16:30: After Walker Buehler left yesterday’s game with an annoyance in his right elbow, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told reporters (including The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya and the LA Times’ Jack Harris) that Buehler would included in the 15-day injured list. The team officially announced the transaction, citing Buehler’s stance as a result of straining his right forearm. Buehler is currently undergoing an MRI scan to determine the extent and nature of the injury, but Roberts said the right-hand man will lose “enough time”. Right-winger Michael Grove will be called up to replace Buehler on the active roster. Buehler underwent surgery on Tommy John in 2015 and although he has since avoided serious elbow / arm problems, it is of course worrying to see Buehler again on the sidelines with any kind of injury. More will be known as soon as the MRI results are revealed, as it is not yet clear if Buehler’s season (or beyond) could be in jeopardy. At the very least, the Dodgers will have a large vacancy to fill the original rotation, even if Buehler was not himself at ace level in 2022. Buehler has 4.02 ERA over 65 innings, with a very stable 6, 2% hiking rate, but lower than the average strike rate of 21.2% and overwhelming Statcast numbers. The biggest problem is Buehler’s four-seater fastball, which was at times the dominant game in 2018-21, but the batters are reaching the quadruple this year. Speed has dropped to an average of 95.2 mph, though not well below the Buehler’s career average of 96.1 mph. The Dodgers could have a replacement for Buehler in a relatively short run, as Roberts said Andrew Heaney was preparing for another detox start on Tuesday and could be activated by IL for the Dodgers’s 19-game Guardians June. Los Angeles also has breaks on both Mondays and Thursdays, so a fifth start will not be immediately necessary in the short term. In the bigger picture, of course, losing Buehler for a significant amount of time will definitely increase the Dodgers’ focus on adding initial pitching on time. While Los Angeles has typically had strong results from this year’s rotation, pitching was already expected to be a target area, to add more depth and quality to the top five. Baseball President Andrew Friedman is not ashamed to add big names (including stars such as Max Scherzer or Yu Darvish) to the roster during the previous trade deadlines, so anything from in-depth additions to overproduction deals could be on table for the Dodgers before August 2nd. Buehler stays on the sidelines as soon as Clayton Kershaw returns from his own IL, leaving the Dodgers even less than the ideal rotation peak. Kershaw, Julio Urias, Tony Gonsolin, Tyler Anderson and Heaney are now in the top five, with Dustin May (TJ surgery) and Danny Duffy (tendon flexor surgery) expected to return sometime later in the season. . Pitchers like Grove, Ryan Pepiot and Mitch White also have some starts this season and could be called up again for more rotating tasks or possible relief roles depending on how the club chooses to develop any of these. launchers.
