Much of the talk surrounding the Los Angeles Dodgers through the first eight weeks of the season has centered around injuries plaguing the pitching staff and outfield depth.
In Spring Training, the team saw Mike Bolsinger go down with an oblique strain and Andre Ethier sustain a fractured tibia as a result of fouling a ball off his leg. While Bolsinger has since returned, Ethier is remains on the disabled list and is not expected back any time soon.
Prior to Bolsinger’s injury, Brett Anderson was lost to back surgery. Hyun-Jin Ryu’s suffered setbacks in his recovery from last May’s shoulder surgery that have delayed his return, and Brandon McCarthy isn’t expected back until July.
Alex Wood was recently placed on the 15-day disabled list with a posterior impingement in his left elbow that will require an estimated four weeks of rest. Yasiel Puig was the latest to suffer injury, landing on the DL on Friday due to a strained left hamstring.
Puig’s DL stint did correlate with the return of Scott Van Slyke. He’d been out since the first week of the season after going down with lower back irritation. Despite enduring several hurdles in his first year as a manager, Dave Roberts emphasized to the team that they not allow themselves to lose focus over injuries, via Brian Hedger of MLB.com:
“Every team deals with it in some capacity,” Roberts said. “This was one of the things that I made clear in a message to the players — things are going to happen, and we just can’t let it distract us from winning games. Nobody is going to make excuses, and we have to move forward. It’s not to be insensitive to any player we lose by way of injury, but we have to win baseball games.”
Through two months of an injury-plagued season, Roberts praised his club for stepping up to offset the loss of players:
“It speaks to the characters of the players in there,” manager Dave Roberts said. “You look at Trayce Thompson, who now has an opportunity, and how he’s stepped up, and other guys on our team. They have stepped up. The pitching staff, the guys in the ‘pen have stepped up, so it’s more of the character of the players.
Thompson has been particularly impressive this season, with Roberts recently stating he believes the young outfielder is destined for a spot on an All-Star team at some point in his career.
As the injury bug surfaced during the spring, Roberts instructed his club to not become distracted by the growing list of those going down. He soon after acknowledged frustration set in over the ongoing injury issues, but has otherwise remained focus on moving forward.
