Dodgers: What will the rotation look like in three years?

Predicting the Los Angeles Dodgers rotation for the 2023 season.

The time following the MLB Draft always represents a period to think ahead. What will the Los Angeles Dodgers roster look like in three years? What will the roster look like in five years?

Hopefully, for the scouting department, some of the names we saw called on draft night are key pieces in the lineup down the road. With the Dodgers prioritizing college-age pitching, “down the road” might be just around the corner.

As we wait for the 2020 season to begin, I thought it would be fun to project what the Dodgers rotation will look like in 2023.

It’s not easy to predict three years into the future; obviously, players come and go, free agent signings are made, trades are orchestrated. As an example, look at the Dodgers rotation from three years back (based on number of starts):

1. Clayton Kershaw
2. Alex Wood
3. Rich Hill
4. Kenta Maeda
5. Hyun-Jin Ryu

Only Alex Wood and Clayton Kershaw remain. Both Kenta Maeda and Hyun-Jin Ryu left Los Angeles this past offseason. The best pitching prospect in the Dodgers system in 2017 was Jose De Leon, with Walker Buehler and Jordan Sheffield the next pitchers appearing on the list. Only Buehler is a fixture in the rotation today.

So while it’s difficult to predict the future, for the fun of it, let’s try to come up with a rotation for the 2023 season with optimistic projections for the current group of young arms in the Dodgers system.