Photo courtesy: Keith Allison
The Dodgers received bad news on the pitching front, as they will be without one of their starters for even longer.
Los Angeles starting pitcher Hyun-Jin Ryu will be undergoing shoulder surgery to clean it up and have it be 100% healed again. There is fortunately no indications of a torn labrum, but it still may need to be smoothed out if the surgeons find that it needs to be worked on. This will be a surgery that takes time to heal from and be able to have full use of the shoulder again.
This surgery is very much needed as this shoulder problem has prevented Ryu from getting his season fully underway. He has been on the disabled list by the team just to see what other options they could pursue for this injury of his. Unfortunately for the Dodgers and Ryu, there was no getting around surgery and pushing it off any longer than it already has would have made no sense at all for all parties involved.
Though this will cost the left hander quite a significant amount of the season, he will be able to resume his career in the fashion he had it going before this setback hit him.
The Dodgers have done well without Ryu’s services, with a 24-14 record on the season so far, at the top of the class in the NL west division. A question will arrive for them should they continue to be in the mix for the division and the playoff picture. Will they be willing to add a front line starter type of pitcher to bolster their rotation in the absence of Ryu? The trade line would be the prime moment for Los Angeles to pull off this type of move. They have a very well regarded farm system that is full of prospects that many baseball clubs would love to get their hands on.
As we have seen since new ownership took over a few years ago in LA, money is no object to this franchise that can take on almost any amount of money that may hinder a deal from getting complete if other teams not in a similar financial situation were involved instead.
As constituted, having Kershaw and Greinke as the one-two punch at the top of the starting rotation is excellent, but if this team wants to get to a World Series, they will need an effective number three starter that can be reliable and consistent enough to keep the Dodgers in their winning ways and set them up for a run in October.
There are a number of candidates for this spot, but what it will take to get any one of those pitchers in Dodger blue is a mystery right now and will be until July.
So while the Dodgers continue a solid start tot their season, the loss of Ryu will come into play sooner rather than later and will need to have a resolution to counter the loss of him and not rely solely on Kershaw and Greinke to carry the pitching load for the whole season.
