Dodgers and injury-depleted pitching staff have been here before

The Dodgers choosing to go with 37-year-old Clayton Kershaw for Friday’s series opener at Citi Field, followed by Tony Gonsolin and Landon Knack, is not exactly how the defending world champs originally drew it up for their NLCS rematch against the Mets.

Turns out, one of the few things that money can’t buy is a clean bill of health. And while the Dodgers spending $400 million on this year’s roster guaranteed an unmatched infusion of talent — especially on the pitching side — the staggering outlay of cash has been unable to keep those expensive arms functioning on a regular basis.

Remember how outrageous it was during the winter when the Dodgers scooped up both two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell and the latest Japanese phenom, Roki Sasaki? They were viewed more as voracious art collectors than baseball architects, gobbling up more ace-quality starters than they had spots in the rotation.

By mid-February, L.A. already had a Fantastic Five in place: Snell, Sasaki, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Dustin May (Shohei Ohtani, the everyday DH, still was rehabbing back into pitching shape from his ’23 elbow surgery). The Dodgers also featured a restocked bullpen that had four closer-caliber arms for its anchor, an unheard-of luxury for the other 29 teams.

From a pitching standpoint, the Dodgers seemed to be unsinkable. Then again, so was the Titanic.

When they showed up Friday in Flushing, the Dodgers had 14 pitchers on the injured list — six starters, eight relievers — more than enough to build a separate World Series contender from the one currently taking the field.

Snell, Sasaki and Glasnow are all on the shelf with shoulder injuries (their return dates still are up in the air). Five of their highest-paid top-leverage relievers — Kirby Yates, Blake Treinen, Michael Kopech, Evan Phillips and Brusdar Graterol — also are inactive.

All told, for this season alone, those 14 injured pitchers account for roughly $102 million in salary — more than the entire payrolls of six teams. As of Friday, the Dodgers had only two starters who had amassed more than 34 innings — Yamamoto (58) and May (50 2⁄3) — and had used a whopping 13 overall to get through the first two months (teams typically use a dozen different starters for the whole 162-game regular season).

Fortunately for them, Yamamoto has performed closer to a $325 million ace in his second year, already making 10 starts (after only 18 last season) with an NL-leading 1.86 ERA.

And yet, despite what should be crippling blows to the Dodgers’ title defense, they remained atop the ultracompetitive NL West after Friday night’s 7-5, 13-inning victory over the Mets — a game in which manager Dave Roberts saw Kershaw washed out after two innings because of a 90-minute rain delay and had to follow him with seven relievers. At 32-19 entering Saturday, the Dodgers had the second-most wins in the majors, behind only the Phillies and Tigers (both were at 33).

“It’s certainly not easy,” Roberts said. “With pitching, when it goes well, you can count on and depend on innings from certain performers. Then when you don’t have it, I think it certainly adds a level of complexity and difficulty.

“But honestly, our guys have really just bought into the fact that whatever guys we have available that night to prevent as many runs as we can to win a game and do it again the next day.

“So I think that mindset is just the honest way we kind of manage it. I think if you sort of look at the IL list, then it gets more daunting and discouraging.”

What also helps? The fact that the Dodgers went through almost the same thing a year ago, when a dozen pitchers — including seven starters — either missed a considerable chunk of the season or finished it on the IL. They won the World Series anyway, beating a Yankees team with a definitive edge in that category.

Last season, the Dodgers’ rotation ranked 19th in ERA (4.23) — a tick below the 80-win Giants — and not only clinched the division title but got the job done in October, too. If that’s not a confidence-booster, at the very least it should hold off the panic in trying to navigate through this first-half minefield.

“I think that’s part of it,” Roberts said of handling an increasingly difficult pitching puzzle. “We did it last year. We’re going to do it again this year.”

One huge difference this season? Ohtani — the pitching half — is on the horizon.

In spring training, the concept of Ohtani returning to the mound for the first time since August 2023 felt more like a bonus than a necessity. The Dodgers already had plenty of elite-level starters, and Ohtani was coming off a third MVP earned strictly by his historic season at the plate (54 homers, 59 stolen bases).

Ohtani’s rehab pace, though always a constant source of attention — certainly from the large contingent of Japanese media that follows him — wasn’t a pressing concern for the Dodgers with him again mashing as their DH. But the team’s avalanche of pitching injuries likely has altered that perspective, which made Ohtani’s first session facing hitters Sunday afternoon at Citi Field a pivotal event as the Dodgers look for a shot in the arm(s).

After Ohtani became baseball’s first 50-50 player last season, exclusively as a DH, it became easier to forget that he finished fourth in the Cy Young Award voting in 2022 with the Angels (2.33 ERA, 11.9 K/9). Ohtani also has a career 3.01 ERA and 1.08 WHIP in 86 major-league starts, so obviously he’s not someone returning as a back-end starter.

The timeline from here, however, still seems somewhat vague. And it’s not as if the Dodgers would send him out for a rehab assignment — to pitch in the minors — and lose their most dangerous hitter in the process. Ohtani will need to get MLB mound-ready while preparing for his daily DH duties, and as unorthodox as that sounds, everything this $700 million unicorn does is beyond the sport’s traditional boundaries.

“I think he’s calibrating really well,” Roberts said of Ohtani’s rehab process. “The stuff looks good. It’s easy 94-95 [mph] coming out of his hand. I think we’re all anxious to see how he looks to hitters, but when he decides to ramp it up, I’m very anxious with that, too. But it’s all on his schedule. It really is.”

Ironically, Ohtani’s return to the rotation — potentially around the All-Star break — may be on the surest trajectory of all the injured starters.

Snell, who signed a five-year, $182 million contract in November, made only two starts before being sidelined with shoulder inflammation and has no definitive timeline.

The Dodgers seem more optimistic about Glasnow, who recently advanced to bullpen sessions but remains nowhere close to coming back.

As for Sasaki, he arrived in the United States with medical concerns that impacted his workload in Japan, so his shoulder impingement hardly is surprising — though the Dodgers also could stretch out the IL stint to limit his use during his rookie season.

For all the talk of the Dodgers’ super-rotation and airtight bullpen coming into this season, their starters’ ERA ranked 22nd (4.26) in the majors and their relief corps — which has thrown the most innings (224 2⁄3) by far — is 18th with a 3.97 ERA. Compare that performance with a Mets rotation built on the cheap that ranks third overall (tops in the NL) with a 2.91 ERA and a bullpen that also sits third (2.89) in that category.

So far, the Dodgers’ pitching Armageddon has done little to derail their hopes of repeating as world champs. And testing their depth this early could even be an advantage, presuming all of that expensive front-line talent ultimately does return.

Either way, the Dodgers added an eighth World Series ring last season by patching together a pitching staff, and to them, money is no object. Those are reasons they sound confident this time around, too.

By David Lennon

dave.lennon@newsday.comDPLennon

David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.