The Los Angeles Dodgers have gotten off to a rough start this season both in terms of their record and injuries. The latest was to Clayton Kershaw, who was placed on the 10-day disabled list on Sunday with left bicep tendonitis.
The injury came out of nowhere, but Kershaw joins Justin Turner, Logan Forsythe, Rich Hill, Corey Seager, Hyun-Jin Ryu and Yasiel Puig as key contributors for the Dodgers who are on the disabled list just over one month into the season.
For Kershaw, it’s a third consecutive season and fourth in the last five that injury has required a stint on the disabled list. If there’s a silver lining with the latest trouble, an MRI revealed only tendinitis.
Though the team will be without Kershaw for an unspecified amount of time, Dodgers president of baseball operations is confident the team will manage to rally together, via Bill Plunkett of the Southern California News Group:
“Obviously it’s been tough,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “But injuries are part of the game and we’ve seen this team respond to adversity in years past when others had kind of written us off. We expect to do the same thing.
“We haven’t quite clicked yet with all our various components to surge through that adversity. We haven’t seen that yet. But we expect we will.”
The Dodgers combined to go 62-35 with Kershaw on the disabled list over the past two seasons, so they have proven that they can be successful even without their ace.
Ross Stripling, who tossed four shutout innings on Sunday, will remain in the starting rotation while Kershaw is out.
Kershaw is 1-4 with a 2.86 ERA, 3.73 FIP and 1.1.14 WHIP through seven starts this season. His fastball velocity had been below a career average, which could be explained by the tendinitis.
