The Los Angeles Dodgers had a deep starting rotation going into the season, but injuries have quickly put them in a tough position. However, Dustin May has been healthy, unlike in the past. May missed all of 2024 after having surgery in 2023.
In 2021, he had Tommy John surgery. He missed most of 2022 but returned in August. In 2023, May was diagnosed with a right flexor pronator strain that required another surgery. Last season, just as he was gearing up to return, he had to have esophageal surgery, ending his season. Injuries have plagued his career, and he revealed what his biggest focus was this season in an interview with RG’s DJ Siddiqi.
“I haven’t had a healthy season in five years now. 2020 was my last healthy season, and that was a half-season,” said May. “I don’t really know if you call that a full season. That’s my biggest thing for this year, to just go through the year and stay healthy. There’s going to be some bumps in the road where I’m not feeling right, or like a skip-start, just to be able to kind of hit an innings limit, because I haven’t pitched in so long.”
May made 12 appearances in 202, pitching to a 2.57 ERA. He figured to be a key player for the team in 2021 and beyond, but that’s when injuries started to plague his career. Since 2020, May has pitched in just 27 games. This season, the Dodgers expected to have a rotation of Tyler Glasnow, Yoshibobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Rōki Sasaki, Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw at some point. However, May knew he would be called on while Ohtani and Kershaw worked their way back.
However, injuries to Snell, Glasnow and Sasaki have increased May’s importance in the rotation. He has a 4.08 ERA in seven starts. He started the season by allowing just two earned runs in three starts. A seven-run outing against the Chicago Cubs has inflated his ERA, but he has been pitching well. He dealt a quality start against the Arizona Diamondbacks in his last start. He gave up just two earned runs in 6 2/3 innings of work. May knows the goal is for the Dodgers to repeat as World Series champions, but he will have to take a new approach individually.
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“I’m not going to be able to go out and throw 200-plus innings like I would like to,” May told RG. “I know that’s something that I would like to do, but it’s not really in the cards, especially for the situation that I’ve been put in. But as a team, to repeat—we definitely have the skills and the ability and the talent to do that, so just being able to put everything together and go out and do that all the way to the end like we did last year would definitely be the team goal.”
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