March 26th, 2021 at 8:00 am 
by Ron Cervenka With only five Spring Training games remaining, Dodgers President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman and Dodgers Manager Dave Roberts will soon have a very difficult decision to make – who will be on their 26-man Opening Day roster?
Believe it or not, that’s the easy part. The hard part is – who will be in their five-man starting rotation?
On Thursday evening, 23-year-old right-hander Dustin May made that decision even more difficult for the Dodgers brain trust when he allowed only one earned run on two hits, with one walk and six strikeouts in his five innings pitched against the Chicago Cubs at Sloan Park in Mesa, AZ to lower his Spring Training ERA to a respectable 2.63 over his combined 13.2 innings pitched.
“I thought the last two [starts], he’s done a much better job of pounding the strike zone, getting into good counts,” Roberts told reporters after his team’s 5-2 win over the North Siders. “But I think the breaking ball, curve ball better, cutter better. But overall, just with his entire mix, he’s in the strike zone.”
Pound the strike zone he did. Of the 19 batters May faced, he struck out six of them (31.58%), including 28-year-old Javier Báez on a 100-MPH high fastball in the bottom of the fourth inning.
“I had guys on base, and he hit me pretty hard in the first inning, so I was trying to avoid that situation again,” May said of that crucial strikeout.
(Video capture courtesy of SportsNet LA)
Asked what he thought of his overall performance in his fourth outing [third start] of the Spring, the hard-throwing Justin, TX native and Dodgers third-round draft pick in 2016 out of Northwest High School in Justin answered with what anyone watching the game already knew and Cubs batters painfully experienced.
“I thought tonight was probably my best outing,” he answered. “I felt, body-wise, I was way more in control of how I felt going to home plate. I felt just real synched up in my delivery and everything just came out right.”
As Dodger fans know, there has been considerable talk (mostly by Dave Roberts) that May could end up pitching out of the Dodgers bullpen come Opening Day. And while this certainly wouldn’t be a bad thing, with 35-year-old left-hander David Price recently telling reporters that he would be perfectly fine and, in fact, would prefer to pitch out of the bullpen as a long reliever, Roberts would be negligent in not having May in his Opening Day starting rotation. If Roberts in fact does include May in his Opening Day starting rotation, May would join an incredible starting rotation of future Hall of Fame left-hander Clayton Kershaw, right-hander Walker Buehler, right-hander Trevor Bauer, and either left-hander Julio Urias or right-hander Tony Gonsolin – a ridiculous starting rotation any way you slice it.
Don’t mess this one up, Doc. Dustin May is a must.
Play Ball!
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I can see why folks want May in the starting rotation. His stuff is awesome, seems unhitable when his mechanics are on. The issue, for me, is that Gonsolin is further along in his development as a pitcher. Tony has 4 pitches he commands well and May is mostly fastball/breaking. ball. May slots better as a relief pitcher; Gonsolin as a starter.
That said, May is this years Walker Buehler of a few seasons ago. I’d like to see three pitches of different speed and trajectory from May before we put him in the SR. That will come someday. I also think he’s going to loose the wild leg kick at the end of his delivery sooner rather than later.