Blake Snell's season debut was ... suboptimal. He gave up five runs (four earned) and was pulled after just three innings.
It might've been easy enough to explain away as just an awkward start for a guy fresh off the IL, who had also missed all of spring training, but the Dodgers also did seem to rush Snell from his rehab assignment. He made just three starts in the minors, and two were in Single-A. Fans thought that they might want to give him more of a ramp-up to make up for the time he missed in spring, but no dice.
He was supposed to be back on the mound on Friday, for the Dodgers' Freeway Series opener against the Angels. Instead, Katie Woo of The Athletic reported that he was being scratched and the Dodgers would go to a bullpen game with Will Klein as the probable opener.
The Dodgers are scratching Blake Snell ahead of his start against the Angels tonight. They’ll go with a bullpen game instead, likely with Will Klein to start. #Dodgers
— Katie Woo (@katiejwoo) May 15, 2026
We'll wait to see what Dave Roberts has to say, and of course, we'll hope that it's purely precautionary, but Dodgers fans tend to catastrophize with updates like these. Given the Dodgers' track record when it comes to injuries, we're not exactly wrong to do that.
Dodgers scratch Blake Snell from opener vs. Angels, turn to Will Klein as opener
The Dodgers' starting pitching has been a sneaky weakness during their recent slide. The offense gets the most attention because it's certainly strange when Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Teoscar Hernández, and Will Smith aren't performing to expectations, but there have been issues with the rotation, too.
Tyler Glasnow is hurt. Snell was bad in his first start and has now been scratched. Roki Sasaki is ... well, you know. Even Yoshinobu Yamamoto has a 5.00+ ERA in his last four starts.
The issue that landed Snell on the IL in the first place was shoulder fatigue, which he said dated back to the postseason last year. On top of that, he missed almost four months with shoulder inflammation last year.
The Dodgers might've rushed him back, or maybe whatever Snell has been dealing with since he joined the Dodgers has never fully gone away. Either is bad for LA.
There's not a lot of reason to be optimistic or hopeful about an update like this given that kind of injury history, but still — maybe naively — we'll hope for the best until the Dodgers almost inevitably announce the worst.
