When the Dodgers broke spring training camp on April 1 with only the annual exhibition Freeway Series with the Angels remaining, their Opening Day 25-man roster was just about set. In fact, the only remaining pieces to the puzzle was in their nearly completely overhauled bullpen. Gone were Jamey Wright, Brian Wilson and Chris Perez and in their place were Yimi Garcia, Adam Liberatore, Joe Wieland, Sergio Santos, Juan Nicasio, Dan Coulombe, Paco Rodriguez, Pedro Baez, and Josh Ravin fighting for what basically amounted to three spots.

It was pretty much a given that J.P Howell, Joel Peralta and Chris Hatcher were going to make the team and there were a couple of extra temporary vacancies created with Kenley Jansen and Brandon League beginning the season on the disabled list.

On Open Day, Dodgers President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman, general manager Farhan Zaidi and field manager Don Mattingly ultimately settled on a bullpen of Howell, Hatcher, Rodriguez, Nicasio, Peralta, Baez and Garcia.

Over the course of the next 10 weeks Pedro Baez, Joel Peralta and Paco Rodriguez landed on the disabled list, Daniel Coulombe and Sergio Santos came and went (with Santos ultimately being DFA’d and released), Kenley Jansen (thankfully) returned from his off-season foot surgery, and Chris Hatcher and Yimi Garcia have struggled over the past three or four weeks.

Getting Kenley Jansen back was an enormous boost to the Dodgers bullpen. Since returning on May 15, he has nine saves in 10 save opportunities. (Photo credit – Ron Cervenka)

Well guess what? Friedman, Zaidi and Mattingly are right back in the same situation again with having to make some rather significant roster moves. Why, you ask? Because Brandon League, Joel Peralta and Paco Rodriguez are now within days of completing their respective rehab assignments are are ready to return to action – except there’s no place on the roster for them right now.

Where things get sticky is that League and Peralta are out of options and can only be sent to the minor leagues if they agree to do so – and why would they? Paco does have options and will most likely be sent back down to Triple-A Oklahoma City – for the time being, at least.

Although Joel Peralta struggled in his first two rehab outings with the Quakes, he retired the side in order in his third outing on Monday night and appears to be getting close to returning to the Dodgers.
(Photo credit – Ron Cervenka)

The current Dodgers bullpen includes Jansen, Howell, Hatcher, Nicasio, Garcia, Liberatore and Ravin – with only the latter three having options. And while Garcia is basically a mess right now and would benefit greatly from a stint back down in the minors, Liberatore and Ravin – a left-hander and a right-hander respectively – have been pretty much lights out, and shipping them out simply to make room for League and Peralta could prove to be a huge mistake.

Without question the most inconsistent guy in the Dodgers bullpen has been Chris Hatcher. And while the 30-year-old Kinston, NC native has had his moments of greatness (albeit briefly), many Dodger fans are calling him “the new Brian Wilson” – and not in a good way. But here again, Hatcher is out of options and the only way to get rid of him would be to designate him for assignment and hope that no other team claims him and then hope that he would accept a minor league assignment a la Eric Stults – and that’s a lot of hoping.

And then there’s Brandon League, whose situation is both the simplest and most complicated at the same time. Per the MLB Collective Bargaining Agreement, a vested player – i.e. a player without options – must be returned to the active roster within 30 days of beginning his minor league rehab assignment; this to protect the player from being buried in the minor leagues indefinitely by the parent organization to avoid having to deal with a roster move. League, who was placed on the 60-day DL during spring training with shoulder inflammation, opted for rest and rehabilitation over arthroscopic surgery to clean up on his shoulder – and understandably so. With rest and rehab he was looking at an eight-week recovery period as opposed to a potential season-ending recovery period with surgery. League, as you may recall, is in the final year of a three-year/$22.5 million contract for which he is owed $7.5 million for the 2015 season.

League (through his agent) entered into an agreement with the Dodgers to move up that 30-day rehab thing to 20 days, which means that he must be returned to the Dodgers 25-man roster no later than June 24. The good news is that in the four games that he has appeared in thus far with the Quakes (with several more planned) he has allowed only one unearned run through his four innings of work with three strikeouts and no walks. And although his fastball velocity is in the 90-92 MPH range instead if the 95-97 MPH range that it once was, he is pitching pain-free.

To compound matters even further, right-hander Brandon Beachy is beginning his rehab assignment tonight with the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes after recovering from his second Tommy John surgery. And although Beachy is a starting pitcher and is probably still three to four weeks away from being MLB-ready, when he is, another roster move will have to be made as he, too, is out of options. As it stands at this moment, the likely move would be to send Carlos Frias back down to Triple-A over Mike Bolsinger, who is 4-1 with an outstanding 2.25 ERA – second only to Zack Greinke’s 1.95 ERA among the five current Dodger starters. Frias is currently 4-4 with a 4.14 ERA, having suffered the loss on Monday night against the Texas Rangers due to a meltdown sixth inning in which he allowed four earned runs – two by way of walks – in the eventual 4-1 loss.

Needless to say, things are going to get very interesting over the next few weeks for the Dodgers. But if Friedman and Zaidi have shown us anything, they have shown us that they are not intimidated by contract status, which has caused us to expect the unexpected from them. All we can hope for is that they don’t shoot themselves in the foot by keeping the wrong guys in the Dodgers bullpen.