Tarik Skubal trade: Let's look at the Dodgers' preposterous rotation with a new ace aboard
Tarik Skubal is the newest member of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
In many ways, it feels apt. Baseball's richest and most powerful team acquires the biggest name at the MLB trade deadline, adding a two-time Cy Young Award winner to what was already one of the best rotations in baseball. It absolutely does not guarantee them a World Series, but it sure makes them feel inevitable right now.
However, the deal also presents the most rich-person problem possible for the Dodgers: figuring out who goes where in that ridiculous rotation. Because, by our count, there are now seven players on this team who, if healthy, would be locks for any other four-man postseason rotation in baseball, and their depth doesn't end there.
Even Thanos thinks this is an excessive hoarding of resources.
Here is every arm available for the Dodgers in a world where everyone is healthy (which, to be fair, is not a world the Dodgers have lived in for years) and where they fall in the October hierarchy.
The locks
Tarik Skubal
We can go through this quickly.
Skubal entered 2026 as the consensus best pitcher in baseball. He has arguably lost that crown to Jacob Misiorowski in a season that required him to undergo a novel procedure to remove loose bodies in his elbow, but his velocity numbers have returned to his career norms and he just posted a 2.03 ERA in five July starts while striking out 41 batters in 31 innings.
The Dodgers acquired him to be a frontline pitcher. He will be. And then he will hit free agency and likely break this next player's record for the largest contract ever signed by a pitcher.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto
Like Skubal, we don't need to spend much time here. Yamamoto cemented himself as one of MLB's best big-game pitchers last offseason, earning wins in three of the Dodgers' four victories in an absurd World Series, and is having another fine season this year.
The only reason the Dodgers would want fewer playoff innings from him is concern for his long-term health.
The two-way star this team is built around
Shohei Ohtani
Here's our first real question mark. Everything the Dodgers have done this year indicates they want Ohtani pitching in October. This was his first season since joining the Dodgers that he entered Opening Day as an actual two-way player, but he hasn't pitched since July 3 due to a left knee issue that required a lubricant injection at the All-Star break.
Any hope for a quick return disappeared when Ohtani skipped a bullpen session last week due to "regression" in the knee, and he reported a biceps issue days later. He is still playing nearly every day as a designated hitter, but the Dodgers have clearly decided to take it slow with him.
Still, this all seems in service of making sure Ohtani is ready for October while having to throw as few innings as possible between now and then.
The All-Stars who somehow aren't locks
Blake Snell
The other two-time Cy Young winner on this team began the season on the injured list with shoulder fatigue and returned after a single bad start in May, this time with loose bodies in his pitching elbow, just like his new teammate Skubal had.
He is currently on a rehab assignment and said Friday he will need one more start before he's activated. Given his past success in the postseason, notably a 3.18 ERA in 34 postseason innings last year, you would imagine he has the inside track for that last spot. It's just hard to feel confident when he has made exactly one start this year, though it would hardly be the first time Snell suddenly emerges as an ace in the second half after struggling in the first half.
Justin Wrobleski
Imagine being Justin Wrobleski. Imagine getting your first real season as an MLB starting pitcher and surpassing all expectations. Imagine ranking 12th in MLB in ERA while ranking behind only Yamamoto in innings pitched on the Dodgers. Imagine making your first All-Star team.
And then imagine being told you might be pitching out of the bullpen during the playoffs, which Wrobleski did last year under significantly different circumstances. On any other team, Wrobleski not making the postseason rotation isn't even a conversation.
Tyler Glasnow
After a solid start to the season, Glasnow hasn't pitched since May 6 due to lower back spasms. He is expected to begin a rehab assignment next week.
The towering right-hander came up huge in the 2025 postseason after past October struggles, with a 1.69 ERA and the Dodgers winning all six of his appearances (three starts). It is preposterous he is the sixth pitcher mentioned in this article.
The other guys
Roki Sasaki
It would not be unfair to say Sasaki's MLB career so far has been a bit of a disappointment, at least given the enormous expectations when one of the most-hyped pitching prospects in recent history joined his Samurai Japan teammates in Los Angeles.
Sasaki struggled heavily as a starter in 2025, acquitted himself well as a reliever in September and October and struggled again as a starter in 2026. However, he appears to have turned a corner recently.
His giant glove (to cut down on pitch tipping) has gotten most of the attention recently, but a velocity bump and a reworked pitch mix — with a faster splitter separated from his signature pitch, now known as a forkball — have also paid significant dividends with a 2.25 ERA and 26 strikeouts in his last four starts.
The Dodgers have persistently indicated they view Sasaki as a starter. He might be proving them right. They are probably sending him to the bullpen in a couple months, if not sooner.
Eric Lauer
The Dodgers got Lauer for basically nothing in May after he was designated for assignment after 36 1/3 terrible innings for the Toronto Blue Jays, where he was openly disgruntled about his role.
Lauer has now appeared in nine games for the Dodgers, with eight starts. The Dodgers have won all nine of those games. He's been a great find for the team while some of the above pitchers have hit the IL. Odds are decent they trade him away within the next two days.
Emmet Sheehan
If there was a surprise with the Skubal deal, it wasn't the destination. It was that Sheehan wasn't packing for Detroit.
If the Tigers were going to trade their ace, it was widely assumed they would want an MLB starting pitcher in addition to considerable minor league talent. Sheehan seemed to be the clear fit as both an MLB starting pitcher and a starting pitcher the Dodgers wouldn't mind giving up.
Sheehan has real strikeout stuff and has flashed good results in the past, but he also struggled in October last year and hasn't been much better in 2026. The Dodgers giving him a change of scenery and letting him fill Skubal's rotation spot in Detroit would have made sense.
Then again, starting pitchers are a perpetually sought-after resource in MLB and other teams might be interested in taking a chance on Sheehan. Like Lauer, there's a decent chance the Dodgers trade Sheehan soon, if for no other reason that there's no room left for him on this roster with Skubal aboard.
The total price of this Dodgers rotation
Add up all the 2026 salaries for the above nine pitchers on Fangraphs' Roster Resource, without accounting for the deferrals in Ohtani and Snell's contracts, and you get $191.4 million.
That would be the 16th-largest payroll in MLB by cash, between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Seattle Mariners.
Let's reflect on this
Remember the 2024 postseason, when we had no idea what the Dodgers would do with their rotation? When that group was Yamamoto, Jack Flaherty and Walker Buehler? You might recall Ryan Brasier starting an elimination game against the San Diego Padres.
We are a long way from those days. Odds are good that at least one of the pitchers listed above won't be able to pitch in the postseason, but as long as it's just one or two of them, we are going to see some supremely weird things.
The Dodgers are committed to making this work, and that might mean an All-Star pitcher devoted to piggybacking a more established starter. In addition to 2024, recall that Ohtani, Wrobleski, Glasnow, Sheehan, Snell and Yamamoto all pitched in their triumph in Game 7 of the 2025 World Series. That was a team emptying the clip, and the Dodgers have evidently decided to enter this October with an even bigger clip.
It is preposterous. It is infuriating for other fans. It is going to be talked about at the next collective bargaining agreement negotiations. It is the Dodgers in vintage form.
