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Dustin May will open the season as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ fifth starter, pushing former Cy Young Award winner David Price, who is owed $ 64 million over the next two years, into an undefined role to open. 2021.
Price will be one of three traditional starters available in the Dodgers box to start the regular season, joining Tony Gonsolin, who challenged for the National League Rookie of the Year award last year, and the Veteran right-hander Jimmy Nelson, who returned to the Dodgers on a minor league contract. All three can offer loose innings, and Price and Gonsolin in particular could also be counted to pitch in high leverage situations similar to how Julio Urias has been deployed over the past two years.
Keeping them all stretched – a necessity given the inning that will place special emphasis on pitch depth throughout the sport – will be a difficult balancing act that could play out all season long.
“We’re going to have to do a little bit of gymnastics in the paddocks, gymnastics of the throws, as far as the season is concerned,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. “It’s an unknown – this season, which comes from last year. I think the ultimate goal that the players, the organization are aligned with is that we want our guys, our pitchers, to be so sharp. and as fresh and as strong for September, the playoffs. How to get there, how to get there, can be debated. We will have to be nimble. “
Price joined the Dodgers alongside Mookie Betts in February 2020, then announced his decision to withdraw from the shortened COVID-19 season five months later. After the Dodgers signed Trevor Bauer, adding the reigning NL Cy Young Award winner to the team with the lowest ERA in the NL in 2020, Price reached out to Roberts to let him know he would be ready to go. take on any role, even if it meant acting. like a long relief.
Price will fill that role, at least initially, which will at least help the Dodgers manage his innings after he goes 19 months without pitching in a game that matters. Clayton Kershaw, Bauer, Walker Buehler and Urias will play in the season opener four-game series against the Colorado Rockies starting Thursday, respectively, and May will make her 2021 debut against the Oakland Athletics on Monday.
On May 25, he won the job after posting a 3.10 ERA while striking out 90 batters and walking just 28 in 104 innings from 2019 to 2020, a stretch that also includes the playoffs. But Gonsolin, 26 – with a 3.19 ERA, 96 strikeouts and 31 steps in 96 innings on the same streak – deserved it too. So is Price, the 35-year-old, five-time All-Star and World Series champion who tallied 150 wins.
“It was easy, it was difficult – just a lot of variables that I really don’t want to go into,” Roberts said of the decision to pick May. “I just think we feel good with David, Jimmy and Tony in the pen going left, coming out right away, winning two, three, four innings. Potentially at some point I would expect those same guys will finish a game so makes sense. “
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