The Los Angeles Dodgers are among the best teams in baseball as the MLB season reaches its halfway point, but there is still a glaring hole in the pitching department that the reigning champions must fix before October. As the trade deadline approaches, leading pundits continue to link the Dodgers with some pitchers who would greatly improve the ailing rotation and provide more depth in the most important stretch of the season.
The Cincinnati Reds are close to the .500 mark at this point in the season, leading many to believe they may sell them at the trade deadline. One of their veteran starting pitchers, Nick Martinez, has a 65% chance of being traded, according to ESPN’s Kiley McDani and Jeff Passan. Martinez currently has a qualifying offer of $21.05 million and will turn 35 in August.
Los Angeles Dodgers need starting pitchers
This season with the Cincinnati Reds, he has a 4.12 ERA in 16 of his 18 appearances. In his visits to the mound, he has 69 strikeouts and 21 walks in 94 innings of work.
These are positive numbers that are above some of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ starters such as Dustin May and Rocky Sasaki, although still below Yoshimou Yamamoto. However, the need to bring in an experienced starter is due to Shohei Ohtani’s lack of touch in his three appearances.
The Californian team has come out on top in most of its series thanks to the offensive power in its bats, where Ohtani has been a benchmark with nearly 30 home runs in the first half of the season. This is coupled with the contribution of Max Muncy, Will Smith, Freddy Freeman and company.
Nick Martinez’s advantages to get to Los Angeles
Another possible advantage for Martinez is his durability. He has pitched 868.1 innings in MLB over the past eight seasons, with an additional 430.1 innings in five seasons in Japan and the Dominican Republic. Nearly 1,300 innings on his odometer can be seen as a double-edged sword at this point in the season for the Dodgers. Lately, pitching health has been hard to come by for Los Angeles, but Martinez has proven to be an iron man on the mound.
With a costly one-year contract, coupled with his age, he would undoubtedly be a rental player, but the terms of a possible return to the Reds is where the situation can get complicated. The Dodgers have been on the wrong side of losses at the trade deadline in recent history, and the risk of an older pitcher being added to the rotation may not be greater than the potential losses.
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