Blake Snell's stellar rehab start officially starts countdown on this Dodgers pitcher

Blake Snell made his second rehab appearance with the Single-A Ontario Tower Buzzers on Tuesday and, to no one's surprise, he dominated. He pitched three clean innings, only giving up one hit and no walks while striking out six.

It's far from the end of his rehab assignment, given that he missed spring training, but it's a huge step toward his eventual return, at which point the Dodgers will have a decision to make.

The rotation currently stands at six men — Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, Shohei Ohtani, Justin Wrobleski, Emmet Sheehan, and Roki Sasaki — and we'd think that the Dodgers will prefer to keep it that way when Snell comes back. So who's getting the bump?

Based on almost every metric, it should be Sasaki, but we all know the Dodgers aren't going to go there. That leaves Wrobleski and Sheehan, but it really just leaves Sheehan.

Wrobleski has been stellar through five appearances (four starts) and is the Dodgers' second-most valuable pitcher by bWAR behind only Shohei Ohtani, while Sheehan has battled velocity issues through his first five starts. He was excellent his last time out — 6 1/3 innings, one run, one walk, 10 strikeouts against the Cubs — but at this point it seems like he may be fighting to stay on the roster as a long reliever.

Emmet Sheehan is Dodgers' prime candidate to be pushed out of the rotation when Blake Snell returns

Sheehan will get at least one more start before Snell is ready to come off the IL (Friday night against the Cardinals), and all eyes will be on his fastball velocity. It dropped as low as 91.8 MPH during spring training, sat at 94 in his first regular season start, and was back to 94 in his latest. He averaged 95.6 last year. He found ways to be effective without it, leaning more heavily on his slider against the Cubs, but either sending Sheehan to the bullpen or down to Triple-A to workshop his mechanics could do him some good.

The only mark against Wrobleski may be his lack of swing-and-miss stuff. He's pitched 3 2/3 more innings than Sheehan, but has 13 fewer strikeouts. There's nothing wrong with inducing contact if it results in an out, but he may not always be so lucky.

The Dodgers have been able to give a number of fringier players all over the roster some much-needed playing in the absence of some of their biggest stars (Snell, but also Mookie Betts, Kiké Hernández, and Tommy Edman), but roster crunches are looming.

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