SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- With Yoshinobu Yamamoto headed to the World Baseball Classic, the battle to fill out the back end of the Dodgers' rotation could begin to intensify.
Yamamoto made his second and final Cactus League start in Friday afternoon's 12-4 loss to the Giants at Scottsdale Stadium, stretching out to three innings on 52 pitches (37 strikes). Yamamoto’s ramp-up will continue in meaningful games as Samurai Japan's ace, but even though he'll be away from the Dodgers, he remains one of the few certainties in their rotation.
"I think the benefit of the WBC, beyond some exciting games going on, will be a longer spring for us," general manager Brandon Gomes said earlier in Spring Training. "And not starting so early to have a little bit of wiggle room built in for guys getting ready."
Two weeks after pitchers and catchers reported, the Dodgers will need that wiggle room to answer this question: How could their rotation realistically look come Opening Day?
On paper, the back-to-back World Series champions are carrying an incredibly talented pitching staff into their three-peat bid. The Dodgers' projected full-strength rotation is led by four starters who dominated in last season's title defense -- Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani -- and rounded out by two young arms with big upside, Emmet Sheehan and Roki Sasaki.
But it won't be that straightforward. Snell, who slow-played his offseason throwing program due to lingering discomfort in the left shoulder that sidelined him for four months last season, has only played catch out to 90 feet. He's due to progress to 120 feet soon, but that still puts him well off schedule for the beginning of the regular season.
Ohtani expects to be part of the rotation from the start, but it's unclear how much he will be able to build up his arm while he's away for the Classic. Ohtani will exclusively hit for Japan in games, but he is planning on throwing live sessions on off-days in order to keep ramping up as a pitcher. He could potentially pitch in a Freeway Series exhibition (March 22-24), but it seems unlikely that he would be able to throw more than two or three innings when his first regular-season start comes around.
The final spots could also be in question. Sasaki's first Cactus League start was shaky, and Sheehan missed a few days due to illness and he has yet to make it into a game. Meanwhile, Gavin Stone (right shoulder surgery) and River Ryan (Tommy John surgery) had promising first outings after missing all of last season. Justin Wrobleski is also stretching out and is firmly in the mix.
To piece together this rotation puzzle, the Dodgers may first look to determine how many starting pitchers they really need to open the season. They prefer to give their starters five days' rest, rather than the conventional four, when they can -- and in certain stretches of the schedule, that can be accomplished without using a six-man rotation.
For instance, the Dodgers open the season with 12 games in 15 days, so they could use a five-man rotation then. That is followed by a stretch of 19 games in 20 days, when they would probably want to use an additional starter.
The solution may be to go with a five-man rotation with length options in the bullpen who could make spot starts when the schedule calls for it. During that early stretch of the schedule with more off-days, one of the long relievers could also piggyback with Ohtani to lessen the burden on the rest of the bullpen.
That could look something like this:
Rotation: Yamamoto, Glasnow, Ohtani, Sheehan, Sasaki
Swingmen: Wrobleski, Stone
There remains some competition for who gets the final spots in the rotation. It would appear that they are Sheehan's and Sasaki's spots to lose, based on manager Dave Roberts' comments earlier in spring camp, but that means they can be lost. And the likes of Wrobleski, Stone and Ryan have the opportunity to win a starting role.
"Once we break camp, we just don't know how we're going to fill out the roster with the best players," Roberts said. "But you still kind of have to be mindful of where starters are built up to have length for guys coming out of the bullpen. All that stuff is kind of in the math of how you put together the roster."
With more than three weeks of spring games ahead of them, the Dodgers have plenty of time to make those calculations.