How the Dodgers and Braves Fixed the Two Best Starting Pitchers in the National League

Expect every team to look into this!

(Photo by Michael Owens/Getty Images)

When the Dodgers traded for Tyler Glasnow last December, they did so knowing that when he’s healthy his stuff is as good as any other starting pitcher’s in MLB. The problem, of course, is that he’s never managed to avoid getting hurt and pitch from April through October during his nine seasons in the big leagues. The most innings he’s ever thrown in a season is 120, set in 2023.

Regardless, LA traded promising young prospects Ryan Pepiot and Jonny DeLuca to the Rays and inked Glasnow to a five-year, $136.5 million extension. The reason they did this is simple: the Dodgers are tired of losing in the playoffs, and Glasnow has the kind of pitch repertoire that could dominate even a loaded opposing October line-up….if they could just figure out a way to get him on a mound with a working right arm in the postseason.

After Glasnow signed, he told the media that he’d been feeling significantly better after his Tommy John surgery in 2021. “Both Glasnow and the Dodgers feel the elbow is no longer a concern, especially given recent advancements in the procedure involving a synthetic collagen band to provide extra structural support,” Sarah Wexler of MLB.com wrote at the time.

Heading into the season, the Dodgers gave off the vibe that they had “solved” whatever injury issues had plagued Glasnow in the past, beyond the collagen band. This would understandably be a huge development, as pitchers’ of Glasnow’s caliber command something like $40+ million a year when they can fire 200 innings a season, as Gerrit Cole does and Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, and Clayton Kershaw used to do every year in their primes.

The Braves made a similar gambit when they traded prospect Vaughn Grissom to the Red Sox for the superlatively talented but always injured Chris Sale. The fiery lefty used to throw 200 innings a year back when he was in his 20’s, but had tossed just 151 total innings over his last four seasons combined. This is why the Red Sox also kicked in $17 million of Sale’s $27.5 million salary for 2024.

And now here we are on July 9 and Sale and Glasnow are 1-2 in pitcher fWAR in the National League. Glasnow was just selected to pitch in the All-Star Game for the first time, and Sale was picked for the squad for first time since 2018.

That the two top teams in the NL over the past five years have so far been able to “fix” these two pitchers is as annoying as it is unsurprising. There is a reason the Dodgers and Braves win 100+ games a season regularly, and it’s not just because “they spend money”—though that helps.

These two teams are trying something somewhat radical with their starting pitchers that re-imagines workloads. And if it works, expect the rest of the league to follow suit and catch up sometime over the next decade.

What are they doing?