In each of the past three regular seasons, exactly 17 pitchers made at least one start for the Dodgers.
This underscores something we all know: you can never have too much pitching because pitching can be fragile. Even if you have the highest payroll in the land.
But this year is different from the previous two in one crucial respect: L.A.’s star starters — the four pitchers the club envisioned leading the way to a second consecutive World Series title — are all healthy in October.
In 2024, the Dodgers were without Tyler Glasnow and Gavin Stone, who combined to make about a third of the club’s regular season starts. Los Angeles got just 20 innings from its starters over five games in the World Series, but with clutch hitting and some Yankees miscues, the Dodgers emerged victorious.
This postseason, Dodgers starters have done something we haven’t seen in over three decades.
Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani combined for 28 2/3 innings in a four-game NL Championship Series sweep of the Brewers. Prior to that, no team that played a four-game LCS had that many innings covered by starters since the 1990 A’s (29 1/3).
In the current baseball epoch, in which the workload borne by starting pitchers has steadily declined (particularly in the playoffs), that’s quite a feat.
Most innings pitched by starters, four-game LCS:
1979 Orioles: 33 1/3 IP
1974 A’s: 29 2/3 IP
1983 White Sox: 29 1/3 IP
1990 A’s: 29 1/3 IP
2025 Dodgers: 28 2/3 IP
1983 Orioles: 28 2/3 IP
Why the stark difference this fall? The Dodgers played the “long game” with their starters, three of whom missed significant time in the regular season due to injury.
With Ohtani recovering from elbow surgery, the club slow-played the two-way superstar’s return to the mound in order to ensure he was ready, then followed by building up his pitch count slowly after his season debut on June 16.
Snell, the Dodgers’ big offseason signing, experienced left shoulder inflammation after just two starts. The two-time Cy Young Award winner didn’t step on the mound in a Major League game for the next four months.
Glasnow missed more than two months with right shoulder inflammation.
As a result, outside of the 173 2/3 innings pitched by Yamamoto, the most any of L.A.’s playoff starters pitched during the regular season was 90 1/3 innings — by Glasnow. Snell threw 61 1/3, and Ohtani threw 47.
Long story short? The arms are fresh.
It seems that after multiple postseasons in which stud starters were unavailable at the worst time — October — the Dodgers got the timing right this time around.
The result? A 9-1 record and a starting rotation ERA of 1.40 in these playoffs. Opponents are batting just .132 against Dodgers starters, who have combined for 64 1/3 innings, a full 12 frames more than the team in second place in that category, the Mariners.
Here’s a breakdown of how the year progressed for each of L.A.’s postseason starters, leading to their dominant showing in October:
Yoshinobu Yamamoto
Regular season: 30 GS, 173 2/3 IP, 2.49 ERA, 201 K, 59 BB
Postseason: 3 GS, 19 2/3 IP, 1.83 ERA, 18 K, 4 BB
Yamamoto proved to be the most durable of the Dodgers’ starters this year, making 30 starts after he was limited to 18 in his 2024 rookie campaign. And he was excellent, helping carry the Dodgers’ rotation while other stars were sidelined. He finished the 2025 regular season with a 167 ERA+ and earned his first All-Star selection.
And he’s continued that in the playoffs, pitching the first complete game in the postseason since the Astros’ Justin Verlander in the 2017 American League Championship Series.
Tyler Glasnow
Regular season: 18 GS, 90 1/3 IP, 3.19 ERA, 106 K, 43 BB
Postseason: 3 G (2 GS), 13 1/3 IP, 0.68 ERA, 18 K, 8 BB
Glasnow has a lengthy injury history from even before he joined the Dodgers in 2024. As a result, he’s never hit the 30-start mark in any of his 10 Major League seasons. That includes this past regular season, when he made 18 starts over which he posted a 3.19 ERA and struck out 29% of the batters he faced. But Glasnow is healthy now, and in his first postseason with Los Angeles, he’s been brilliant.
Blake Snell
Regular season: 11 GS, 61 1/3 IP, 2.35 ERA, 72 K, 26 BB
Postseason: 3 GS, 21 IP, 0.86 ERA, 28 K, 5 BB
As with Glasnow, the Dodgers knew when they signed Snell that they’d be getting one of the elite starters in the game, but also that he has a substantial injury history. A left shoulder issue limited him to 11 starts in the regular season, but the Dodgers didn’t rush him back and he’s been nearly unhittable in the playoffs.
Snell, who entered this postseason never having gone more than 5 2/3 innings in any of his 10 playoff starts, has gone at least six in each of his three starts this month — that includes an eight-inning gem in which he yielded just one hit, struck out 10 and walked none against the Brewers in Game 1 of the NLCS. He’ll be the Game 1 starter again when the World Series gets underway on Friday at Rogers Centre.
Shohei Ohtani
Regular season: 14 GS, 47 IP, 2.87 ERA, 62 K, 9 BB
Postseason: 2 GS, 12 IP, 2.25 ERA, 19 K, 4 BB
Ohtani’s long-awaited postseason pitching debut finally came, and over his first two playoff outings, he was overpowering outside of a three-run second inning in NLDS Game 1 against the Phillies. In the other 11 innings he’s pitched this October, he hasn’t yielded a run and has only surrendered three hits.
Ohtani is the first player to strike out 10 on the mound and hit three homers at the plate in the same game, period — regular or postseason.
The best ability is availability
The Dodgers didn’t get anywhere near the 104 wins they were projected for prior to the season. In fact, they won the second-fewest number of games in a full season season since Dave Roberts’ first year as manager in 2016 (93).
But as it turns out, that didn’t matter. Los Angeles is having arguably its best postseason showing during the Roberts era thanks in large part to its phenomenal starting pitching, and it is four victories away from becoming the first team in this century to win back-to-back World Series titles.
Unlike in recent Octobers past, the Dodgers can rest assured knowing that with four more wins to get, they have their four best hurlers ready to go.
