{"id":172207,"date":"2025-09-27T06:57:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-27T06:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/172207\/"},"modified":"2025-09-27T06:57:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-27T06:57:09","slug":"brock-stewart-to-undergo-shoulder-surgery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/172207\/","title":{"rendered":"Brock Stewart To Undergo Shoulder Surgery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dodgers reliever\u00a0Brock Stewart<\/a> will undergo season-ending shoulder surgery, manager Dave Roberts tells the L.A. beat (including Fabian Ardaya of The Athletic<\/a>). It\u2019s a debridement procedure, added GM Brandon Gomes (relayed by Jack Harris of The Los Angeles Times<\/a>). While he\u2019s unlikely to be ready for Opening Day, the Dodgers expect him to return at some point in the first half of the 2026 season. The right-hander has been on the injured list since the middle of August.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s another hit to a bullpen that is the Dodgers\u2019 biggest weakness heading into the playoffs.\u00a0Blake Treinen<\/a> has given up 11 runs in 7 1\/3 innings this month. Closer\u00a0Tanner Scott<\/a> has surrendered six runs over his past 7 1\/3 frames. Treinen has a 5.47 earned run average on the season; Scott has allowed 4.82 earned runs per nine.\u00a0Kirby Yates<\/a> has been knocked around as well, and he went down with a hamstring strain earlier in the week.<\/p>\n

Michael Kopech<\/a> has been limited to 11 innings by a trio of injuries. He\u2019s back on the IL with knee inflammation and will at least be unavailable for the Wild Card Series. Brusdar Graterol<\/a> never made it back from last year\u2019s shoulder surgery.\u00a0Evan Phillips<\/a> underwent Tommy John surgery in June. Stewart is their seventh potential high-leverage arm who is either unavailable or not performing to expectations.<\/p>\n

It leaves the Dodgers very vulnerable late in games. Lefty\u00a0Alex Vesia<\/a> has excelled for a second straight season and fourth time in the past five years. He has gotten the most high-leverage assignments and leads the team with eight holds in the second half. Fellow southpaws Anthony Banda<\/a>, Justin Wrobleski<\/a> and\u00a0Jack Dreyer<\/a> have each pitched well down the stretch.<\/p>\n

Neither Wrobleski nor Dreyer has any postseason experience. Banda tossed eight innings during L.A.\u2019s World Series run a year ago. He pitched well enough but wasn\u2019t tasked with many key situations. There\u2019s almost no certainty from the right side. The Dodgers just activated<\/a>\u00a0Roki Sasaki<\/a> after a four-month absence due to his own shoulder injury. He\u2019ll pitch in relief and is alongside Edgardo Henriquez<\/a> as right-handed alternatives if Treinen doesn\u2019t figure it out.<\/p>\n

Their best options aside from Vesia are probably all converted starters who could go to the bullpen in October. That\u2019ll almost certainly be Emmet Sheehan\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0role.\u00a0Clayton Kershaw<\/a> came out of the bullpen on Wednesday in preparation for a potential relief job.\u00a0Shohei Ohtani<\/a> has even left the door open to pitching late in games (link via Thomas Harrigan and Sonja Chen of MLB.com<\/a>).<\/p>\n

That\u2019s complicated by MLB\u2019s two-way player rule only applying to starting pitchers. If Ohtani begins the game as a designated hitter and then pitches out of the bullpen, the Dodgers would lose the DH. Unless he\u2019s called in to close, that\u2019d require them to play Ohtani in the outfield \u2014 something he has done for all of 8 1\/3 innings in the major leagues \u2014 or lose his bat late in games.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers decided not to aggressively attack that tenuous relief group at the trade deadline. Stewart and minor leaguer\u00a0Paul Gervase<\/a> were their only bullpen pickups in July. Stewart\u2019s talent wasn\u2019t a question. The 33-year-old righty was sitting on a 2.38 ERA with a near-30% strikeout rate over 39 appearances with Minnesota. Swapping him<\/a> for James Outman<\/a>, a strikeout-prone outfielder who\u2019d plummeted down the depth chart made sense.<\/p>\n

However, Stewart\u2019s lengthy injury history meant the Dodgers were taking a big risk by making him their only relief pickup of significance. Stewart has never reached 40 MLB innings in a season. He was shut down in June 2023 by elbow problems and battled shoulder issues for much of last year, culminating in arthroscopic surgery. He hadn\u2019t had any arm injuries in the first half of \u201925, but it unfortunately didn\u2019t register as a huge surprise when he went down after four appearances following the trade.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers can transfer Stewart to the 60-day injured list if they need to open a 40-man roster spot before the end of the season. He\u2019s playing on an $870K salary that is barely above the league minimum. Stewart will go through arbitration twice more and won\u2019t hit free agency until the end of his age-35 season.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles has clinched the NL West and the #3 seed. They\u2019ll host the league\u2019s final playoff team (one of the Mets, Reds or Diamondbacks) in the Wild Card Series beginning on Tuesday. If they survive that three-game set, they\u2019re likely to match up with the Phillies in the Division Series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dodgers reliever\u00a0Brock Stewart will undergo season-ending shoulder surgery, manager Dave Roberts tells the L.A. beat (including Fabian Ardaya…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172208,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,35353,591,85],"class_list":["post-172207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-brock-stewart","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}