At the end of an otherwise celebratory offseason, the Dodgers had to take a critical look at one of their biggest organizational flaws this winter.
In the weeks leading up to spring training, team officials engaged in what they described as a “deep dive” into their spate of pitching injuries in recent years. They called meetings involving club executives, pitching coaches and medical personnel. Together, they tried to diagnose the causes — and brainstorm potential solutions — to an injury crisis that has impacted the baseball world at large, but ravaged their pitching staff more than any other MLB team over the last several seasons.
“We dove pretty deep,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said last week, as the Dodgers gathered at Camelback Ranch for another season that could be defined by their ability to stay healthy on the mound. “We were able to have some substantive discussions.”
It remains to be seen how fruitful that examination proves to be.
While Friedman said the team identified “some things we’ll do differently,” he also acknowledged there was no “Ah-ha! We’ve figured it out” moment. He said the club’s probe into the problem will continue during spring training, when they plan to “create little groups to dive in on various things.” At the same time, he countered, “there are obviously some big macro issues that are a lot harder” to solve completely.
“There’s a lot going on in youth baseball that is different than how we would set it up or how Major League Baseball would set it up,” Friedman said, referencing how an industrywide emphasis on velocity and spin has led young pitchers to train in a way that makes them more susceptible to injuries early in their professional career.
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“The chicken or egg on how those things get untangled, and momentum shifted a different way, is a much bigger question,” Friedman continued. “It’s easier for us to control how things operate within the Los Angeles Dodgers organization.”
Long term, such organizational changes could come in myriad facets — from minor league development methods, to rest and recovery routines between outings for big leaguers, to…