Michael Kopech’s first rehab outing in return to Dodgers was astonishingly bad

As overworked as they've been, the Dodgers' bullpen has been absolutely essential to LA's early season success. With their rotation averaging less than 4 2/3 innings per start, the Dodgers have been forced to tax their bullpen just 1/4 of the way through the season. Dodgers relievers are currently leading all of baseball in innings pitched. The big story has been how battered the rotation is, but the bullpen has also suffered some losses. Evan Phillips was the latest to go back onto the IL after coming off of it in mid-April, and Michael Kopech and Blake Treinen were moved to the 60-day just days before.

Kopech started the season on the IL after reporting shoulder discomfort in spring training. Even though he won't be able to come back for a while, the Dodgers recently sent him on a rehab assignment in Triple-A for a long ramp-up to his season debut after missing spring training.

He opened a game for the Comets on Thursday and, plainly, it went really badly. Kopech walked his first batter on five pitches, two of which were so far outside the zone that they don't even show up on MLB Gameday's snapshot of the at-bat. He then walked the next three on four pitches each, which scored a run.

The Comets finally pulled him after his fifth consecutive at-bat ended in yet another walk to score another run. He managed to throw two more strikes, but one of them was iffy. All told, he threw 23 pitches, 20 of them for balls.

Michael Kopech's first Dodgers rehab outing ended after he walked five straight batters

Kopech was replaced by Justin Jarvis, who inherited a bases-loaded, no-outs situation right at the beginning of the game. He got to two outs without issue, but then he walked another (another!) Isotopes batter, and Albuquerque tacked on two more on an RBI single, tagging Kopech with responsibility for all five of those runs.

Walks have always been an issue for Kopech. He had a 6.3 BB/9 rate in 2023 and 4.9 with the White Sox before he was traded. It got a little better with the Dodgers after the deadline (3.8), but it still wasn't good, and he slotted in at the 7th percentile for his walk rate.

Kopech is going to be stuck in Triple-A for some time to work out the kinks, but the disaster of this first appearance isn't reassuring.