The impact of losing Walker Buehler for an extended period

A terrible weekend for the Dodgers ended with a miserable sweep at the hands of the Giants. To make things worse, the ace the team will need to go deep in the postseason in Walker Buehler, hit the shelf Saturday with a right flexor strain and is expected to miss at least two months.

In unsurprising news, several outlets have had some things to say about Buehler, what has happened and what the Dodgers should do moving forward.

Jack Harris over at the Los Angeles Times writes that there are four ways the team can cope with the loss in the months ahead.

Fangraphs has a thorough dive into the Buehler situation by Jay Jaffe. The article points to a number of things that weren't going well coming off a career-year in 2021. Jaffe also points out how the Dodgers playoff odds shifted dramatically when Buehler went to the IL.

Andrew Friedman isn’t looking to overreact yet to the Buehler news and, as Bill Plunkett writes for the Southern California News Group, is looking internally to fill Buehler’s role for now. Andrew Heaney returning soon could help ease that loss.

“We’ll dust that off when trade season really kicks into effect,” Friedman said. “We’ll get a nice boost when Heaney returns soon and we’ll continue to assess our internal options and begin to layer on external ones to see what makes sense.”

White Hot Week

Mitch White earned honors at both the major league level and minor leagues this week for the Dodgers. The right-hander started for the Dodgers in Chicago Tuesday and tossed five scoreless with five strikeouts, no walks and only two hits allowed. The performance made him the prestigious pitcher of the week in our weekly review.

The Dodgers optioned White back to Triple-A Oklahoma City Friday and he pitched 5 ²⁄₃ scoreless Sunday, striking out six batters along the way. Sunday’s outing earned him the Pacific Coast League Pitcher of the Week.

It seems as though right now would be a great time for White to step up in Buehler’s prolonged absence.

Links

Jack Harris and Mike DiGiovanna lay out the struggles of both the Dodgers and Angels as they begin a short two-game series at Dodger Stadium.