Justin Wrobleski flashed nasty stuff, flaws in Dodgers debut vs. Brewers

When we said that Justin Wrobleski was being fast-tracked toward the majors, we didn't expect a major league debut to come quite so fast. Wrobleski, the Dodgers' No. 14 prospect, was promoted to Triple-A on June 22 after making just 13 starts in Double-A. In his OKC debut, he allowed three runs but struck out 11 batters over five innings.

He only made one more start in Oklahoma City (5 1/3 innings pitched, two runs, six strikeouts) on June 29 before he got the major league call for a start on July 7, presumably to give their relievers a bit of a rest instead of opting for another bullpen day.

In his debut on Sunday versus the Brewers, he pitched five innings and gave up four runs and two walks while striking out four. Chris Taylor kept the Dodgers from being totally shut out with a two-run homer in the sixth, but LA's bullpen — Ryan Yarbrough and Anthony Banda, to be more specific — gave up five more runs to blow the game open for Milwaukee.

It's unclear how long Wrobleski will stay in the majors, but him not being immediately optioned back to Triple-A after the game is a pretty good sign that he'll move into a Landon Knack-esque roll as a fill-in starter while Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Walker Buehler remain injured. Especially early on in Sunday's game, the upside the Dodgers saw was very obvious.

Dodgers No. 14 prospect Justin Wrobleski was shaky but showed signs of greatness in MLB debut

Wrobleski threw 76 pitches in his debut, but was primarily reliant on his fastball. It ended up accounting for four of the five hits he gave up, including a home run to Christian Yelich, but it also induced three of his four strikeouts on the afternoon and produced a 25% whiff rate.

The cutter, the best of his secondary pitches, also came out to play in 1/4 of his outing, and none of the Brewers who saw it managed to get a hit off of it. His second strikeout also came on a beautifully placed slider, which dropped onto the outside edge of the plate and made Blake Perkins look like he'd never seen a baseball before.

If Wrobleski is added to the rotation on a semi-regular basis, it'll make him the Dodgers' much-needed second lefty behind James Paxton and will give them a stopgap between now and the trade deadline, when they'll be chasing another starter and might even nab lefty Garrett Crochet.

Still, despite some flaws, Wrobleski's major league debut could've gone much, much worse for a guy who only pitched 10 1/3 innings in Triple-A before getting thrown into the deep end of the majors. It definitely bodes well for his future with the team, even if he's just in an interim role at the moment.