1 biggest X-Factor in 2022 Los Angeles Dodgers season

The Los Angeles Dodgers, entering 2022, have a rotation problem.

Walker Buehler and Julio Urías, their pair of 2021 stalwarts, are both coming off career-highs in innings pitched by fairly wide margins. Urías’ previous regular-season high was 79.2 (with an extra 3.2 in that postseason, 2019). This season? 185.2, plus an additional 15 in October. Buehler? He posted 226 total innings in 2021 (regular and postseason combined), beating a career high of 195 combined (2019).

Max Scherzer, who helped stabilize things in the season’s second half, has very much departed to the East Coast Dodgers (sorry for dignifying Steve Cohen’s vision there). Clayton Kershaw is, at this moment, not under contract. Tony Gonsolin took a step back from Rookie of the Year contention. David Price never proved durable after a year away from the game. Andrew Heaney might be the Opening Day No. 3 starter, the main problem with that being he’s Andrew Heaney.

But, as bleak as things seem now, there’s a midseason savior waiting in the wings.

And though it would be unfair to demand too much from Dustin May in his very first “training wheels” starts after completing Tommy John rehab, how well or poorly he performs — combined with a trade deadline acquisition — could determine the 2022 Dodgers’ ceiling.

Dustin May’s 2022 Tommy John surgery rehab is the Dodgers’ No.1 X-Factor

Tommy John rehabs vary significantly from patient to patient. May could be back in action 12 months out from his surgery date, looking near-ready (that was May 11, FWIW). He could take the full 15 months and still not look right closer to 18.

Uncertainty is what makes an X-Factor an X-Factor, after all.

If May steps to the mound again in May or June, then reawakens the confident force he was becoming last spring before his 25th birthday (Sept. 6, for those counting), he could be the Dodgers’ livest arm entering the postseason. If things don’t go quite as smoothly with his control and command, often the two final pieces of the puzzle to return, it might be 2023 before we see him doing anything approaching this again.

Last we heard from May, his rehabilitation was going well, though the length of the process seemed daunting. Of course, things only got more difficult in December when MLB’s owners locked out the league’s players, cutting off access to team doctors and those with intimate knowledge of the first six months of May’s rehab plan.

Around Thanksgiving, May seemed confident but in a bit of a difficult place when he was forced to conceive of the totality of his time away from his teammates:

“Probably the biggest struggle that I’ve faced is just knowing that there’s so much time in between,” said May. “Knowing that I have to take off about 14 to 15 months from being back with the squad is probably the biggest thing for me cause I’ve never really taken that much time off.The first day throwing it felt something like a forbidden fruit. Like you’re not supposed to be doing this yet because I’d been told for so long ‘don’t do this, don’t do this’ so being able to do it for the first time, it felt really foreign. But after the first few throws, it was just like riding a bike.”

If and when the time comes for May to hit a big-league mound at full strength, the results should be special.

How soon that day comes might be the single biggest factor in the 2022 Dodgers’ stretch run.

4 star free agents Dodgers can sign when lockout ends

The Los Angeles Dodgers will have their pick of the litter and an overflowing budget when the MLB lockout ends. Who will they sign?