{"id":597177,"date":"2026-02-28T01:10:21","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T01:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/597177\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T01:10:21","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T01:10:21","slug":"dodgers-considering-dark-horse-candidate-for-rotation-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/597177\/","title":{"rendered":"Dodgers Considering Dark Horse Candidate for Rotation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman named left-hander Justin Wrobleski as a candidate for the starting rotation in 2026.<\/p>\n

Wrobleski, 25, has featured for the Dodgers 32 times over the last two regular season campaigns, eight of which came as starts. Through his two seasons with the Dodgers, Wrobleski has a 4.81 ERA and 102 strikeouts through 103 innings pitched.<\/p>\n

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He hit his stride towards the end of the 2025 season, keeping allowing a run in just two of his final eight appearances of the season. The southpaw continued to dominate into the postseason, not allowing a single run through four appearances \u2014 including two World Series games.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think his ability to grow and mature and learn how to harness his stuff and compete in those moments will serve him well as he tries to navigate a lineup two, three times,\u201d Friedman said,\u00a0per MLB\u2019s Sonja Chen<\/a>. \u201cHe\u2019ll certainly be a candidate. He was also so good out of the \u2018pen, we have to weigh that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wrobleski struggled as a starter last season, beginning just two games on the mound and allowing 12 earned runs through 11 innings. The Dodgers, though, may not have much of a choice.<\/p>\n

\"Los<\/p>\n

Feb 24, 2026; Phoenix, Arizona, USA; Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Justin Wrobleski against the Cleveland Guardians during a spring training game at Camelback Ranch-Glendale. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

Why Could Justin Wrobleski be a Rotation Piece?<\/p>\n

As of now, the Dodgers\u2019 rotation is completely open, at least to begin the season. Tyler Glasnow and Yoshinobu Yamamoto are sure to have a spot at the beginning of the season<\/a>, but Blake Snell and Shohei Ohtani have big question marks hanging above them as far as pitching on Opening Day pitching is concerned.<\/p>\n

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The remaining spots have plenty of suitors, and the current frontrunners are Roki Sasaki, Emmet Sheehan, Gavin Stone and River Ryan. Both Stone and Ryan are coming back from season-long injuries, so if the Dodgers were to look at someone to fill the spot who can immediately undertake a full workload, it would make sense for them to look at Wrobleski as someone who has started games before.<\/p>\n

Wrobleski has already made his spring training debut for 2026 and looked solid through the singular inning he pitched, notching a strikeout through a scoreless inning against the Cleveland Guardians.<\/a><\/p>\n

If he can continue to produce results throughout the spring, the third-year left-hander could make a return to a starting spot in 2026.<\/p>\n

Would you want to see Justin Wrobleski start games this season?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman named left-hander Justin Wrobleski as a candidate for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2380],"tags":[628,5,114,135,51,2565,7907,1523,538,1529,57,4,7911,110,468,786,313],"class_list":["post-597177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cleveland-guardians","tag-andrew-friedman","tag-baseball","tag-blake-snell","tag-cleveland","tag-cleveland-guardians","tag-clevelandguardians","tag-emmet-sheehan","tag-gavin-stone","tag-guardians","tag-justin-wrobleski","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-mlb","tag-river-ryan","tag-roki-sasaki","tag-shohei-ohtani","tag-tyler-glasnow","tag-yoshinobu-yamamoto"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116145596914498726","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}