Dodgers: Pros and Cons of signing Trevor Bauer next offseason

Pro of signing Trevor Bauer: Depth, depth, depth

You can never have enough pitching. Isn’t that the adage baseball fans and management staff are taught from an early age? Well, it’s true. Just when you think you have a deep enough staff to withstand the rigors of a baseball season, the injury bug sneaks through a crack and infests the entire foundation.

The Dodgers will enter the 2021 season with Clayton Kershaw and David Price on the books, along with Walker Buehler, Julio Urias, and Ross Stripling still on team-controlled contracts. Prospects Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin are not far from being potential full-time options in the rotation. It seems as if Los Angeles is loaded with arms.

However, for a team competing to a win a championship, a rotation is as deep as the starters who you trust to make a postseason appearance. It’s debatable who the best starter behind Kershaw, Buehler, and Price would be to start in a playoff game. Let’s not forget Price will also be 36-years-old by next season.

Adding Trevor Bauer gives the Dodgers depth at the top of their rotation, while also providing them an extra arm who can eat up innings and reduce the expectations for pitchers like May, Gonsolin, Urias, and Stripling to outperform.

And if a run of injuries occurs, especially given the challenging schedule expectations of potentially extending the 2020 season to make up for lost time, it’s possible Bauer, who has pitched at lest 175 innings for five straight years, becomes a necessary piece.