Tyler Glasnow threw a three-inning, 57-pitch simulated game Friday at Dodger Stadium and is expected to return for Wednesday night’s game against the San Francisco Giants, giving an injury-ravaged rotation that had a major league-worst 8.22 ERA in the 15 games before the All-Star break a much-needed shot in the arm.
But once the ace comes back from a minor back injury, the Dodgers will have to determine the best way to keep the 6-foot-8 right-hander with a lengthy injury history healthy and sharp over the final 2½ months of the regular season and postseason.
“Honestly, I’m just going to manage him,” manager Dave Roberts said before Friday night’s game against the Boston Red Sox. “I don’t like the predetermined, you’re gonna throw three or four innings or 75 pitches.
“When he takes the mound, we’re expecting to win. If there’s a conversation that needs to be had or I hear something different, I’ll adjust. But for me, I’m going to manage him like any other pitcher. With Tyler, you just go out there and play baseball.”
Glasnow dealt with a litany of elbow and forearm problems after being traded from Pittsburgh to Tampa Bay in 2018, all of which culminated with Tommy John surgery in 2021. Even last season, as Glasnow set career highs in starts (21), innings (120) and strikeouts (162) with the Rays, he sat out two months because of an oblique injury.
Glasnow, who signed a five-year, $136.5-million extension with the Dodgers after he was acquired in December, went 8-5 with a 3.47 ERA and 143 strikeouts in his first 14 starts in which he threw 109 innings, 11 innings shy of his career high. The 18-day break between starts this month will ease Glasnow’s workload.
“It can’t hurt,” Glasnow said. “I was feeling good [before going on the injured list]. I was confident either way that I was going to be able to throw a lot of innings, but it’s definitely helpful.”
The Dodgers would prefer to keep Glasnow in the rotation for the rest of the season, with some extra rest between starts, rather than shut him down again in August.
“People could argue that an August shutdown might be beneficial to save bullets, but I don’t think there’s one way to go about it with these limits,” Roberts said. “I think he’s benefited from extra days between starts. More teams are doing that to shorten your workload over the course of the season.
“There’s a mental, psychological part of it, too. If you take three weeks off in August, and then for us to expect him to [return and] be dialed in … I don’t know if that’s fair. I believe in a player having skin in the game.”