Dodgers Rotation

First of all, before I get into today’s topic, the deal reported yesterday became official today, as the Dodgers signed Orlando Hudson to a 1 year 3.4 million dollar deal.  Hudson, who made $6.2 last year, was looking for a deal in the $10 million range, but settled for a significant pay cut from last season.

Now, on to todays topic, the Dodger rotation.  I’ve heard a lot of talks about how the Dodgers may have the hitting this season (especially if we resign Manny) but with the losses of Lowe and Penny, our rotation would be significantly diminished.  While losing those 2 arms won’t help, but they mght not hurt us as much as most may think.

We’ll start with our new ace, well not necessarily new to us, but new to the “ace” role, Chad Billingsley.   This will be his first season as our #1 pitcher and the 24 year old righty is coming off his best season and I think he’ll only get better.  He does have some control problems at times, but he strikes out more than a batter per inning.  The main concern for Billingsley this season will be how well he’s healed from the broken leg he suffered in the offseason.  He reported no pain when throwing off the mound recently, and hopefully he’s at 100% by opening day.

Our likely #2 will be Hiroki Kuroda.  Last year was his “rookie” year in the majors after playing in Japan and it took him a little bit to get used to MLB hitting, but he closed the season out well, which bodes well for this season.  During the months of August and September he posted ERAs of 2.29 and 2.96, and had two good starts in the playoffs, both wins, including 6 1/3 shutout innings against the Cubs.  The only knocks on him are his age, 33, and the fact that he usually only goes about 6 innings, but I look for him to be a solid #2.

Our #3 is likely to be Clayton Kershaw.  While his numbers don’t necessarily stand out in any way, he’s only 20 years old, and will be turning 21 before the season.  If you compare him to other young lefties, his rookie year was very similar to Tim Lincecum’s rookie year, and we all know Lincecum won the Cy in his 2nd season.  The thing about Kershaw is that he was 3 years younger than Lincecum in his rookie season, and could quite possibly have more upside.  Now, I’m not guarenteeing a Cy for Kershaw this season, but seeing a jump like we saw with Lincecum last season wouldn’t surprise me, especially from a guy who’s been compared to Sandy Koufax while in the minors.  Expect huge things from Kershaw.

1-3 we’re solid, but #4 we’ll turn to vet Randy Wolf.  I don’t really know what to expect from Wolf this season.  He’s an average pitcher who can hopefully eat up some innings and hopefully post a .500 record for us.  He did close out 2008 on fire, going 4-1 with a 2.23 ERA in September, and who knows, maybe he figured something out that he can use this season, but I’m just hoping for decent outings.

Finally, our #5 will have a lot of competition.  Leading the way will most likley be Jason Schmidt, if he’s healthy.  Would be nice if he was, seeing as we’ve been paying him top dollar for 6 starts over 2 seasons.  If he comes back healthy and to the form he was in SF, he could be the best #5 in the league.  If not, we might be stuck with Eric Milton or Jeff Weaver.  Milton is coming off Tommy John surgery and wasn’t really good the last 3 seasons he played.  Weaver hasn’t been much better, but the last time he was a Dodger in 2005, he was actually respectable. 

Overall, we actually may have a better rotation than we did last year, when you consider that we didn’t really have Penny long last year anyway, so we”re really only losing Lowe, and improvements to Billingsley, Kuroda, and Kershaw may make up for the loss.  We definitely have question marks in the 4 and 5, but we have 4, maybe 5 pitchers competing for 2 spots and hopefully they’ll step up.  I’m really looking forward to this season and seeing what our young pitchers can do, especially Kershaw.

View Falc618's Profile      Subscribe via RSS