Rival fans putting Dodgers' payroll and pitching depth on blast have lost the real target

Impossibly, the Dodgers, the fifth-highest spending team in baseball this year, have somehow made themselves one of the underdogs of this year's postseason crop. If you don't believe us, just look back at ESPN's Dodgers-Padres NLDS predictions.

It didn't start that way, of course. The Dodgers had an historic, $1 billion+ offseason during which they not only got Shohei Ohtani, but a longstanding target in Tyler Glasnow and coveted international free agent in Yoshinobu Yamamoto as well. With those three signings on top of James Paxton, Bobby Miller, eventually Walker Buehler and Clayton Kershaw, along with promising developing starters like Gavin Stone, they looked like they had loaded the rotation not just for 2024, but for years to come.

But then injuries (and a sprinkle of poor performance) absolutely decimated the Dodgers' pitching staff. Glasnow, injured and unable to pitch in the postseason; Yamamoto, out for three months; Paxton, traded; Miller, bad; Buehler, bad and injured; Kershaw, injured; Stone, injured and potentially out for all of 2025 ... all of that on top of the fact that Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May both started the 2024 season on the shelf.

Flash forward to the present, and the Dodgers have three working starters, one of whom was acquired at the trade deadline, and they've tasked the bullpen with starting games three times through the LDS and LCS.

The Dodgers' lack of starting pitching has inevitably drawn criticism from opposing fans, who point to the ridiculous amount of spending LA did in the winter. Now, the current state of the rotation is the Dodgers' fault in some capacity, but not exactly for the reasons those detractors might think.

Opposing fans criticizing Dodgers' pitching aren't seeing the bigger picture

Money got the Dodgers all of their guys, but no amount of it was going to keep them healthy. It wasn't as though the Dodgers filled the rotation with aging pitchers; Glasnow is only 31, Yamamoto and Stone are 26, and Emmet Sheehan, who started the year on the IL, is only 24. It's not the Dodgers' fault for signing the free agents they targeted or putting their faith in youngsters, but it may be their fault for wearing them down.

The Athletic referred to the Dodgers as the "epicenter" of pitcher injuries this year, and that has everything to do with the way the Dodgers develop and use their pitchers. Starters like River Ryan (also injured and requiring Tommy John) can blame the pitch clock as much as they want, but even Andrew Friedman acknowledged that the Dodgers would need to take a deeper look at their player development in the offseason to try to get to the heart of these injuries, which have hit the Dodgers harder than any other team this season (subscription required).

The bullpen games aren't ideal, and Dodgers' fans definitely don't need opposing fans telling them that. If the World Series goes to seven games, they run the risk of completely draining their guys by the end, and they can't repeat this next season. But the Dodgers are still going to the World Series, even with all of the hits they've taken this year.