PHOENIX — The only drama for the Los Angeles Dodgers at Camelback Ranch this spring might be making sure their home clubhouse has enough lockers to fit everyone. A herd of portable lockers currently resides in the middle of the room where Clayton Kershaw’s ping-pong table sat a year ago. The club’s spring training roster sits at 75 players, and will add one more player (and locker) with the return of Yency Almonte on a minor-league deal.
It’s a big camp. Not that it reflects much in terms of roster intrigue. This will be the closest thing to a normal spring training the Dodgers have had since 2023. Each of the previous two seasons started early and overseas, and both ended with a win in the final game. Winning back-to-back World Series is a fair trade-off for a short offseason. The Dodgers will slow-play their veterans in Cactus League action this spring. They need bodies to get through the slate.
“I’ve got to appreciate it’s a longer spring,” manager Dave Roberts said. “If they’re going to be here for six weeks, those guys, I don’t want to come in too hot. I want to pace them out a lot.”
But this group is largely set. The Dodgers brim with talent; look no further than a session of live batting practice that featured new signing Kyle Tucker facing off against the World Series MVP (Yoshinobu Yamamoto), the National League MVP (Shohei Ohtani) and Edgardo Henriquez pumping 102 mph in Tucker’s first full-squad workout day this week.
Dave Roberts is on guard against complacency: “I expect (a lot) from myself, and everyone should expect that from themselves.” (Rick Scuteri / Imagn Images)
Everyone is pleased on the heels of consecutive titles, with sights set on a third. For the most part, the group has remained healthy. While Tommy Edman and Brusdar Graterol are dealing with prior injuries, the Dodgers have managed to get through the early part of camp unscathed.
Yamamoto has bulked up, as has pitching prospect River Ryan. Teoscar Hernández has trimmed down. Kiké Hernández is back, guiding his fellow Puerto Rican Edwin Díaz around the facility. Díaz, the new closer, has already dyed his hair bleach-blonde in preparation for next month’s World Baseball Classic.
Spring training is always the start of the optimism season. It’s just easier to feel good about yourself right now if you’re the Dodgers.
Yamamoto put his arm on the line by pitching on zero days’ rest in Game 7 last October. Last week, he became the first Dodger to face hitters and was as pleased as anyone with how good he felt. Yamamoto is going to be the ace for Samurai Japan in the World Baseball Classic, so it made sense for him to start early.
A day after Yamamoto’s session, Roberts was surprised to see Gavin Stone already facing hitters, a notable stride in his return from shoulder surgery.
It’s easy to forget that Stone led the 2024 Dodgers in innings pitched. That was supposed to be his breakout year, as he logged a 3.53 ERA in 140 1/3 innings. Stone’s shoulder never bothered him while pitching, but it made the nights after and days between difficult to get through. Surgery proved inevitable, and more invasive than anticipated. The procedure addressed his rotator cuff, capsule and labrum.
Stone threw last summer, but briefly shut down his rehab while dealing with a “hiccup” after his 13th bullpen session. That meant rest and only playing light catch during the Dodgers’ postseason run. Sunday marked his first time facing hitters.
It went well.
“That,” Stone said, “went a lot better than I expected it to.”
Stone touched 96 mph with his fastball. He felt like he had good command of his signature changeup and secondary pitches. He felt great, close enough to what he felt in 2024. The Dodgers are excited about what Stone and River Ryan can bring back after their surgeries. Both are on schedule to start the season, with Ryan facing hitters on a back field on Friday morning. Neither will pitch a full season in 2026, which means the Dodgers still have to determine how to manage that workload.
There’s an opening in the bullpen with Graterol’s slow spring, and the last few spots back there will be in flux all through March.
That means an opportunity for Ben Casparius, who thrived through mid-June last season (2.86 ERA. 1.95 FIP in his first 22 appearances and 44 innings) and struggled afterward (6.95 ERA in the following 33 2/3 innings) in his rookie season.
“I think for the better part of three or four months, it was a no-brainer,” Casparius said. “There was no thought really going through my head outside of attacking.”
Then, everything fell out of whack. His mechanics became a mess, particularly his tempo as he came down the mound. First, Casparius drove down the mound too quickly. Then, he stayed on the rubber too long. He wasn’t able to make the adjustments quickly enough. He spent his winter recalibrating.
The opening in the bullpen could be another jumping-off point for Will Klein, who went from unknown to World Series hero, receiving a shoutout from Philadelphia Phillies star Bryce Harper as an example of the Dodgers’ excellence besides their payroll. The organization acquired Klein, revamped him and turned him into a reliever who looks like he has supreme upside.
It’s crazy to think Klein has pitched only 16 times in a Dodgers uniform. He’s someone trying to stick. He feels better set up to do it now.
It starts with his slider, a pitch the Dodgers ditched and revamped after acquiring Klein in June. His old version of the pitch was a “gyro” slider, a pitch with bullet-type rotation that relied more on depth than horizontal movement. Klein’s over-the-top release point (his arm angle is 52 degrees) has made it difficult to snap off sliders with extreme horizontal movement in the same way he made his curveball drop.
So, assistant pitching coach Connor McGuiness essentially used Klein’s curveball to make his new slider.
As Klein explained his transformation on Wednesday afternoon, he grabbed a baseball. His curveball grip, he showed, is predicated on two fingers. His index finger “spikes,” bending and digging his nail into the seam while his middle finger lines along another seam. That causes one of the seams to “catch,” generating the vertical movement he wants.
Then Klein rotated the baseball 90 degrees and put on the same grip, just with different seams in play. This is his new slider.
“It just kind of catches the seams and shifts it to that 3 o’clock tilt, and that’s what gets it going left a little bit more now,” Klein said. “That was something I didn’t know I could do, make it turn as much as it does.”
Klein’s old slider generated an average of 0.6 inches of horizontal movement. His new sweeper gets 9.8 inches of horizontal break on average. It’s made a huge difference, especially against right-handed hitters.
He still needs the pitch to get more consistent. It’s not his go-to pitch, but it’s one that will keep hitters honest.
That’ll continue to grow Klein’s confidence. The best way to fight off feelings of imposter syndrome is to keep succeeding. Klein worked with the Dodgers’ mental skills staff to try to feel more confident using his eye-popping stuff in the strike zone.
“That was a big thing, not being afraid,” Klein said. “Understanding that I’m there because I’m meant to be there. Building off of success, but being convicted first. Each pitch is the most important pitch, and make them hit this pitch. When they don’t, then you go to the next pitch. Getting results builds on itself there.”
Alex Freeland stayed back for extra work on Friday. After the day’s live batting practice sessions, and while his other teammates started to hit balls off a machine out on the field, the infield prospect was the only guy still working on his defense. It’s a big spring training for Freeland, especially with Tommy Edman set to start the season on the injured list and an opening at second base. Mookie Betts knows this, too. The former MVP has been in Freeland’s ear for close to a year now, and that continues this spring. Before Freeland took some more groundballs on Friday, Betts checked in. It was a light day for Betts, so he pulled the rookie aside and talked with Freeland for about 10 minutes before sending him off to get to work.
Betts often acknowledges it doesn’t come naturally to him to be a rah-rah leader. This is where his presence shows.
If you listen to Roberts this spring, you’d think the Dodgers should start expanding their awards cabinet at Dodger Stadium. He’s pegged Ohtani and Yamamoto as Cy Young Award front-runners. When asked this week about Betts’ odds of returning to his usual offensive form, Roberts said he expects Betts to rejoin Ohtani in the MVP conversation.
Friday, he heaped praise on Tyler Glasnow. The right-hander has always been talented. After battling physical maladies and at times showing caution when he felt something was off, Glasnow threw some of that into the wind midseason. In October, he proved willing to be used in relief. Glasnow pitched Games 6 and 7 in relief, going back-to-back for the first time he could recall in his baseball life. Roberts and the Dodgers took notice. Maybe Glasnow showed himself something, Roberts said, and could use this as a launching point.
“He’s kind of taken another step with the talent that he has,” Roberts said. “He should be in the conversation — and I would expect him to say the same thing — with the best pitchers in the National League. He should be in that conversation. That should be an expectation for himself.”
Roberts likes to operate in a state of endless optimism. He’d much rather praise a player than break him down. But his enthusiasm about his roster and stars goes beyond just talent. He’s trying to motivate them as they seek a third straight title.
“I expect (a lot) from myself, and everyone should expect that from themselves,” Roberts said. “That’s how you get good and great and not become complacent. With the talent we have in this clubhouse, they should expect individual great things as well as collectively.”
