Dodgers Rumors: Stone, Crochet, Shortstop, Outfield

Several teams tried to pry right-hander Gavin Stone from the Dodgers in offseason trade talks, writes Bob Nightengale of USA Today, but Los Angeles held firm on the former top prospect and is now reaping the benefits. After yielding 31 runs in his first 31 big league innings last season, Stone has emerged as a vital member of manager Dave Roberts’ rotation.

Stone, 25, ranks second on the Dodgers with 89 innings pitched and is tied for second with 15 games started. He’s posted a terrific 2.73 earned run average through the season’s halfway point. While his 19.5% strikeout rate is below average and his .268 average on balls in play and 6.3% homer-to-flyball ratio suggest there’s likely some ERA regression in store, he has the look of a legitimate big league starter. The 2020 fifth-round pick has been a constant in the L.A. rotation while the team has navigated injuries for Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Walker Buehler and others.

The Dodgers have a whopping six starters on the injured list, to say nothing of oft-injured arms like James Paxton and Tyler Glasnow healthy and in the rotation. Glasnow, in particular, is already 17 innings from his career-high at the MLB level (120 innings). He’s never topped 155 innings in any professional season before.

Unsurprisingly, given the wide slate of current injuries and the health histories of their current arms, the Dodgers have been exploring the market for pitching. Nightengale reported within that same column that the Dodgers have already made an offer to the White Sox for lefty Garrett Crochet, which has been rejected, and the latest report from Ken Rosenthal, Patrick Mooney and Will Sammon of The Athletic also touches on Los Angeles’ interest in Crochet.

Crochet isn’t an ideal fit for a team seeking consistent, bankable innings — as the Dodgers currently are. This year’s 101 1/3 innings is more than Crochet, a 2020 draftee, had thrown in his entire professional career combined prior to the ’24 campaign. There are questions about how the left-hander will hold up down the stretch, and The Athletic trio suggests he’s not a lock to spend the remainder of the season pitching in a regular rotation role if he is indeed moved — as the White Sox are reportedly planning on after extension talks with Crochet quickly stalled out. The Dodgers, however, view Crochet as a legitimate October weapon regardless of the role in which he’s used and could simply figure out the specifics of his usage down the line, depending on how the second half of the season plays out.

Rotation innings are just one of multiple questions the Dodgers will face over the next four-plus weeks as the deadline looms. They’re also staring down an absence of six to eight weeks for star leadoff man Mookie Betts, who in recent years has moved from right field to both middle-infield positions, playing virtually anywhere the team asks without seeing any real drop-off in his MVP-caliber offensive production. With Betts on the shelf, the Dodgers have plugged hot-hitting Miguel Rojas back into a regular role at shortstop, and the veteran’s play this season could make that a more permanent arrangement when when Betts is healthy.

“I would, I would,” manager Dave Roberts replied when asked by Mike DiGiovanna of the L.A. Times whether he’d consider keeping Rojas his everyday shortstop when Betts returns. “I don’t think anyone can debate the level of shortstop play from Miguel Rojas. Some of it is contingent on the timeline for Mookie’s return and where Miggy is physically and how things are going. But to your question, would I consider it? Absolutely.”

Rojas, 35, is hitting .297/.344/.446 (126 wRC+) — his best career production outside of the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. He’s playing his customary brand of high-end defense at shortstop, drawing lavish praise from both Roberts and Dodgers third base coach Dino Ebel, who calls Rojas one of the five best defensive shortstops in the sport. (Statcast lists Rojas tied for seventh among all shortstops with six Outs Above Average in just 215 innings this season; every other name among the top-8 this season has played more than 700 innings).

Keeping Rojas at shortstop and sliding Betts back over to second base in place of Gavin Lux could deepen the team’s lineup and improve the defense. The Athletic report notes that adding an everyday outfielder would allow the Dodgers to use Betts at second base and go with a platoon of Andy Pages and Jason Heyward in the outfield alongside the new acquisition and Teoscar Hernandez.

Of course, that’s just one of many viable scenarios, and it’s not framed within that report as a clear objective so much as one of various possibilities that could be explored. Alternatively, if the Dodgers were to add someone who can handle second base on a regular basis — and do so at a higher level than in-house choices like Lux, Chris Taylor and Enrique Hernandez — that could push Betts back to the outfield.

As is frequently the case with the Dodgers, their blend of versatile defenders and a hefty lead in the division combine to create various trade avenues to explore while also reducing urgency to complete a deal. Los Angeles holds a 7.5-game lead over second-place San Diego in the NL West. They’ll surely upgrade in multiple areas between now and July 30, but the size of their lead likely reduces pressure on president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, GM Brandon Gomes and their staff to complete something in the short-term and gives them the luxury of taking a fluid approach to augmenting an already first-place roster.