The Dodgers’ plan for their rotation this season didn’t go the way anyone wanted it to, to say the least.

They started the year with Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Bobby Miller, Gavin Stone, and James Paxton as their rostered starters, and only one of them ended up on the World Series roster.

Glasnow was injured on-and-off throughout the second half of the year, Miller was demoted due to poor performance, Stone was injured in September and underwent shoulder surgery that may keep him out for all of 2025, and Paxton was traded at the deadline.

Even Yamamoto was MIA for nearly three months with a shoulder injury.

The Dodgers talked a lot about the possibility of a six-man rotation when Glasnow, Yamamoto, and Paxton were still in the mix — Glasnow and Paxton were historically injury-prone, Yamamoto was used to only pitching once a week in NPB — but because starters kept dropping like flies, they never really got there.

Even when Walker Buehler and Clayton Kershaw returned from injury, and even with all of the rookies who came up to fill spots, the Dodgers were still unable to execute the vision.

At the recent GM Meetings, Brandon Gomes said it was a “fair bet” the Dodgers would shoot for a six-man rotation again in 2025, when they’ll hopefully have Glasnow, Shohei Ohtani, and Tony Gonsolin back on top of Yamamoto, Kershaw, and whoever they might sign in the offseason.

However, Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior left some reason to doubt that strategy. In an appearance on Dodgers Territory, he said, “It’s not the easiest thing to do. […] I think it’s doable; the biggest issue is, do you have enough depth to be able to do that?”

Prior didn’t seem entirely sold on the idea, mapping out a lot of roadblocks the Dodgers faced this season whenever they tried to implement a six-man strategy. However, the core issue is pretty simple: the Dodgers could never stay healthy enough to fill up the rotation like that, even when they wanted to.

There are already concerns that Ohtani and Kershaw won’t be ready to pitch by Opening Day in 2025.

Like Prior noted, depth is the key here. This season, LA moved Stone into a bigger role and called up River Ryan — both ended up injured. Landon Knack didn’t make himself look like an ideal option for the rotation this season, and neither did Justin Wrobleski.

Emmet Sheehan may be available in 2025 and Miller’s future is still up in the air, but it leaves the Dodgers with a lot of complicated roster configurations.

Andrew Friedman said the Dodgers would be looking deeper into their pitching development strategies in order to avoid the same rash of injury they were faced with this season.

Thinking about a six-man rotation is a little bit like putting the cart before the horse, so they should probably figure out the root cause before they run the risk of putting even more starters out of commission next year.