⚾ Baseball Bytes: Depth and the Dodgers

L.A. built the deepest pitching staff money could buy — and it still wasn’t enough. Plus, a Windy City phenom eyes a 40-40 season and Colorado finally wins a series.

Welcome to Baseball Bytes^¹ — a column in which I point out several byte-sized pieces of information that jumped out to me from my various baseball spreadsheets. If you’ve noticed a Baseball Byte of your own, email me and I’ll feature it in a future column!

⚾ You (Literally) Can Never Have Too Much Pitching

Tyler Glasnow, Roki Sasaki and Blake Snell are among the big-name Dodger pitchers who are currently injured.

Remember the 2024-25 MLB offseason? When the Los Angeles Dodgers were the envy of the league — and the scourge of small-market fans — for scooping up every free agent and/or international signing that wasn’t nailed down, and causing a huge panic about competitive balance across baseball?

A lot of that had to do with a pitching staff that added 2023 NL Cy Young winner Blake Snell, prized Japanese ace Roki Sasaki, and relievers Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates to a group that already boasted such big names as Clayton Kershaw, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow — as well as guys like Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May, who’d been effective before when healthy, and one big wild-card named Shohei Ohtani, the batting MVP who was also potentially on track to pitch again sometime in 2025.

In terms of name value, talent and (most of all) depth, it was hard to imagine a group of pitchers more loaded with pedigree and promise. Indeed, FanGraphs’ preseason depth chart projections ranked the Dodgers’ pitching staff as the best in baseball for 2025, with the No. 1 rotation and No. 3 bullpen.

It wasn’t cheap to assemble, either: According to Spotrac, Los Angeles is spending $62.3 million on starters, second-most in MLB, and another $19.1 million on relievers, 13th-most. But it would be worth it — and make plenty of opposing fans go crazy all over again — if L.A.’s deep stable of arms could lead the team back to another Fall Classic in 2025.

And certainly, the Dodgers remain on the short list of championship contenders, with the best record in the National League West (36-24 when play commenced Tuesday) and a 12 percent chance to win the World Series per the Elo forecast.

But if you think it’s because of their army of pitchers… think again.