Blake Snell is expected to undergo surgery on Tuesday to remove loose bodies in his elbow, a setback that sends the Dodger left-hander back into an injury fight barely a week after he returned to the mound. One source estimated he could be back by late July or early August, and the club still expects him to pitch again before the end of the season.
The Dodgers placed Snell back on the injured list on May 15, backdating the move to May 12, and recalled Charlie Barnes in the corresponding transaction. Snell had been activated from the injured list on May 9 after missing the first month of the season with left shoulder fatigue, then made only one major league start before landing back on the shelf. Against the Braves that night, he allowed five runs, four earned, in three innings.
Dave Roberts said Snell felt something in the back of his left elbow while playing catch, and the coming procedure will address the same elbow that was operated on in 2019. Snell had arthroscopic surgery in July 2019 to remove loose bodies from that elbow and missed six weeks then, so this is not unfamiliar territory for him or the Dodgers.
The timing stings because Los Angeles had been trying to protect its starters with a six-man rotation, especially Shohei Ohtani, and the staff is already thinner than it wanted to be. Tyler Glasnow went on the injured list a week before Snell with lower back spasms, leaving the Dodgers to lean harder on a five-man group that now consists of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Ohtani, Emmet Sheehan, Justin Wrobleski and Roki Sasaki.
That group has work ahead of it. Sasaki has a 5.88 ERA through 33 2/3 innings, and the next wave of help is not yet a simple answer. River Ryan was recently activated at Triple-A after missing a month with a hamstring injury, but Roberts said Ryan is only a slim possibility to eventually join the big league rotation. Jackson Ferris, the Dodgers' No. 8 prospect according to MLB.com, has made six starts at Triple-A and owns a 7.43 ERA.
For now, Barnes gives the Dodgers a long man out of the bullpen, even if he has been a starter for nearly all of his MLB career. That is the kind of patchwork move teams make when the rotation keeps shrinking, and it leaves Los Angeles balancing immediate innings against the longer question of how soon Snell can get back after the surgery. The Dodgers know the answer cannot come quickly enough.
