major league

If this World Series is going to turn into a food fight about the economics of baseball, Dave Roberts tossed the first meatball.

The Dodgers had just been presented with the National League Championship trophy. Roberts, the Dodgers’ manager, had something to say to a sellout crowd at Dodger Stadium, and to an audience watching on national television.

“They said the Dodgers are ruining baseball,” Roberts hollered. “Let’s get four more wins and really ruin baseball.”

The Dodgers had just vanquished the Milwaukee Brewers, a team that did everything right, with four starting pitchers whose contracts total $1.35 billion.

The Brewers led the major leagues in victories this year. They have made the playoffs seven times in the past eight years, and yet their previous manager and general manager fled for big cities, in the hope of applying small-market smarts to teams with large-market resources.

The Dodgers will spend half a billion dollars on player payroll and luxury tax payments this year, a figure that the Brewers and other small-market teams might never spend in this lifetime, or the next one.

The Brewers will make about $35 million in local television rights this year. The Dodgers make 10 times that much — and they’ll make more than $500 million per year by the end of their SportsNet LA contract in 2038.

Is revenue disparity a problem for the sport?

The owners say yes. They are expected to push for a salary cap in next year’s collective bargaining negotiations. A cap is anathema to the players’ union. At the All-Star Game, union executive director Tony Clark called a cap “institutionalized collusion.”

The union could say, yes, revenue disparity is the big issue and propose something besides a cap.

But that is not what the union is saying. The union does not agree that revenue disparity is the issue, at least to the extent that the players should participate in solving it. Put another way: Tarik Skubal should not get less than market value in free agency to appease the owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

For the most part, the union believes the owners should resolve the issue among themselves.

And the fundamental difference might be this: To most of the owners, the Dodgers’ spending is the big problem, or at least the symptom of a big problem. This was Commissioner Rob Manfred at the owners’ meetings last February: “Do people perceive that the playing field is balanced and fair and/or do people believe that money dictates who wins?”

To the union, the problem is not one of perception. The union believes the problem is that the Dodgers’ spending exposes other owners who would love a salary cap that would give them cover — not to mention cost certainty that could increase profits and franchise values.

“Players across the league show up every day ready to compete and ready to win,” Clark told The Times. “Excuses aren’t tolerated between the lines, and they shouldn’t be accepted outside them either.

“When decision-makers off the field mirror the competitive drive exhibited on it, everybody wins and baseball’s future is limitless. Fans and players alike deserve — and should demand — far more accountability from those to whom much is given.”

Tony Clark, executive director of the MLB Players’ Assn., speaks during a news conference in New York in March 2022.

(Richard Drew / Associated Press)

In its annual estimates, Forbes had the Dodgers’ revenue last season at a league-leading $752 million and the Pirates’ revenue at $326 million. The Pirates turned a profit of $47 million and the Dodgers turned a profit of $21 million, according to those estimates.

The Pirates — and other small-market teams — make more than $100 million each year in their equal split of league revenue (national and international broadcast rights, for instance, and merchandising and licensing) and revenue shared by the Dodgers and other large-market teams. That means the Pirates can cover their player payroll before selling a single ticket, beer, or Primanti sandwich stuffed with meat, cheese and fries.

“The current system is designed so larger markets share massive amounts of revenue with smaller markets to help level the playing field,” Clark said. “Small-market teams have other built-in advantages, and we’ve proposed more in bargaining — and will again.”

The union would be delighted to get a salary floor — that is, a minimum team payroll. The owners would do that if the union agreed to a maximum team payroll — that is, a salary cap.

Whether the owners believe recent and potential future changes — among them a draft lottery, more favorable draft-pick compensation for small-market teams losing free agents, providing additional draft picks for teams that promote prospects sooner and for small-market teams that win — can begin to mitigate revenue disparity is uncertain. Whether the players can condition revenue sharing on team progress also is uncertain.

And, perhaps most critically to owners, the collapse of the cable ecosystem means many teams have lost local television revenue that might not ever bounce completely back, even if Manfred can deliver on his proposed “all teams, all the time, in one place” service.

Whatever the issues might be, fans are not throwing up their hands and walking away. The league sold more tickets this year than in any year since 2017. Almost every week brought an announcement from ESPN, Fox or TNT about a ratings increase, and the league did not complain about the outstanding ratings the Dodgers and New York Yankees attracted in last year’s World Series.

Dodgers fans celebrate after Shohei Ohtani hits the second of his three home runs in Game 4 of the NLCS against the Brewers at Dodger Stadium on Oct. 17.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

Payroll is under the control of an owner. Market size is not.

Of the top 15 teams in market size, six made the playoffs. Of the bottom 15 teams in market size, six made the playoffs.

Is that a reasonable exhibition of competitive balance? Would the Dodgers winning the World Series in back-to-back years define competitive imbalance, even if they would become the first team in 25 years to repeat? The only other team currently dedicated to spending like the Dodgers — the New York Mets — has not won the World Series in 39 years.

The Kansas City Chiefs have played in the Super Bowl five times in six years, winning three times. That is because they have Patrick Mahomes, not because the NFL has a salary cap.

In the past three years, the Dodgers are the only team to appear in the final four twice — more diversity than in the final four in the NFL, NBA or NHL, each of which has a salary cap.

The league used to happily distribute information like that. After the winter chants about the Dodgers ruining baseball, the league started talking about how no small-market team had won the World Series in 10 years.

Payroll itself should not define competitive balance, but that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if an owner decides competing with the Dodgers would be no less futile by spending another $25 million on players.

It is premature to count heads now. However, at this point, you wonder whether any team besides the Dodgers and Mets would lobby against the league pursuing a salary cap in negotiations. If the owners really want a salary cap, they need to be prepared to do what the NHL did to get one: shut down the league for an entire season.

We should be talking about the magic of Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts. Instead, on its grandest stage, the talk around baseball will be all about whether its most popular team is ruining the game to the point of depriving us of it come 2027. Well done, everyone.

In the opening moments of a new film called “Diamond Diplomacy,” Shohei Ohtani holds the ball and Mike Trout holds a bat. These are the dramatic final moments of the 2023 World Baseball Classic.

The film puts those moments on pause to share the long and complex relationship between the United States and Japan through the prism of baseball, and through the stories of four Japanese players — Ohtani included — and their journeys to the major leagues.

Baseball has been a national pastime in both nations for more than a century. A Japanese publishing magnate sponsored a 1934 barnstorming tour led by Babe Ruth. Under former owners Walter and Peter O’Malley, the Dodgers were at the forefront of tours to Japan and elsewhere.

In 1946, however, amid the aftermath of World War II, the United States government funded a tour by the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. Director Yuriko Gamo Romer features archival footage from that tour prominently in her film.

“I thought it was remarkable,” she said, “that the U.S. government decided, ‘Oh, we should send a baseball team to Japan to help repair relations and for goodwill.’ ”

On the home front, Romer shows how Ruth barnstormed Central California in 1927, a decade and a half before the U.S. government forced citizens of Japanese ancestry into internment camps there. Teams and leagues sprouted within the camps, an arrangement described by one player as “baseball behind barbed wire.”

The film also relates how, even after World War II ended, Japanese Americans were often unwelcome in their old neighborhoods, and Japanese baseball leagues sprung up like the Negro Leagues.

In 1964, the San Francisco Giants made pitcher Masanori Murakami the first Japanese player in Major League Baseball, but he yielded to pressure to return to his homeland two years later.

San Francisco Giants pitcher Masanori Murakami, shown on the a pro baseball field in 1964, was the first Japanese athlete to play in Major League Baseball.

(Associated Press)

In 1995, when pitcher Hideo Nomo signed with the Dodgers, he had to retire from Japanese baseball to do so. (The film contains footage of legendary Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda teaching Nomo to say, “I bleed Dodger blue.”)

Now, star Japanese players regularly join the majors. In that 2023 WBC, as the film shows at its end, Ohtani left his first big imprint on the international game by striking out Trout to deliver victory to Japan over the United States.

On Friday, Ohtani powered the Dodgers into the World Series with perhaps the greatest game by any player in major league history.

In previous generations, author Robert Whiting says in the film, hardly any American could name a prominent Japanese figure, in baseball or otherwise. Today, Ohtani’s jersey is baseball’s best seller, and he is a cultural icon on and off the field, here and in Japan.

Fans cheer as Dodgers pitcher Shohei Ohtani hits his third home run during Game 4 of the NLCS against the Milwaukee Brewers on Friday at Dodger Stadium.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

“Suddenly, a Japanese face is the face of Major League Baseball in the United States,” Romer said. “People here can buy bottles of cold Japanese tea that have Shohei’s face on it.

“I know people who don’t care about baseball one iota and they’re like, ‘oh, yeah, I know who that is.’”

“Diamond Diplomacy” will show on Tuesday at 5 p.m. at the Newport Beach Film Festival. For more information, visit newportbeachfilmfest.com.

The Dodgers are not the norm in baseball. For the majority of teams in the major leagues, the last week of the regular season is the last week until spring training.

As the Angels played out their final week, the Angel Stadium store featured a “Thank You Fans” sale, with up to 50% off caps, T-shirts, polo shirts, jackets, even authentic Mike Trout jerseys.

Inside the clubhouse, the reminders for players had the feel of the final week of school: return your team-issued iPad; order your gloves for next season; take your exit physical.

As the Dodgers play out their final week of the regular season, on the road, the Dodger Stadium store is stocking up on blue “October Baseball” T-shirts, the same ones the players wore last week, when they clinched a postseason spot.

On Thursday, the Dodgers clinched the National League West, again. On Tuesday, the Dodgers will make their 13th consecutive postseason appearance, one shy of the major league record. Only once in those 13 seasons did the Dodgers fail to win the NL West: in 2021, when they won 106 games and the San Francisco Giants won 107.

For the Angels and their decorated closer, and for 17 other teams, Tuesday will be the second day of the offseason. That is the norm in baseball, at least outside Chavez Ravine, the Bronx, and recently Milwaukee.

Kenley Jansen played October baseball for the Dodgers from 2013-21, and for the Atlanta Braves in 2022.

In 2023, the first time in 11 years Jansen did not appear in the postseason, his family alerted him that the Dodgers’ playoff opener was on television, with good friend Clayton Kershaw pitching.

Jansen had no interest in watching.

“I’m like, guys, I’m not on the Dodgers anymore,’ ” he said this week at Angel Stadium.

He wanted to be around his family. His friends and family members wanted to be around him, which they assumed meant around baseball.

“I get it,” he said. “I still feel like I’m going to get those calls: Did you watch that game?”

He appreciates how difficult it is to get to the playoffs. In his first two full seasons, the Dodgers vs. the rest of the league at Dodger Stadium was a sideshow to the main event: Frank McCourt vs. Major League Baseball in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del.

Never mind whether the Dodgers would make the playoffs. Would the players get paid?

“We went from the bankrupt Dodgers to getting into the playoffs every year,” Jansen said. “I think it was the core group, the leadership that we had, plus the front office and the ownership wanting to win a championship every year. They make it competitive.

“They’ve got to keep that train going.”

Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, center, celebrates with teammates in the locker room after the Dodgers defeated the Arizona Diamondbacks on Thursday to clinch the NL West division title.

(Darryl Webb / Associated Press)

In Anaheim, for the first time in 50 years, the Angels are bound for a second consecutive last-place finish. Their last postseason appearance: 11 years ago. Their last winning record: 10 years ago.

This playoff drought included the stretch in which Trout and Shohei Ohtani played together. The Dodgers are more — much more — than Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman.

“For me, on the other side now, I see how hard it is to get in the playoffs,” Jansen said. “It’s not easy. You’ve got to have depth — not only here in the big leagues, but depth in the system — to give yourself a chance to win the division.”

It’s too bad the Dodgers and Angels could not complete a trade to get Jansen back to Los Angeles, where he would immediately have become the Dodgers’ most reliable right-handed reliever.

Jansen has a 2.64 ERA this season, and he has converted 28 of 29 save opportunities. He hasn’t given up a hit in more than a month.

But the Angels didn’t sell at the trade deadline, declaring they were in serious contention without buying any serious upgrades.

Dodgers fans should take it from Jansen: Don’t take this golden era for granted. Take a few days to appreciate it. On Wednesday, Jansen said, he’ll start his offseason workouts.

On Tuesday, the Dodgers will start the playoffs, trying to become baseball’s first back-to-back champions in 25 years. The percentages are not in their favor: As of Thursday, Baseball Prospectus gives the Dodgers a 9.6% chance to win the World Series, a smaller chance than the Milwaukee Brewers, New York Yankees, Philadelphia Phillies and Seattle Mariners.

The Angels have been so bad for so long that a division championship would be cause for great celebration. The Dodgers have been so good for so long that nothing but a World Series championship would suffice.

And so, on Tuesday, the days of gratitude can end, and Dodgers fans can resume reflexively criticizing their manager and grimacing about whether they can trust anyone in their bullpen.

If you’re a Dodgers fan, of course, you would love to see the Dodgers win the World Series again. If you’re a baseball fan above all, though, you ought to be pulling for the Milwaukee Brewers.

The Dodgers served as a convenient bogeyman for owners of many other major league teams last winter. To fans pointing a collective finger at the owner of their local team, all too many of those owners pointed a finger in our direction: It’s not us. It’s them.

“The Dodgers are the greatest poster children we could’ve had for how something has to change,” Colorado Rockies owner Dick Monfort told the Denver Gazette last March.

How, those owners shrugged, can we compete against a team playing in a major market and spending half a billion dollars on a star-studded roster?

The Dodgers are 58-40.

The Brewers play in the smallest market in the major leagues — Sacramento included, Denver definitely included.

The Brewers are 57-40.

This is not about a sprinkling of fairy dust. The Brewers have made the playoffs six times in the past seven years, prospering even beyond the financially motivated departures of star shortstop Willy Adames, Cy Young winner Corbin Burnes and two-time National League reliever of the year Devin Williams, and even after manager Craig Counsell and president of baseball operations David Stearns left for teams in major markets.

“It’s not really an abnormal year,” said designated hitter Christian Yelich, the Brewers’ franchise anchor. “Each year, we’re picked to finish last or second-to-last in our division, regardless of what happened the year before.”

The Brewers cannot pay the going rate for power, so they do not try. Of the free agents signed by Milwaukee last winter, the most expensive one in the lineup for Friday’s victory at Dodger Stadium: outfielder Jake Bauers, signed for $1.4 million. Shortstop Joey Ortiz was obtained in the trade of Burnes; third baseman Caleb Durbin was acquired in the trade of Williams.

The Brewers rank in the bottom 10 in the majors in home runs, but they rank in the top 10 in walks, stolen bases, sacrifice bunts and fewest strikeouts.

Milwaukee’s Caleb Durbin celebrates after hitting a solo home run in the seventh inning of a 2-0 win over the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium on Friday night.

(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)

“We know what we are,” Yelich said. “We know we’re not going to have a lineup full of guys that hit 30 homers. You’ve got to force stuff to happen sometimes and try to put pressure on the other team and try to manufacture runs any way you can.”

They are one of two teams — the Detroit Tigers are the other — to rank among the top 10 in runs scored and in earned-run average. No NL team has given up fewer runs than the Brewers.

The Dodgers lead the majors in runs scored. In four games against Milwaukee, the Dodgers have scored a total of four runs.

“They can really pitch,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “The ’pen is lights out. They catch it. They play good defense. In totality, they do a good job of preventing runs.”

Whether they can do a good job of deterring a lockout, well, that might be a whole other ballgame.

The collective bargaining agreement expires after next season. The owners have not explicitly stated a salary cap is their goal but, at least the way the players’ union sees it, why else would commissioner Rob Manfred already be talking about a lockout as a means to an end?

At the All-Star Game, union chief Tony Clark blasted the concept of a salary cap.

“This is not about competitive balance,” Clark said. “This is institutionalized collusion.”

A salary cap would provide owners with cost certainty and potential increases in franchise values, not that fans would care much about either. So, to the extent that owners might settle on a talking point in negotiations, what Manfred said at the All-Star Game would be it: “There are fans in a lot of our markets who feel like we have a competitive balance problem.”

If you’re the union, you’ll say MLB has not had a repeat champion in 25 years. If you’re an owner, you’ll say no small-market team has won the World Series in 10 years.

If you’re the union, you’ll say expanded playoffs offer every team the chance to win a wild-card spot and get hot in October, as the 84-win Arizona Diamondbacks did two years ago. But, should the Brewers win the World Series this year, owners certainly would call it the exception that proves the rule.

Over the past seven years, the Brewers have made the playoffs as many times as the Yankees have. Yet, for all their success in the regular season, the Brewers have not won a postseason series since 2018.

Baseball has not lost a regular season game to a work stoppage since 1995, the last time the owners pushed hard for a salary cap. They might do so again next year, which would jeopardize the 2027 season, but to argue small markets need a salary cap to win after the team in the smallest market won the World Series might ring hollow.

If the Brewers’ success could derail the potential disaster that would be a work stoppage, America ought to be rooting on The Miz.

ATLANTA — The center fielder for the Dodgers’ Class A Great Lakes affiliate is a former first-round draft pick. The other two outfielders were selected for the Futures Game.

Who’s the best outfielder on the team?

“We’re all good, brother,” said the left fielder, Josue De Paula. “We’ve all got talent. We all excel somewhere.

“Us together? It’s a dream squad. I don’t feel like you see that much talent that often.”

De Paula flashed his considerable talent Saturday, hitting a three-run homer that decided the National League’s 4-2 victory over the American League and earned him the Futures Game most valuable player award.

The only other Dodgers prospect to win that award: infielder Chin-Lung Hu, in 2007.

“This is definitely motivating for me,” De Paula said. “Mentally, it was a big moment, to prove, especially to myself, who I really am.”

De Paula’s home run traveled 416 feet, triggering a round of fireworks in the sky and a lump in De Paula’s throat as he crossed home plate.

“I was overtaken by emotion,” he said, “especially doing it in front of my dad.”

His father lives in New York City. The Midwest League is far away.

Perhaps the major leagues are not so far away. De Paula is 20, but he is in his fourth pro season. The Dodgers signed him out of the Dominican Republic, but he was born in New York City and he is a second cousin of former NBA All-Star Stephon Marbury.

“Baseball called me,” De Paula said. “I fell in love with it at a young age.”

Zyhir Hope, the Great Lakes right fielder, also appeared in the Futures Game. He singled ahead of De Paula and scored on the home run, so he was waiting at home plate to congratulate De Paula.

“We do it often,” De Paula said, smiling.

Hope, also 20, smiled when asked what he liked about De Paula’s game.

“Everything,” he said. “He takes it easily. He’s calm, relaxed and laid back, but he works hard. He’s a great dude.”

Before the season, Baseball Prospectus ranked De Paula and Hope among the top 10 prospects in baseball. Currently, MLB Pipeline ranks both among the top 40.

De Paula offers power, speed, and advanced plate discipline, although scouts wonder whether he can stick in left field or might need to try first base or designated hitter. Hope has advanced from a good-fielding prospect with uncertain hitting skills in the Chicago Cubs’ system — the Dodgers got him in the Michael Busch trade — to a gap hitter with speed.

This is the time of year, of course, where contenders trade prospects to fill major league needs. Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, rarely trades his top prospects, and De Paula ranks No. 1 in the Dodgers’ farm system. On the other hand, the Dodgers need pitching help.

“I do want to get to L.A. I hope that’s in God’s plans,” De Paula said. “At the end of the day, we never make the decisions. We’ve just got to focus on what we need to do on the field and whatever happens, happens.

“But I really do hope I become a Dodger and I stay there for a very long time.”

His smile has brightened the locker room, his bat has energized a once-impotent segment of the lineup and his speed has transformed their offense.

Hyeseong Kim belongs in the major leagues.

Manager Dave Roberts was asked the other night about the “difficult decision” the Dodgers will have to make on Kim when utilityman Tommy Edman and outfielder Teoscar Hernández return from the injured list in the next couple of weeks, but nothing about this decision should be difficult.

Kim will still belong in the major leagues.

There won’t be enough at-bats for him?

The Dodgers have to find them.

He can gain more experience in the minors?

A 26-year-old who played seven-plus seasons in the Korean Baseball Organization before he signed with the Dodgers, Kim isn’t a typical rookie.

President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said part of the reason catcher Dalton Rushing was called up this week was because of the competition in the National League West?

The same logic should be applied to Kim’s situation.

Make liberal use of the injured list. Release Chris Taylor. Do whatever is necessary for Kim to remain in Los Angeles.

“How he’s playing,” Roberts acknowledged, “certainly helps his case.”

Shohei Ohtani homered twice in a 19-2 victory over the Athletics at Dodger Stadium on Thursday night. Both times, Kim was on base.

Ohtani, who leads off for the Dodgers, drove in only 10 runs in his first 30 games of the season. The bottom of the order wasn’t hitting or drawing walks

In the first 12 games Ohtani played since Kim was called up from triple-A Oklahoma City, Ohtani collected 18 runs batted in.

Kim batted eighth or ninth in each of the eight games he started through Thursday, and he’d already been driven home by Ohtani five times. The only player Ohtani has driven in more this season: Ohtani.

“A lot easier to pitch to Shohei when nobody’s on base,” Roberts said. “Recently, certainly with Kim and his ability to get on base, there’s always traffic.”

Kim entered the Freeway Series opener on Friday batting .429, a pleasant surprise considering he looked completely overmatched at the plate in spring training. His ability to make contact has enhanced his greatest weapon, his legs.

“He’s really talented,” third baseman Max Muncy said. “He can do a lot of really special things that you can’t see from a lot of players.”

That game-changing speed was on display in just his second major league game when he was deployed as a ninth-inning pinch runner with a one-run deficit against the Atlanta Braves at Truist Park. Kim stole second base and reached third on a dropped third strike, positioning him within 90 feet of the tying run. The next two batters struck out and the Dodgers lost the game, but the cameo performance was a preview of what was to come.

In his first 12 major league games, Kim stole three bases and plated nine runs. Three of his first 12 hits were infield hits.

“I tried to figure out what my role is in this organization, and I’m just trying to control what I can control,” Kim said through an interpreter.

Dodgers coaches also believe Kim’s speed has influenced how opponents attack Ohtani. One particular example that was cited was Ohtani’s three-run, ninth-inning home run in a 14-11 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks on May 9.

Kim was on second base and Michael Conforto was on first when Ohtani came to the plate with one out and the score level, 11-11. Walking Ohtani would have moved the go-ahead run to third base, and with Kim’s speed, any ball put in play by the next batter would have likely resulted in a run. Diamondbacks reliever Ryan Thompson pitched to Ohtani, who launched a 1-2 pitch into the stands in right-center.

“With the speed dynamic [of Kim], it creates stress,” Roberts said. “He can steal a base, go first to third. It certainly opens some things up for the top of the order.”

The Dodgers have scored an average of 7.3 runs per game since Kim joined the team. In the process, he’s become a beloved figure in the clubhouse, overcoming a language barrier to form bonds with a wide range of players that includes everyone from Ohtani to Mookie Betts.

“That started in spring training,” Muncy said. “He was there with a couple of us and just immediately fit right in. He likes to have fun. He’s always smiling, he’s always laughing. He’s really fun to have out there.”

With a three-year deal that could be extended by the Dodgers for an additional two seasons, Kim figures to be a part of their future. But he’s already a reason for why they’re clicking now, and the returns of Edman and Hernández shouldn’t change that.

Like pretty much every other time the Dodgers have found themselves in a self-made mess, the task of downplaying a major problem once again was made the responsibility of manager Dave Roberts.

So, in the aftermath of a deflating 11-1 defeat by the Oakland Athletics on Tuesday night, Roberts trudged into the interview room at Dodger Stadium and applied a good old Stan Kasten spin to Roki Sasaki’s move to the 15-day injured list.

The point relayed by Roberts was basically this: Sasaki underwhelmed in his eight major league starts because of a shoulder pain that he kept secret from the Dodgers “for the last weeks,” and not because the 23-year-old rookie right-hander wasn’t as good as they previously thought.

“He hasn’t been as productive as he would have liked because he was compromised,” said Roberts, who added that Sasaki revealed his condition to the team after his most recent start.

The explanation raised an equally alarming possibility, however.

If Roberts’ story was accurate, and Sasaki experienced a shoulder impingement to the one that slowed him down last year in Japan, wouldn’t that point to a chronic problem?

As it was, Sasaki was already viewed as a high injury risk. He never remained healthy for an entire season with the Chiba Lotte Marines.

At this point, what’s worse? That Sasaki’s lack of control and decline in fastball velocity were because of a chronic shoulder issue? Or because he just was too raw to compete in the major leagues?

Either scenario would be problematic.

So, what now?

As much as the Dodgers sold Sasaki on how they could one day guide him to a Cy Young Award, his future isn’t their only priority. They also have to consider what’s best for their team, which is positioned to become baseball’s first repeat champion in a quarter century.

Even if the Dodgers acknowledge that Sasaki is more of a long-term project than a short-term solution and want to send him to the minor leagues when he returns, they might not have the luxury of doing so. They have signed four potential frontline pitchers in the last two years, and three of them are currently on the injured list — Sasaki, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow. The other, two-way player Shohei Ohtani, isn’t expected to pitch until after the All-Star break.

Snell was examined by a team doctor on Tuesday but the team didn’t provide any details about his condition. Glasnow played catch but Roberts didn’t provide a timeline for his return.

The rotation is in such a state of ruin that not only were the Dodgers forced to start Landon Knack on Tuesday, they were desperately awaiting the return of 37-year-old Clayton Kershaw four days later.

Roberts described Sasaki’s injury as “benign” but didn’t say when he might resume throwing. The manager insisted there were no thoughts of sending him to the minors, despite Sasaki posting a 4.72 earned-run average and completing six innings in just one start.

“I think our goal is to get him healthy, get him strong, make sure his delivery is sound for him to pitch for us,” Roberts said.

In other words, Sasaki will return to the mound in the major leagues. He will have to gain familiarity with low-quality American baseballs in the major leagues. He will have to become more comfortable with the pitch clock in the major leagues. He will have to strengthen his body to prevent future injuries in the major leagues. He will have to learn to throw something other than a fastball, forkball and slider in the major leagues.

The Dodgers knew Sasaki would require an adjustment period but they couldn’t have imagined anything this drastic.

The introductory news conference they staged for Sasaki in January was matched in scale in recent years only by Ohtani’s and Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s. That was where president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman declared Sasaki would start the season in the Dodgers’ rotation and general manager Brandon Gomes compared him to Paul Skenes of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Back then, the Dodgers’ plan for Sasaki was simple: Insert him into the rotation and watch him develop into one of the best pitchers in baseball.

Sasaki can still become everything the Dodgers envisioned, but his path to greatness has become infinitely more complicated. Roberts remained characteristically upbeat, saying Sasaki concealed his shoulder problems from the team not because he was selfish but because he didn’t want to let down an injury-ravaged team.

“He’s a great teammate,” Roberts said.

With his rotation crumbling, Roberts didn’t have the luxury of viewing the situation any other way.