The Los Angeles Dodgers appear poised to begin the 2026 season with a six-man rotation, manager Dave Roberts said Friday.
Speaking at spring training in Glendale, Arizona, Roberts confirmed that the team expects to utilize a six-man rotation, as they did last year.
“I think early, it’s hard to say it won’t be,” Roberts said, as reported by Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register. “How beholden we are to that, for how long, I don’t know.”
Projecting the Six Pitchers
Last year, the Dodgers rotated Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow, Emmet Sheehan and Clayton Kershaw.
General manager Brandon Gomes said after the season that the team was open to another year of the six-man rotation, and five of those pitchers are back with the team in 2026.
Presumably, they’ll hold their spots, but who will fill in for the retired Clayton Kershaw?
Gomes previously said Roki Sasaki “absolutely” will be starting again after spending much of 2025 hurt or in the bullpen, where he found more success than he’d had as a starter.
How he bounces back after a roller coaster season has led to him being considered perhaps the team’s biggest mystery of the season.
Nothing Set in Stone Yet, Roberts Says
While it’s easy to assume Sasaki will take Kershaw’s spot in an otherwise unchanged rotation, Roberts wouldn’t confirm the starters.
“It’s hard to say right now who those participants are. It really is,” he said. “But I do think that with the starting pitching depth we have, it makes sense as I sit here right now.”
As Roberts implied, only time will tell. Injuries, trades, performance and many other factors will come into play, and change could come swiftly.
“How that looks, end of April? I’m not sure yet,” he said.
