some point during the season.

McCullough further tweets that Stripling will not be going to Triple-A but will instead begin the season in long relief. The Dodgers will trot out a rotation of Clayton Kershaw, Rich Hill, Kenta Maeda, McCarthy and Ryu with Kenley Jansen, Sergio Romo, Grant Dayton, Luis Avilan, Chris Hatcher, Wood and Stripling in the relief corps.

MARCH 27: The Dodgers will utilize lefty Hyun-Jin Ryu out of the rotation when camp breaks, manager Dave Roberts told reporters including Andy McCullough of the Los Angeles Times (Twitter links). That leaves Brandon McCarthy and Alex Wood still battling for the fifth and final rotation job, though both will end up on the MLB roster.

It’s not altogether surprising at this point to hear that Ryu will join the staff, though it’s certainly promising news that the Dodgers think he’s ready to handle the load. He seemingly locked the job up with his outing today, which extended his spring stat line to 14 innings of 2.57 ERA ball, over which he racked up a dozen strikeouts with just one walk.

Ryu, who just turned 30, has basically missed all of the past two seasons with arm issues. And it is certainly an open question whether he can stay healthy for the long haul. But the upside is obvious — he posted a 3.17 ERA with 7.7 K/9 and 2.0 BB/9 over 344 innings from 2013-14 — and there’s little reason not to hand him the ball and see what happens with two years and $14MM left on his contract.

After all, the Dodgers are clearly set up to get what they can out of health risks such as Ryu while covering when the need arises. In this case, one of McCarthy and Wood will be on hand in the bullpen. And while the news seemingly tickets Ross Stripling for Triple-A, he’ll be among the arms ready to step into the rotation. Los Angeles has already stashed a not-so-secret weapon there in outstanding youngster Julio Urias.

Scott Kazmir To Begin Season On DL

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Dodgers starter Scott Kazmir will begin the season on the disabled list, Andy McCullough of the Los Angeles Times tweets. “It’s something with the hip,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told McCullough.

Kazmir has dealt with hip tightness this spring, and his velocity was in the 82-84 MPH range less than two weeks ago. He pitched yesterday against Texas and struggled, allowing three runs, five walks and two hit batsmen over three innings.

The Dodgers have two open spots in their rotation behind Clayton Kershaw, Kenta Maeda and Rich Hill. Even with Kazmir on the shelf, there’s plenty of competition for those two spots — Brandon McCarthy, Hyun-jin Ryu and Alex Wood, all veterans with successful big-league seasons under their belts, are all in the running. Ryu has missed much of the past two seasons to injury, but has impressed observers in camp. Top young lefty Julio Urias appears set to begin the season in the minors as the Dodgers monitor his workload.

Rosenthal’s Latest: Lucroy, Lindor, Ahmed, D’backs, Ryu

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Here are highlights from the latest column by FOX Sports’ Ken Rosenthal:

  • Catcher Jonathan Lucroy and the Rangers recently shelved talks about an extension. It’s not entirely clear what happened, but one possibility could be that Lucroy is waiting for a new Yadier Molina deal with the Cardinals, a contract that would help set his value. Molina could receive $17MM to $18MM a season, Rosenthal writes, and Lucroy would probably receive only a bit less.
  • An extension for Indians shortstop Francisco Lindor appears unlikely unless the team is willing to pay him at elite rates, Rosenthal opines. Lindor is on track to become a free agent at 28, and he has an endorsement deal with New Balance that provides him with extra funds during these early-career seasons during which his pay is relatively minimal.
  • The Diamondbacks do not have shortstop Nick Ahmed on the market, Rosenthal reports. Ahmed has two minor-league options and is therefore useful to a Diamondbacks team that faces a reasonable amount of uncertainty at the shortstop position, where they also have the largely unproven Chris Owings and Ketel Marte. The Yankees, meanwhile, feel they don’t need Ahmed — Didi Gregorius is set to begin the season on the DL with a shoulder injury, but the Yankees prefer to get through the first several weeks of the season with a combination of Ronald Torreyes, Pete Kozma (a somewhat similar player to Ahmed, Rosenthal points out) and Tyler Wade at short.
  • The Diamondbacks will keep an eye out for bullpen help as Opening Day approaches, perhaps pursuing players who don’t make other clubs’ 25-man rosters. In the meantime, though, the Snakes like what they see in Tom Wilhelmsen and J.J. Hoover, both of whom they signed to minor-league deals.
  • The White Sox do not seem likely to deal Jose Quintana now when interest in him could ramp up at the deadline, but the Astros, with their strong farm system and rotation needs, seem likely to eventually acquire Quintana or another good starter.
  • Dodgers lefty Hyun-jin Ryu, who has missed almost all of the past two seasons to injury, looks “like he hasn’t skipped a beat,” in the words of one scout. Ryu is competing for one of the Dodgers’ final two rotation spots.

Pitching Notes: Quintana, Ryu, Weaver, Iglesias

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Pittsburgh has pursued a trade for White Sox left-hander Jose Quintana over the past several months, but Pirates general manager Neal Huntington found the asking price to be “well above where it made sense for us” (via ESPN’s Jim Bowden). With the Bucs seemingly out of the picture for Quintana, the Astros and Braves are the “best possibilities,” per Bowden, who notes that the White Sox “continue to work hard” to trade the 28-year-old. No deal is imminent, though, according to Bowden, who adds that the Astros would have to part with both right-hander Francis Martes and outfielder Kyle Tucker, two of Baseball America’s top 20 prospects, to acquire Quintana (all Twitter links). Houston balked at giving up a package of Martes, Tucker and righty Joe Musgrove for Quintana during the Winter Meetings.

For his part, White Sox GM Rick Hahn is content to wait until someone makes what he deems a satisfactory offer for Quintana, who’s reasonably priced and controllable through the 2020 season. “We’ve had conversations even this spring where if our asks was met, we’d make a move,” Hahn told Scott Merkin of MLB.com. “Obviously nothing has developed as of yet, but that could well change early in the season or it could take to the trade deadline or into the next offseason” (Twitter links).

The latest on a few other pitchers:

  • Remarkably, after missing almost all of the previous two years because of shoulder problems, Dodgers southpaw Hyun-Jin Ryu is making a strong case to crack their season-opening rotation, writes Ken Gurnick of MLB.com. Ryu threw four scoreless, one-hit innings against Milwaukee on Tuesday, giving him nine frames of one-run ball for the spring. Manager Dave Roberts made it clear afterward that the Dodgers want him in their rotation, saying: “When we look back a year, where he’s come from, he’s done nothing but allow us to be very optimistic. Every time he’s gotten better and we’re building him up to be a starter and break camp with us. That’s the plan on our end. He worked hard to put himself in a position where he’s at right now. We’re a better team if he’s in the starting rotation.” With Julio Urias likely to begin the season in extended spring training and Scott Kazmir looking for his lost velocity, two of Ryu, Brandon McCarthy and Alex Wood figure to claim the Dodgers’ available starting spots.
  • Padres righty Jered Weaver is dealing with a dead arm, tweets Dennis Lin of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Weaver has also battled that issue in previous springs, notes Lin, though it’s not exactly encouraging news for a soft-tossing 34-year-old who’s coming off the two worst seasons of his career. Weaver indicated last week that he’s physically “10 steps above” where he was last year, when he piled up 178 innings with the Angels and logged the fourth-worst ERA (5.06) and second-highest FIP (5.62) among the majors’ qualified starters. The former ace lasted two-thirds of an inning in his start against the Royals on Wednesday and yielded four runs on three hits. He also hit two batters.
  • Already sans their best starter, the injured Anthony DeSclafani, as Opening Day approaches, the Reds might also begin 2017 without top reliever Raisel Iglesias, who hasn’t pitched since March 14. An elbow issue has kept Iglesias out of action, but an MRI only showed a bone bruise, according to C. Trent Rosecrans of the Cincinnati Enquirer. “The good news is that it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a huge setback or there are any structural issues at all,” said manager Bryan Price. “The negative is that he’s going to have four more days off before he begins to throw again and we’ll have to see how comfortable we are by Opening Day or maybe before that.” A former starter, Iglesias was among the few bright spots in a historically inept Reds bullpen last year, when he posted a 1.98 ERA, 9.72 K/9 and 3.42 BB/9 in 50 innings as a reliever. Health permitting, the 27-year-old will serve as a high-leverage bullpen weapon this season.

Quick Hits: Dodgers, Astros, Royals, Gagne

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Two weeks ago, the Dodgers were leaning toward having left-hander Julio Urias open the season in their rotation. It now appears he’ll begin in the minors as they attempt to tamp down his workload, according to Joel Sherman of the New York Post. The 20-year-old phenom threw a career-high 122 innings between the majors and minors in 2016, and LA wants to keep him fresh this season for a potential playoff run. Should the Dodgers send down Urias, they’d choose among Brandon McCarthy, Alex Wood and “wild card” Hyun-Jin Ryu to fill their final two rotation spots, adds Sherman (Twitter links here).

Elsewhere around the majors…

  • Houston’s acquisition of catcher Brian McCann from the Yankees in November played a key role in their December signing of designated hitter Carlos Beltran, Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow informed Mark Feinsand of MLB.com. “As we recruited Beltran, bringing McCann over was a big part of getting Beltran to accept coming over here,” said Luhnow. Teammates in New York from 2014-16, McCann and Beltran have already been quite valuable behind the scenes for the Astros, per Luhnow. “These two guys have been a tremendous boost to the environment in our clubhouse,” he stated. “I’m so glad they’re here.”
  • When he accepted the Royals’ two-year, $12MM guarantee as a free agent last month, southpaw Travis Wood seemed like a decent bet to start 2017 in their rotation. But another offseason acquisition, trade pickup Nate Karns, has emerged over Wood and Chris Young as the clear favorite for Kansas City’s last starting spot, tweets Sherman. The right-handed Karns, 29, made 46 starts with the Nationals, Rays and Mariners from 2013-16 and logged a 4.19 ERA, 9.0 K/9 and 3.69 BB/9 over 249 innings. The 30-year-old Wood worked solely as a reliever with the World Series champion Cubs last season, which came after he racked up 133 starts in Cincinnati and Chicago from 2010-15. He recorded the same ERA as Karns (4.19) to go with 7.11 K/9 against 3.15 BB/9 during that 776-inning span.
  • Free agent reliever Eric Gagne, 41, is making a case for a contract in the World Baseball Classic, though the Team Canada righty and 2003 NL Cy Young winner realizes he’d first have to succeed in the minors to have any chance at returning to the majors. “I know the game, I know how it happens, I know they need spots on the 40-man roster and don’t want to release a young guy for a 41 year old, so of course I’d be willing to do anything,” the former closer told Shi Davidi of Sportsnet. Gagne, who hasn’t pitched in the bigs since 2008, worked out for five teams before the WBC, writes Davidi, and has since fared well in the tournament. “Words are irrelevant at this point. Clubs are seeing it with their own eyes,” Gagne’s agent, Scott Leventhal, told FanRag’s Jon Heyman (Twitter link).

NL West: Padres, Ryu, Desmond

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Here’s the latest out of the National League West:

  • The Padres are “open-minded” to quite a bit of experimentation in the way they deploy their roster in 2017, as manager Andy Green explains and Bryce Miller of the San Diego Union-Tribune reports. Beyond the quirk of carrying Christian Bethancourt as a catcher, outfielder, and relief pitcher, San Diego will look for other ways of taking advantage of creativity. “I think a lot of teams come in with more established options at different spots,” Green explains. “We’re going to be open-minded to see who rises up and wins the respective jobs and be opportunistic to put guys in positions to succeed that might run different than what other clubs would do.” Just how far the Pads go in tweaking baseball convention remains to be seen; while it won’t likely make much of a difference in their postseason outlook, some new approaches could conceivably pave the way for future change in San Diego as well as other organizations.
  • The Dodgers are seeing signs of life from lefty Hyun-Jin Ryu, with pitching coach Rick Honeycutt telling reporters — including Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register (links to Twitter) — that the Korean hurler is ready to throw in a game situation. It’s unclear whether that’ll be a sim game or a Cactus League contest, but it seems the former is more likely. “No negatives to me,” Honeycutt said of Ryu’s showing thus far. “It’s been impressive.” The 29-year-old is looking to return to the excellent form he showed during his first two years with the Dodgers. He has missed all of the past two seasons (except for one ill-fated outing last year) due to persistent shoulder problems.
  • While many have panned the Rockies’ large expenditure on Ian Desmond, in large part due to the fact that he’s slated to shift from being an up-the-middle defender to a first baseman, Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports identifies some reasons to support the move. Manager Bud Black says the team was focused less on position than it was the desire to “go get a baseball player who is good.” While Desmond was targeted as a first baseman from the get-go, per the report, GM Jeff Bridich notes that “there is absolutely the potential” he’ll change positions in the future. And Desmond himself is embracing the challenge of yet another new position much as he did his move to the outfield last year, saying he likes the Rockies’ “creativity to use my athleticism.” Of course, those statements don’t necessarily counteract the core criticisms of the deal, though they do suggest that the team is looking to be creative and flexible in building out a roster — now and in the future.

Hyun-Jin Ryu Says He’s Pain-Free, Ready For Camp

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Dodgers lefty Hyun-Jin Ryu says he’s confident that he can finally return to health in 2017, Jee-ho Yoo of the Yonhap News Agency reports. The Korean hurler has been beset by injuries over the past two years, most recently going under the knife for an elbow debridement.

“Right now, I’d say I am in better shape than I normally would be at the start of spring training,” said Ryu. “I threw four bullpen sessions while training in Japan. I have no pain at the moment.”

With a long list of rotation options on the depth chart, the Dodgers aren’t necessarily relying on a return for Ryu. But a return to form this spring might pose a welcome problem, and Ryu says he’s set to compete from the start. “I think I have to start throwing on the mound from the very beginning of the camp,” he said. “And I think I am physically ready to do that.”

Though he carries an excellent 3.28 lifetime ERA over his 348 2/3 innings, Ryu has made just one MLB start since the beginning of the 2015 season. (On the bright side, he showed nearly his typical fastball velocity in that one outing and did throw 27 2/3 rehab innings last year, allowing just one walk.) Given his struggles to stay on the mound, Ryu seemingly recognizes that he’s no longer guaranteed a starting role. He noted that he’ll enter the spring “try[ing] to win a spot in the rotation.” The hope, says Ryu, is first to do that and then stay healthy for all of 2017.

There are longer-term implications here, too, for both player and team. Ryu is owed $7MM apiece in each of the next two seasons, and Los Angeles will surely hope to receive a contribution from the talented southpaw. And Ryu will be looking to get his career back on track before hitting the open market after 2018. (Though he could theoretically earn opt-out rights after this coming season, there is no realistic way he can reach the 750 total innings needed for that clause to vest.)

Hyun-Jin Ryu Undergoes Elbow Surgery

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The Dodgers announced that left-hander Hyun-Jin Ryu underwent an arthroscopic left elbow debridement earlier today. The southpaw is expected to be ready for the 2017 season, according to the team.

Ryu, 29, had a brief return to the Majors in 2016 after missing the entire 2015 campaign due to shoulder surgery. Though he did make it back to the mound with the Dodgers this season, his return lasted for just one start — a 4 2/3 inning effort in which he yielded six runs on eight hits and two walks back on July 7. That represented his only big league work since Sept. 12, 2014.

Originally signed to a six-year, $36MM contract out of Korea (plus a $25.7MM posting fee), Ryu looked to be worth the investment for the Dodgers after a brilliant rookie season in 2013 and a strong sophomore effort in 2014. The former Hanwha Eagles standout finished fourth in 2013 Rookie of the Year voting after logging 192 innings of 3.00 ERA ball with 7.2 K/9 against 2.3 BB/9 and followed that up with a similarly excellent 3.38 ERA across 152 innings a year later. While the second two seasons of that six-year pact certainly haven’t gone as the Dodgers had hoped, Ryu still has another two seasons of cheap club control remaining. He’s owed just $7MM in each of the next two seasons — a manageable sum for virtually any club but especially the deep-pocketed Dodgers — though he’ll obviously fall shy of the requisite 750 innings (2013-17) that would allow him to opt out of his contract and test the free agent market a year early.

Most likely, the Dodgers aren’t banking on a full, healthy season for Ryu as they map out their 2017 season, but Los Angeles has built a virtually unprecedented staff in terms of overall pitching depth this year (as The Ringer’s Ben Lindbergh recently profiled at length in an excellent piece), and it’s likely that they’ll do the same in 2017. Ryu joins Clayton Kershaw, Kenta Maeda, Scott Kazmir and Brandon McCarthy as pitchers that are already guaranteed contracts next season (though Kazmir does technically have an opt-out clause, even if he’s unlikely to exercise it), and the Dodgers also have Alex Wood, Jose De Leon, Julio Urias, Carlos Frias, Brock Stewart and Ross Stripling under control either via arbitration or as pre-arb rotation options. Nonetheless, they’ll also presumably be active on both the free agent and trade markets this winter as they look to remain atop the National League West.

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