Dodgers News: 'Not Realistic' to Expect Full Season Out of Walker Buehler in 2024
The Dodgers played the entire 2023 season without the services of their ace Walker Buehler, and it seemed to really hurt their starting rotation. He spent the year rehabbing, and had a chance to return at the end of the season, but decided it was best to wait until 2024 to come back.
Getting Buehler back will help the Dodgers starting rotation, but he may not jump right back into being a full-time starter. He is coming off another major surgery and the Dodgers know that he is going to want to push himself, so they may need to save him from himself at different times.
President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman knows that it could be a slow grind back for Buehler and that the team isn’t going to push him. He explained his line of thinking about Buehler playing the full season in an exclusive interview with DodgersNation.com.
"I certainly wouldn't bet against him. He is the ultimate competitor. And we're going to continue to kind of assess things this offseason and as we get into spring training, I don't think it's realistic to expect him to go from opening day through hopefully a really long October. If you ask him, he'd be like, 'yeah, no problem.' So we'll have to think about the right way to try to balance that and handle that. He is coming off his second surgery, but watching how he attacked his rehab process last year. The position he got himself into last September, it was really good and we just didn't want to push it at that point and just a little slower to recover, which makes sense that close to surgery, but it made us even more optimistic of what things would look like in 2024."
The Dodgers will likely be cautious with their pitcher this coming season to avoid any further issues. He has been out for some time now, and the team is going to want to ease him back throughout the year.
While Buehler may want to pitch every fifth day, the team will likely scratch him from starts or push games back for him this year. They want to make sure that he is healthy heading into the postseason as well, so limiting him over the course of the long season makes sense.
