It only takes one quick glance at the Dodgers 40-man roster heading into spring training 2017 to immediately recognize that the team has tremendous starting pitching depth … extremely tremendous. In fact, as it stands right now, when pitchers and catchers report for spring training on Wednesday, February 15, 2017, they will have 13 guys fighting for five spots in the Dodgers starting rotation. That number gets even tighter when you immediately exclude left-handers Clayton Kershaw and Rich Hill and right-hander Kenta Maeda, who are all but guaranteed a spot in the Dodgers starting rotation even before Day-1 of spring training.

Alphabetically and excluding Kershaw, Hill and Maeda, here are the guys who will be fighting for the two remaining spots in the Dodgers starting rotation come Opening Day on April 3, 2017:

1. Chase De Jong (R)
2. Scott Kazmir (L)
3. Brandon McCarthy (R)
4. Vidal Nuno (L)
5. Josh Ravin (R)
6. Hyun-Jin Ryu (L)
7. Brock Stewart (R)
8. Ross Stripling (R)
9. Julio Urias (L)
10. Alex Wood (L)

With left-handers Clayton Kershaw and Rich Hill all but a lock in the Dodgers 2017 Opening Day rotation, right-hander Ross Stripling has an excellent chance of joining fellow right-hander Kenta Maeda as one of the starting five. (Photo credit – Ron Cervenka)

It goes without saying that while the Dodgers brain trust is still trying to find a Joe Blanton-esque reliever (or two) to add to their 2017 bullpen (which might even include free agent Joe Blanton), several of the above 10 guys might be candidates to fill missing bullpen pieces in what figures to be an 11-man relief corps on Opening Day.

“I don’t think that you ever get to a place with a bullpen where you feel like you’re done,” said Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman about his bullpen during Saturday’s FanFest event at Dodger Stadium. “It’s something that every year heading into the season, it scares me. I’ve made this joke in the past at times where I’ve been completely scared of the bullpen is the years that our bullpen has performed the worst and the years that I’m most concerned, so it’s obviously a very tricky part of roster construction.

“We really like the guys that we have, we’ve got a good amount of depth but there are also a couple of really interesting guys on the market. So we’re continuing to monitor what’s going on out there and we’ll see what happens,” Friedman added.

But even if the Dodgers do not go outside to acquire additional bullpen help, there are several on this list who very well could end up as relievers instead of starters, although it is safe to say that, at this point, all of them will undoubtedly be stretched out during spring training to be ready to go as starters.

“I think some will be candidates (to become relievers),” said Friedman. “It’s obviously tricky. Once you do it, it just becomes that much harder to build them back up as starters. So we’ll have to factor all of that in and it depends what our bullpen looks like, whether we have injuries or not in spring training. And so all of that will go into our decisions come opening day.”

Like Friedman, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts is fully aware of the teams significant starting pitching depth. That said, he is far less concerned about the team’s bullpen needs than is Friedman. He is also aware that all of this can change in a heartbeat.

“I think that the arms are there, it’s just more of somebody’s got to emerge, sort of what Joe Blanton did last year,” said Roberts. “When you look at Pedro Baez, (Luis) Avilan, (Adam) Liberatore, what Grant (Dayton) did last year for us, you look at the other guys, other arms potentially that might be out there… (Josh) Ravin. So we’ve got a lot of options. It’s just more of who’s going to step up and give us a chance to pitch those innings.”

In spite of past struggles. a healthy Chris Hatcher could very well become the Dodgers 8th-inning man in 2017, although neither Andrew Friedman nor Dave Roberts would commit to such.
(Photo credit – Jon SooHoo)

While Roberts is well aware of the starting pitching depth that Friedman and Dodgers general manager Farhan Zaidi have assimilated over the past two seasons, he is uncertain if he will get additional bullpen help from several of his starters who also have bullpen experience.

“I think that’s a possibility, there’s only so many starting rotation spots,” Roberts said. “I hope we don’t have to exhaust all those as we did this past season. But in knowing Andrew and the front office for a year, obviously depth is very important to our front office and it really played itself out last year. So I think as we look here today, we have a lot of starting pitching depth but as we finish spring training, guys like Alex Wood, Brandon McCarthy, Scott Kazmir, they’re going to have to pitch somewhere. So whether it’s in the rotation or potentially out of the pen, I don’t know that answer right now.”

But are guys like Wood, McCarthy and Kazmir – guys who have been starters for most (if not all) of their careers – okay with possibly pitching out of the bullpen?

“I don’t think that it’s something that … a conversation that needed to be made,” said Roberts. “I think that there are certain things that guys who have been around understand what’s at stake and potentially how it could play out. So I expect them to come into spring training ready to compete; and (Hyun-Jin) Ryu is healthy, and that’s another name. So we’ll see how it plays out. That’s (a conversation) that potentially we’ll have when we get to camp.”

In the big scheme of things, a problem such as this – a problem that every other team in major league baseball wishes they had – will somehow work itself out. And when it does, the Dodgers, a team that many self proclaimed “baseball experts” are saying will not win a fifth consecutive NL West title and will finish behind the San Francisco Giants, will once again have what will be among the best starting rotations and best bullpens in all of baseball.

Take that, you “baseball experts.”