No one wants to think it, let alone say it, but the Hyun-jin Ryu shoulder issue could be far more detrimental to the team than anyone wants to admit.

When you think about it, even if Dodgers team physician Dr. Neal ElAttrache gives the soon-to-be (on Wednesday) 28-year-old South Korean native a clean bill of health without surgery, the problem will most likely not just go away; after all, it has been a reoccurring problem for the hard-throwing left-hander for the past two seasons.

On Sunday Dodgers manager Don Mattingly finally acknowledged that Ryu would begin the season on the disabled list even if nothing is discovered in Ryu’s MRI – and that’s the best case scenario. However, should Ryu require surgery, he would more than likely be lost for all of 2015 and quite possibly a good chunk of 2016. This, of course, would force the Dodgers to find a permanent replacement for Ryu – either from within the organization or via trade.

Later on Sunday Dodgers general manager Farhan Zaidi said that they would prefer to fill the spot internally rather than going out and acquiring a starting pitcher via a trade, this in spite of continuing (and unfounded) rumors of a deal involving Phillies ace Cole Hamels.

“We’ve been looking for starting pitching depth all off-season and that’s kind of continued into camp,” Zaidi said. “This is just a hard time to go out there and acquire starting pitching depth. We’re fielding calls from teams that are asking us about our starting pitching depth, [but] there aren’t a lot of starting pitching sellers right now.”

Based on spring training numbers, right-hander Joe Wieland appears to be the leaning candidate as Ryu’s possible replacement if the Dodgers stay in-house. Wieland has appeared in four games thus far and has allowed only one earned run on seven hits with nine strikeouts and no walks in 9.0 innings of work.

Joe Wieland’s nine strikeouts thus far this spring is tops among all Dodger starters not named Clayton Kershaw. (Photo credit – Jon SooHoo)

But when asked if Wieland was being considered as a replacement for Ryu, Dodgers manager Don Mattingly was non-committal about him or about anyone else for that matter.

“There’s a lot of different things we’re looking at,” Mattingly said. “I think [April] 13th or 14th, one of those days we’ll need a guy, but then we won’t need another guy probably until the 23rd or 24th. So we can approach the 13th and 14th days a little differently, maybe doing it out of the [bull]pen or doing something like that.

“We’ve been actually talking back and forth a little bit [about] how do we structure that and it depends on the structure of the guys you have and the roster that we break with,” added Mattingly.

As for Wieland himself, Mattingly acknowledged that they like what they have seen in him thus far this spring.

“One of the things we really like about him is that he locates [his pitches], said Mattingly. “And like we talk about with a lot of our guys is everybody’s got a hole somewhere and guys that can locate can get the ball there. He’s got some different weapons – he’s got a pretty good breaking ball and he knows what he’s doing, but also a guy that’s something’s coming back. Obviously last year he didn’t throw that many innings, he threw 30 innings or something like that, so he’s coming back. But we liked what we saw.”

Although this was anything but a full endorsement for Wieland, if he continues on his current path over the remaining two weeks of spring training, it’s going to be difficult for Mattingly, Zaidi and President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman to overlook him as a replacement for Ryu, should one be needed for any extended period of time.