Andrew Friedman officially took over the helm of the Dodgers front office as President of Baseball Operations on October 14, 2014. A little over a month later, November 22 to be exact, Friedman made one of many off-season acquisitions that, for the most part, went under the radar of most Dodger fans – he acquired then 26-year-old right-hander Mike Bolsinger from the Arizona Diamondbacks for cash considerations after the Dbacks had designated the Chicago native for assignment. Little did anyone know at the time that Bolsinger would not only prove to be among Friedman’s best acquisitions of the off-season, he would also prove to be the most important one.

No one expected left-hander Hyun-jin Ryu, the Dodgers number three starter, to be lost for the entire season with a torn labrum – a condition which they recently revealed they knew about two years ago when they signed the then 25-year-old South Korean superstar to a six-year/$36 million contract (with a $5 million signing bonus). Ryu had made two spring training starts before being shut down completely and began the season on the disabled list. After two months of trying to “fix” Ryu’s torn labrum with platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections – the same treatment that proved unsuccessful with former Dodgers right-hander Chad Billingsley (among others) – Ryu himself finally decided to have the surgery and be done with it, doing so on May 21.

The situation was compounded on April 25th when Dodgers number four started Brandon McCarthy left a game against the San Diego Padres with what was initially called “elbow tightness” but what every Dodger fan in the world knew meant a torn ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) that would require Tommy John surgery which, in fact, occurred on April 30.

Down two starters, Friedman and Dodgers general manager Farhan Zaidi began calling up (and sending back down) a hodgepodge of starting pitchers from Triple-A Oklahoma City. After trying several different combinations and now knowing for certain that Ryu and McCarthy were both lost for the season, the two Dodgers execs finally settled on Mike Bolsinger and Carlos Frias as their permanent (for now) number three and four starters to complement Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke and Brett Anderson.

It’s probably safe to say that no one – not Friedman, Zaidi, Dodgers manager Don Mattingly, the fans or the media – ever expected that Bolsinger would be as effective as he has been through his first seven starts; no one except Mike Bolsinger, that is.

“I knew I was going to start in Triple-A so like I said from the beginning, ‘Just go out there when you get the opportunity and put yourself in a good position and only good things are going to come from that,'” Bolsinger said after Monday night’s 9-3 win over the team that designated him for assignment less than seven months ago.

Bolsinger allowed just two runs on three hits with two walks and eight strikeouts in his seven innings of work on Monday night to improve his record to 4-1 with an outstanding 2.08 ERA.
(Photo credit – Ron Cervenka)

Did the extremely polite and incredibly humble right-hander know that he was capable of going 4-1 with the team’s second best ERA of 2.08 (behind Greinke’s 1.92) among all Dodgers starters?

“I think so, and honestly I think that there’s another level in there. I’ve just got to keep working hard, obviously,” said Bolsinger. “Working with Honeycutt has been tremendous. If I look at video from last year of me pitching and this year, it’s completely different … just normally mentally having that feel for all your pitches but mechanically, [Honeycutt] saw some stuff that he thought I can improve on. I mean, this is stuff that we did three days ago, he saw in the bullpen and we worked on. I even threw a short little bullpen yesterday (Sunday) just to try and see and apply to pitching and it went well, I was really pleased with everything. Everything just seemed really smooth.

“When you watch Greinke pitch you see how smooth he is when he’s out there throwing a baseball and I kind of want to really look like that,” Bolsinger added. “I think that he, his mechanics and everything, it’s fun to watch.”

When asked if there was any added satisfaction that he gets in proving people wrong, especially the Dbacks organization for having given up on him, Bolsinger once again took the high road.

“I want to prove everyone wrong. A lot of people didn’t think I can be in this situation,” Bolsinger answered. “A lot of people thought ‘Oh, I’ll come up here and have a start, do okay, be back down’ and people also saying ‘You know, I’ve done a good couple starts, when’s he going to explode?’ I think now just keep doing what I am game after game is proof to a lot of people. I’m not out to prove a single person wrong, I think it’s more like let me prove everyone wrong. I can go out there and do this.”

Bolsinger took an even higher road when asked (yet again) why things didn’t work out for him in Arizona.

“I don’t know, it was more to do with me. I went up there with a bad mentality,” Bolsinger said. “Going up there and have a bad start and you think to yourself ‘If I pitch bad I’m going to get sent down.’ You can’t go up there thinking like that. The game in Colorado, I thought that was a good game up until the last inning. My mentality was ‘I need to come back out and pitch good in the next outing, today,’ and it went well.

“Last year, it’s crazy to see how much I’ve grown up from one year just mentally in this ball game, it’s crazy,” said Bolsinger. “My mentality is so different than it was last year.”

Up until the sixth inning on Monday night Bolsinger had pitched 23.2 scoreless innings at Dodger Stadium putting him in some pretty rare company. Is he more comfortable pitching at Blue Heaven on Earth than he was pitching at Chase Field?

“When that roof opens up in Arizona at the beginning of the year, if a ball goes up in the air, like A.J. (Pollock)’s ball that he hit off of me today, it’s probably gone in Arizona, or off a wall,” said Bolsinger. “You know, I can’t explain it. Atmosphere and where you pitch has never really been an issue for me. I pitched in the North Division of the [Pacific Coast League] which is the worst place to pitch in minor league baseball that I think, and it was something that really didn’t affect me the past two years, I wasn’t a guy that gave up a ton of home runs.

“I think for me it’s just – I’m locked in and I have this feel, and I’m throwing the baseball,” Bolsinger added. “Everything’s coming out of the right slot and it’s just all working together. In today’s game everything just kind of came together and I was really happy with it.”