CINCINNATI — The Los Angeles Dodgers set out this winter to address the closer position for good. Instead, they’re facing the possibility that a reliever they signed as a star free agent will be excluded from their postseason plans for a second consecutive season.
Edwin Díaz continues to struggle, as Tanner Scott did a year ago, and his rehab assignment with Triple-A Oklahoma City has gone poorly enough that Dodgers manager Dave Roberts acknowledged Monday the club could leave the three-time All-Star closer off the postseason roster. Against minor-leaguers Sunday, Díaz surrendered five runs, walked three, hit a batter and recorded just two outs in his worst appearance yet.
“We have to go with our best pitchers, as far as performance, talent, all that stuff,” Roberts said. “So my bet is that he will be (on the roster). But again, there’s got to be some kind of evidence or something for us, again, to sort of bet on. And so my bet is yes, but we still got to see something.”
The Dodgers gave Díaz three years and $69 million to address a bullpen that floundered in 2025. They won their second consecutive World Series despite Scott — who signed a four-year, $72 million contract — not appearing in a single playoff game.
A second plunge into the deep end of the relief market brought even worse results than the 4.74 ERA and league-worst 10 blown saves Scott had in 2025. Díaz’s famous trumpets have sounded more like a sad trombone.
Díaz’s 16 appearances with the Dodgers yielded a disastrous 11.85 ERA. He missed three months due to arthroscopic surgery to remove loose bodies in his right elbow. Upon his return, he struggled enough that the Dodgers almost immediately put him back on the injured list for what they called a neck issue. They believed his struggles were mechanical, citing the lowest arm angle of his career (14.9 degrees) as a reason his stuff and command were nowhere near where they needed to be.
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Attempts to correct the issue have not worked. What was supposed to be a pair of rehab outings has been extended. The organization thought Sunday’s outing could be the final step before activation, with Díaz joining the team in Cincinnati this week to try to re-earn his closer’s job.
But Díaz has allowed six runs and walked seven of the 21 batters he’s faced since starting his rehab. Even more concerning is how Díaz’s delivery seems even more out of whack than before. His fastball still lacks the north-south movement that it needs to succeed. On that pitch this season, he’s averaged 11.8 inches of induced vertical break, which measures how much “hop” or “ride” the pitch generates. The 15 fastballs he threw Sunday generated just 9.7 inches of IVB.
There’s plenty for Díaz to fix, and not a lot of time.
“He needs to pitch better,” Roberts said. “I think the world of him. The baseball card looks great. But it’s like, where we’re at, there’s got to be something for us to be able to hang our hat on. And he knows that. He knows that. He wants to pitch well.”
So the Dodgers summoned rehabbing reliever Kris Bubic to join the big club Monday instead. Bubic is expected to pitch as soon as Wednesday, Roberts said. Bubic, a former All-Star starting pitcher with the Kansas City Royals, was acquired at the trade deadline and has thrown 5 2/3 scoreless innings with nine strikeouts on his rehab assignment since the trade.
Díaz will stick with Oklahoma City for at least one more outing on Wednesday, and the organization will evaluate from there, Roberts said.
The Dodgers will spend the coming days trying to sort out how they will attack the ninth inning. One option went on the IL on Monday, when the Dodgers placed hard-throwing reliever Edgardo Henriquez on the shelf with a lower back issue; Henriquez has been the Dodgers’ most effective reliever recently, with a 1.69 ERA since Aug. 5. Now, his regular season is over.
Scott, who has bounced back this year with a 2.91 ERA, will be part of fixing the ninth-inning problem they thought they’d avoid entirely when they signed Díaz.