Just when the Dodgers thought their pitching staff was getting healthier, they announced yet another significant injury on Friday.
Rookie right-hander Gavin Stone was placed on the injured list with shoulder inflammation, the team said, leaving the 25-year-old’s late-season status unclear amid a breakout campaign.
President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said Stone will be shut down for at least 10 days, then attempt to start throwing again.
While he doesn’t rule Stone out for the season, it leaves an incredibly narrow margin for him to return in time for the playoffs.
“I’m optimistic he is going to do everything he possibly can,” Friedman said. “There’s just so much unknown around it.”
In the meantime, Landon Knack and Justin Wrobleski were called up from triple-A (reliever Michael Peterson was also optioned in a corresponding move).
Knack was set to start Friday night, while Wrobleski will likely fill in for Stone’s scheduled Saturday start.
Stone had been the one member of the Dodgers opening-day rotation not to go on the injured list this year, becoming just the fifth Dodgers pitcher in the last four years to make 25 starts in a season.
However, in start No. 25 last weekend in Arizona, Stone threw just 84 pitches in five innings before manager Dave Roberts decided he was out of gas and pulled him from the game.
While Stone said that day he felt he could have gone 100-plus pitches, his condition apparently took a turn this week, with him reporting shoulder discomfort to the team.
It makes Stone the Dodgers’ latest rotation question mark — along with other current IL members Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Clayton Kershaw — with three weeks remaining in the regular season.
After top deadline acquisition Jack Flaherty, Stone seemed like the safest lock to be in the Dodgers potential postseason rotation.
In a reversal of his dismal debut 2023 performance, Stone blossomed this year with a new pitch mix, going 11-5 with a 3.53 ERA.
With that success though, came a heavy workload. Stone’s 140 innings this year had already surpassed the career-high he set last year of 131 between the majors and triple-A.
Without Stone, Walker Buehler figures to become a more important piece of the Dodgers’ pitching plans, after shaking off his early-season struggles in his past two outings.
Stone’s injury shouldn’t harm the team’s NL West chances too much, with the Dodgers entering Friday five games up on the San Diego Padres.
But, he stood to play a crucial role in the playoffs.
Instead, he is now yet another uncertainty as the club’s pitching staff continues its injury-plagued limp to October.
“We’re gonna do all we can to dominate each day, and hopefully when he starts throwing, he can ramp up from there,” Friedman said. “It’s just hard to speculate right now.”