Dodgers' Andrew Friedman Discusses Trading for Starting Pitcher at Deadline

The Dodgers under Andrew Friedman have not merely used the trade deadline to load up on pitching help. They've used it to acquire some of the best pitchers in baseball.

Yu Darvish, Max Scherzer and Jack Flaherty all had brief stints as Dodgers in years past, helping bolster the team's rotation for playoff runs of varying lengths. Who will Friedman target between now and July 31, with 13 pitchers currently on the injured list?

Would you believe no one?

"I’m still optimistic,” Friedman said of the Dodgers' belief in their injured players returning, via Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times. “It requires guys coming back on or close to the timelines that we have penciled out.

“We have shown that, if we’re not in position to do that, we’ll be aggressive to add. But our strong desire is not to.”

Friedman has spoken often about his disdain for the cost of doing business at the trade deadline. Last year, the Dodgers had to sacrifice Miguel Vargas in order to acquire Tommy Edman and Michael Kopech in a three-team trade with the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago White Sox.

While Edman and Kopech were instrumental in the Dodgers' run to the World Series, the 25-year-old Vargas has a 112 OPS+ and 1.7 bWAR in 72 games with the White Sox — solid numbers for the kind of cost-controlled player every team covets.

Other than Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who is 6-6 with a 2.76 ERA and hasn't missed a start, the Dodgers' rotation includes few certainties. That makes it particularly hard to project who will be in the rotation a month from now, let alone in October — the focal point for Friedman.

Dustin May (4-4, 4.46 ERA) has made 13 starts. Clayton Kershaw (3-0, 3.31 ERA) has shown improvement in his six starts since returning from the injured list. And while the injury outlooks for Tony Gonsolin (elbow) and Roki Sasaki (shoulder) aren't optimistic, the returns of Shohei Ohtani and Emmet Sheehan from their elbow procedures in the last week suggests some stability is on the horizon.

If Ben Casparius (5-1, 3.02 ERA) is able to successfully transition from the bullpen to the rotation, you have the outline of a five-man rotation that can get the Dodgers to the end of September, if not beyond — and that's without right-hander Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell, in whom the Dodgers are heavily invested.

Can Friedman identify a trade target better than any of his returning rotation reinforcements? If not, it's a good sign that the Dodgers' best injured pitchers are returning to health.