The Dodgers are sending left-hander Blake Snell back to the injured list after he reported loose bodies in his throwing elbow, another hit to a rotation already running short. The move was announced on May 15, 2026, and backdated to May 12. Charlie Barnes is being recalled to take his place.
Snell felt something in the back of his left elbow during a game of catch on Tuesday, manager Dave Roberts said, and the club now has no set plan on whether the pitcher will need surgery. The news lands less than a week after Snell was activated from the injured list on May 9 and made only one major league start, a three-inning outing against the Braves in which he allowed five runs, four earned. It also pushes the Dodgers deeper into a stretch in which every arm matters.
Snell’s elbow has a history. He had arthroscopic surgery in July 2019 to remove loose bodies from the same elbow and missed six weeks after that operation. This time, the expectation is that he will return before the end of the season, but the club cannot map the path with any certainty until it learns whether the injury settles down or turns into something more serious.
The broader problem for Los Angeles is that Snell is not the only starter unavailable. Tyler Glasnow went on the injured list a week earlier with lower back spasms, and the Dodgers had been using a six-man rotation to protect the health of their starters. With Glasnow and Snell both out, the group is down to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shohei Ohtani, Emmet Sheehan, Justin Wrobleski and Roki Sasaki, a five-man rotation that is carrying far more than it was built to handle.
Sasaki has a 5.88 ERA through 33 2/3 innings, which leaves the Dodgers leaning even harder on the rest of the staff. Ohtani’s workload is being watched closely as he tries to get through a full season as both a pitcher and a hitter for the first time since 2023, and the team does not have the luxury of easing him through the summer if injuries keep stacking up.
Snell’s return had already been a careful one. He missed the first month of the season with left shoulder fatigue, then made two rehab starts at Single-A and one final start at Triple-A before the club activated him. The Dodgers had wanted him stretched out to five innings in that rehab stint. Instead, he lasted four innings in his Triple-A start, then went out against Atlanta and was hit hard in three innings. That sequence made the latest setback feel less like a surprise than the latest sign that the rotation still has not stabilized.
There is some help in the system, but not enough certainty to call it a solution. River Ryan was just activated at Triple-A after missing a month with a hamstring injury, though Roberts said he is only a slim possibility to join the big league rotation. Jackson Ferris, the Dodgers’ No. 8 prospect according to MLB.com, has made six starts at Triple-A with a 7.43 ERA. Barnes, who has been the long man in the bullpen for now, has spent nearly all of his professional career as a starter in MLB and the Korea Baseball Organization, which gives the Dodgers some flexibility but not a clear answer.
For now, the Dodgers are left trying to patch together a staff that was supposed to be protected by depth. Instead, the injuries have made the depth the story, and the margin for error is shrinking fast.
