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Just as Clayton Kershaw is coming off the disabled list, Hyun-Jin Ryu is heading onto the disabled list with a shoulder injury. The Los Angeles Dodgers swap their No. 3 pitcher for their No. 1, but their depth has already been tested by injuries, making any further time lost a tough proposition.

Ryu is headed to the DL with what the Dodgers are calling shoulder inflammation. They have been non-specific about the severity and location, but given that the Dodgers medical staff has not asked for an MRI, they must feel that they have a good handle on it. Team sources tell me that Ryu‘s shoulder is more tender than painful and that the push to the DL was precautionary.

Ryu has no significant history of shoulder problems, going 192 innings in his first MLB campaign. Ryu showed good stamina throughout the season, though the Dodgers were very cautious with his innings, especially early in the season. 

The Dodgers cleared Ryu to start a throwing program after some progress with the inflammation, and he should have a couple throwing sessions before getting up on a mound. If all goes well, he could come off the DL sometime late next week.

The Dodgers have a current rotation of Kershaw, Zack Greinke, Dan Haren and Josh Beckett, with Paul Maholm holding the five slot. With Chad Billingsley finishing up his Tommy John rehab and Zach Lee at Triple-A Albuquerque, the Dodgers have some flexibility even with Ryu out. Beckett, Haren and Maholm are essentially pitching for their slot each time out until Ryu and Billingsley are back.

Billingsley did have a mild setback, getting some tendinitis during his rehab. That pushes his return back until mid-June at the current pace, but he is expected to slot right into the rotation when he gets back.

Ryu remains a solid middle-rotation option in fantasy and should be able to put up solid numbers. Missing a couple starts will hold his innings down around the same mark he hit last season, which is a positive. Another big positive is that Ryu hasn’t shown any loss of velocity despite the shoulder issue. Fantasy players should get him back in their rotation once he returns.

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It’s a good thing that Clayton Kershaw is coming back soon. The Los Angeles Dodgers lost another starting pitcher, with Hyun-Jin Ryu headed for the disabled list.

Ken Gurnick of MLB.com reported that Ryu is suffering from an inflamed shoulder. He picked up the injury in his last start, when he gave up five earned runs in five innings to the Colorado Rockies. The good news is that Ryu won’t have to go in for an MRI:

He will, however, be placed on the 15-day DL, per Fox Sports: MLB:

Orange County Register reporter Bill Plunkett had more on the injury:

In his first seven starts of 2014, Ryu has gone 3-2 and posted a 3.00 earned run average. Although he’s not having the year that either Dan Haren or Zach Greinke are, his steady presence in the rotation has helped to make up for Kershaw‘s absence.

The Dodgers are only a half-game behind the San Francisco Giants for the lead in the National League West heading into Friday night.

Los Angeles has what might be a tough three-game series with the Florida Marlins coming up. Ryu was scheduled to pitch in the third game, on May 4, but that will obviously have to change now. Kevin Baxter of the Los Angeles Times reported that the team will call up a new starting pitcher, rather than moving anybody up or down in the rotation:

While this is a tough blow in the interim, the Dodgers will no doubt have an easier time getting over Ryu‘s injury once Kershaw returns.

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According to ESPN Stats & Info, the Los Angeles Dodgers recently earned regular-season win No. 10,000 in franchise history, reaching the milestone mark with Wednesday night’s 6-4 victory over the Minnesota Twins.

The Dodgers’ official website reports that they are the fourth team in MLB history to accomplish the feat, joining the San Francisco (formerly New York) Giants, Chicago Cubs and Atlanta (formerly Boston and Milwaukee) Braves.

Heading into Friday’s slate of games, the Giants (10,709) are tops on the all-time wins list, followed by the Cubs (10,447), Braves (10,421) and Dodgers (10,002).

Adrian Gonzalez and Co. padded the franchise win total one day after reaching 10,000, taking both games of a doubleheader from the Minnesota Twins to complete a three-game series sweep.

It would take decades of excellent play to catch any of the teams above them, as the Dodgers still sit 419 wins short of the Braves and 445 behind the Cubs.

While the Dodgers may be stuck in fourth place for a while, the Braves perhaps have an opportunity to overtake the Cubs for second place on the all-time list.

Sitting at 17-10 in first place in the National League East, the Braves are already 7.5 games better than the 9-17 Cubs through the first five weeks of the season. Atlanta still needs to make up 26 games on the Cubbies, but Chicago has looked bad enough that it may even happen this year.

Of course, regardless of which team finishes the season in second place on all-time wins list, the Braves (1957 and 1995) and Cubs (1907 and 1908) have only won a combined four World Series since the competition began in 1903.

The Giants boast seven World Series titles—five in New York and two in San Francisco—while the Dodgers have won six, with five of those coming in L.A. and just one (1955) in Brooklyn.

With all due respect to the division-leading teams in Atlanta and San Francisco, it’s the stacked Dodgers who are likeliest to add another World Series victory in 2014.

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The Los Angeles Dodgers have their sights set on reaching the World Series this year thanks to a roster full of experienced veterans and All-Star-caliber talent at nearly every position. Veteran teams with championship aspirations don’t normally rely heavily on minor league talent—the 2013 St. Louis Cardinals notwithstanding—and Los Angeles is no different in that regard.

However, the Dodgers have a handful of prospects who are likely to have an impact at the major league level at some point during the 2014 season. Here are five Dodgers minor leaguers who will see time in the majors this year.

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Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw is set to make what could be his final rehab start on Wednesday as he inches closer to a return from an upper back injury that has kept him out of action since being scratched from his second start of the season on March 30. 

At the time, the Dodgers had a 2-0 record after sweeping the Arizona Diamondbacks in Australia and were looking primed to continue their dominance of 2013, a season in which they were victorious in 62 of their final 90 regular-season games and advanced to within two wins of a World Series appearance.

Although the other three teams in the division—the Colorado Rockies, San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants—had yet to play a game, there had to be at least some concern that the Dodgers were capable of running away from the pack as they did late last season. 

But the injury to 2013 Cy Young Award winner Kershaw, who allowed just one earned run over 6.2 innings during the team’s Opening Day victory over the D-backs, made that much less of a certainty.

In fact, the possibility for one of those teams to build a big lead over a Kershaw-less Dodgers team had quickly become a reality. 

ESPN’s Buster Olney listed a Kershaw injury as one of the top five reasons why the Dodgers wouldn’t win the NL West, comparing his loss to the Dodgers of 1962-1966 losing Sandy Koufax.

MLB Lead Writer Zach Rymer wrote about the window of opportunity that had opened up for the D-backs, Rockies, Padres and Giants and the potential impact that Kershaw’s absence for even a few weeks could have on the race. Rymer‘s advice to the Dodgers’ division rivals: “Win as many games as you can now, while the getting’s good in the NL West race.”

As of today, though, it’s safe to say that none of those division rivals have been able to take advantage of their “head start.” 

The Dodgers haven’t played over their heads without their ace, managing a 12-12 record, while Kershaw‘s fill-in Paul Maholm has been very good in two starts and very bad in two others. 

In the meantime, the D-backs have lost 19 of 27 and are already buried in the division. The Giants have gone 15-11, the Rockies are 15-12 and the Padres are 13-14. Regardless of what happens between now and when Kershaw can conceivably return during the team’s May 5-7 series against the Washington Nationals, the Dodgers won’t be too far behind, if at all.

Their current one-game deficit to the first-place Giants is nothing compared to what they overcame last summer. In a span of one month, from June 22 through July 22, they had not only emerged from a 9.5-game hole, but they had jumped all four division rivals to go from worst to first in the division. By August 22, they had a 9.5-game lead and were on cruise control. 

It’s still a tight race, but it will soon be one in which the Dodgers will have the best pitcher and, arguably, the best rotation. And this time, they’ll have no deep hole to dig themselves out of. 

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“It’s time for Dodger baseball!”

A month into what could very well be Vin Scully’s final season uttering those famed words, most of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ contingent isn’t able to hear them spoken.

Scully’s voice is booming rich with bits and pieces of Dodgers history gushing from his lips like a geyser as it has been for decades now, but the majority of Dodgers fans are being deprived of that which they’ve come to crave for six months of the year.

After a month of deadlock in negotiations between the Dodgers’ new TV channel, SportsNet LA, and cable and satellite providers, those fans are parched and enraged.

A month into what has been the most anticipated Dodgers season in a decade, fans are witness to a finger-pointing match that they have no interest in but are forced to watch as they impatiently wait to see the Boys in Blue take the field.

The blame is of no importance to fans.

They could care less if the hefty $8.35 billion deal Time Warner Cable struck with the Dodgers is the root of the impasse, or that there’s a website set up to demand providers to carry SportsNet LA.

What matters to the nearly 70 percent of fans who haven’t been able to watch the Blue Crew on TV is that the matter become resolved immediately.

Los Angeles sports fans are growing weary of getting entangled in the stalemate of TV negotiations. It’s become a maddeningly familiar debacle that starves fans of watching the games they love.

In 2012, fans were held hostage in a standoff between the Pac-12 Networks, Time Warner Cable SportsNet, and its Spanish-language equivalent Time Warner Cable Deportes and providers that prevented them from being able to watch both the Lakers and Pac-12 games, including those of local colleges UCLA and USC.

While nearly all providers eventually struck deals with those channels after a few months, DirecTV and the Pac-12 Networks, as well as Dish Network and the TWC tandem, have still to make a deal, which continues to infuriate fans.

The consumer, of course, has the option to switch to a variety of other providers that carry Pac-12 Networks and TWC SportsNet and Deportes, but in the case of SportsNet LA, only Time Warner Cable is carrying the new channel.

But, then again, why should consumers be subjected to the hassle of switching providers over one channel? It doesn’t take a genius to decipher that the onus is on the provider and channel to find resolution, not the paying consumer.

Moreover, was not the endgame of this new Dodgers channel taken into account when the megadeal was proposed and then inked by both Time Warner Cable and the Dodgers? Are there not shrewd businessmen capable of meeting a deadline, which would’ve been Opening Day?

Again, a digression. Trying to sort out the culpability in the matter is as useful as swinging when the ball’s already in the catcher’s mitt. A blatant waste of energy.

A.J. Ellis said he watched Tuesday’s game via a pirated feed. #ineedmydodgers

— Eric Stephen (@truebluela) April 10, 2014

Fortunately for fans, though, there is an assortment of alternative ways to partly satiate their hankering for the Dodgers as the TV deal remains unresolved.

For one, fans can tune into games on the radio and follow along with play-by-play streams online. There is also a bevy of free, high-quality content from SportsNet LA on the TV channel’s website.

Yet, those methods of ingesting the Dodgers are droplets to a panting beast.

This is starting to get old REALLY FAST @DIRECTV!!!!! #iNeedMyDodgers

— #BeatSJ!! GKG (@DaveyGoesCray) April 28, 2014

@MagicJohnson Hmm…didn’t see it on my TV. Actually, I haven’t seen any Dodger game on TV yet. Hard to be a fan of the Dodgers these days.

— WayneB (@whb1957) April 26, 2014

The Dodgers faithful don’t want to merely watch highlights or features on the team; they want to be immersed in the game, doused knee-deep with Scully’s fascinating stories or poetic tangents about the picturesque Los Angeles skyline that lingers above Chavez Ravine as the first pitch is being thrown.

Without it, fans are disenchanted and irritated, which they are unendingly expressing on social media every day; however, with every game that isn’t televised, a growing number of them are becoming increasingly withdrawn from the team.

Hopelessness can increase desire, but it can also yield discouragement, which has the potential to negatively affect fans’ relationship with the Dodgers in addition to their discontent with both sides of the TV standoff.

Dodgers fans continue to lose in TV money war — and this could last awhile, reports @thebenbergman for @KPCC http://t.co/ibyJLagDb5

— Melanie Sill (@melaniesill) April 28, 2014

@Dodgers @JoeyJ33 been a dodger fan 36 years. so angry that I cant watch games on TV. hope the big contract was worth alienating your core.

— Ryan Blackmun (@rblacky31) April 26, 2014

It’s been clear from the onset of this fiasco that it’s a winless scenario for both of the most important parties involved: The Dodgers organization and its fans. Without the most important medium to connect the two, the distance between them can only expand.

And for those fans eagerly waiting to be told it’s time, Dodger baseball is beginning to seem like a mirage.

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On paper, the Dodgers have too many good problems. Too many good outfielders, too many All-Star closers, and, for the first time in many years, a well-stocked farm system. So barring a rash of injuries, the Dodgers shouldn’t have the need to make any major trades this season. 

That said, general manager Ned Colletti isn’t exactly a frugal businessman, especially with the Guggenheim Group’s deep wallets backing him. He’s been known to pull the trigger on huge mid-season moves, including ones that brought his current starting first baseman, shortstop, left fielder and fifth starter to Los Angeles.

With the team off to a bit of a disappointing start, none of the standard trade subjects have made enough of an impact to raise their stocks. And if the Dodgers do swap one of their high-priced outfielders, they’ll more than likely have to eat a large chunk of any contract. 

But, if the Dodgers find themselves floundering in June and trailing in the division, Colletti might feel the need to make a trade and salvage their World Series-or-bust season. At that point, who will be the most attractive trade chips to other teams? Who might the Dodgers be willing to ship away for a younger, fresher bat or a group of minor league players?

Read on to find out who the Dodgers best trade bait is so far in 2014.

All statistics taken from Baseball-Reference.com.

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The Los Angeles Dodgers made a few low-key acquisitions this past offseason following two years of high-profile roster building. Just two weeks into the new season, some of those players are already playing major roles for the Dodgers.

Dan Haren has been a pleasant surprise at the back of the rotation, and Chris Perez has made a seamless transition to a setup role.

Meanwhile, L.A.’s highest-profile offseason acquisition, Cuban infielder Alex Guerrero, hasn’t had any impact on the major league club. He was sent to Triple-A Albuquerque out of spring training to continue working on his transition from shortstop to second base.

Along with Haren and Perez, however, three other players have established themselves as key members of the Dodgers’ major league club early in the season. Here are early season grades for the six new members of the Dodgers, including Guerrero, through the team’s first 10 games.

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The rivalry between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Dodgers is the “new kid on the block” among some of the more notable ones in baseball. But it sure has picked up steam in a hurry over the past few years.

The start could be traced back to a relatively meaningless September game in 2011 when a Diamondbacks batter was buzzed by an errant pitch from Dodgers reliever Hong-Chih Kuo, who threw a lot of them that season, walking 23 hitters in 27 innings. That batter, Gerardo Parra, launched a home run later in the at-bat and then took his time as he made his way around the bases.

Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw hit Parra with a pitch the next night, which prompted his ejection. There was no brawl and no further conflict—at least not right away.

It wasn’t until the following May, the first time Kershaw had faced the D’backs since the altercation, that the battle resumed. 

Ian Kennedy, the starting pitcher for the D’backs, threw a pitch well inside to Kershaw, who responded by throwing high and inside to Kennedy later in the game.

Again, things didn’t escalate beyond that—at least not right away. 

More than a year later, things finally did. Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig, who was playing in just his 9th big league game and had already made a tremendous impact with 16 hits, including four homers, was hit in the face by a Kennedy pitch in the bottom of the sixth inning.

A half-inning later, Dodgers starter Zack Greinke hit catcher Miguel Montero with a pitch. Benches emptied but things remained calm. It was nothing more than a good old-fashioned stare down between the clubs out near the first base bag. 

It didn’t end there. Kennedy went head-hunting again, nearly connecting with Greinke‘s face with a pitch during the very next half-inning. 

Enough was finally enough. The boiling point had finally been reached. Benches emptied and the two sides weren’t interested in a stare down this time around.

It was the Dodgers who had the laugh last, though. 

As if erasing a 9.5-game lead that the D’backs had built up by June 21 and then running away with the division wasn’t enough, the Dodgers clinched the NL West title with a win in Arizona on September 19 and then celebrated in the Chase Field swimming pool located just beyond the right-center field wall.
 

Several Diamondbacks players and club officials, including president and CEO Derrick Hall, took exception to the Dodgers’ manner of celebration.

Hall responded sarcastically in an email: “I could call it disrespectful and classless, but they don’t have a beautiful pool at their old ballpark and probably wanted to see what one was like.

Utilityman Willie Bloomquist called it “disrespectful and classless”. 

Even with an incident-free two-game series in Australia between the teams last month and Kennedy, one of the central figures in the feud, now pitching for the San Diego Padres, we can’t say for sure whether the bad blood has died down. 

It has become quite obvious that these teams can’t decide when things will be “even.” I doubt any of them are keeping count. These teams hate each other right now and, as long as no one gets seriously hurt, it’s great for baseball. 

Baseball has many storied rivalries. The Yankees and Dodgers have faced off in the World Series 11 times. The Red Sox and Yankees began with the “Curse of the Bambino” in 1918 and the rivalry has intensified over the last few decades. But right now the Diamondbacks and Dodgers have, arguably, baseball’s most interesting rivalry. 

A four-game series between the Yankees, who spent $438 million to land four impact players this past offseason, and the defending champion Red Sox started yesterday. It has to top the “must-watch” list for any baseball fan. But it’s harder to sell it as a heated rivalry when the Yankees’ starting lineup on Thursday included six players who weren’t even with the organization last season and a starting pitcher, Michael Pineda, who missed the past two seasons recovering from shoulder surgery. 

Of the players currently on the Diamondbacks’ 25-man roster, 20 of them were active when the Dodgers clinched the division title on their home field last September. A majority of that group was involved in the June brawl. The Dodgers roster hasn’t changed much, either.

Tonight they’ll go head-to-head at Chase Field for the first time since the swimming pool incident. Things haven’t started off well for the D’backs, who have already dropped two games to the Dodgers and are 3-8 overall. If they’re going to even things out in the standings, this weekend would be a good time to start.

As for which team needs to “even” things out in the ongoing feud, that’s anybody’s guess. You’ll just have to watch and find out.

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Off to a 4-1 start, the Detroit Tigers should feel a sense of urgency this season after the Cleveland Indians and Kansas City Royals proved in 2013 that they were quickly closing the gap in the AL Central.

But if the Tigers can at least partially fill the gaping hole in the middle of their lineup that the trade of slugger Prince Fielder created, their starting rotation is still good enough to carry the team into the postseason for a fourth consecutive season and into the World Series for the third time in nine years. 

Their World Series opponent, if you believe the so-called experts, will likely be the Los Angeles Dodgers, who are the unanimous favorite with sportsbooks, according to Odds Shark, to win it all.

If their talent on paper can translate to wins on the field and they can overcome an extended absence of ace Clayton Kershaw, who is currently on the disabled list with a back injury, then we can look forward to a star-studded World Series matchup between the Dodgers and Tigers. 

Those two teams will get an early look at each other when the Tigers visit Dodger Stadium for a two-game series starting Tuesday at 10:10 p.m. ET. 

While the team’s respective aces, Kershaw and Justin Verlander, won’t make an appearance—Kershaw has 13 shutout innings versus the Tigers in his career; Verlander has never faced the Dodgers—the four starting pitchers scheduled to pitch are no slouches.

Missing Verlander, the 2011 AL Cy Young Award winner, would normally be a relief for opponents. But with 2013 AL Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer—who tossed eight shutout innings in his first start of this season—on the hill in Game 1 and Anibal Sanchez, the reigning AL ERA champ, scheduled to take the mound on Wednesday, the Dodgers are not getting much of a break. 

Their lineup won’t be at full health, either, with catcher A.J. Ellis (arthroscopic knee surgery) expected to be placed on the disabled list prior to Tuesday’s game and Yasiel Puig at less than 100 percent health with a strained thumb ligament. 

Regardless, a Puig-less lineup might have a better shot against the Tigers’ duo. They are extremely tough against right-handed hitters, who posted a .536 OPS against Sanchez and .494 OPS versus Scherzer in 2013. Right-handed batters are 2-for-19 against the pair thus far in 2014. 

In addition, left-handed hitter Andre Ethier, who would likely take Puig’s spot in the lineup, has had success against Scherzer over his career (6-for-15, HR, 2B).

If manager Don Mattingly really wants Puig, who is 6-for-24 with a homer and a double to start the season, in the lineup for at least one of the games, he could opt to sit Matt Kemp against Scherzer after checking out his career numbers against him. Kemp is 0-for-16 against Scherzer with no walks and four strikeouts. 

There’s no doubt that Scherzer and Sanchez are tough, helping to form one of, if not, the best top of the rotations in the game. But, after the Dodgers’ weekend series against the San Francisco Giants, the heart of the Dodgers’ lineup is shaping up to be just as impressive.   

Despite losing two out of three games to the rival Giants, the Dodgers have plenty to be excited about moving forward.

Kemp, who missed most of 2013 and is coming back from ankle and shoulder surgeries, looked as healthy as he’s been in a long time with a two-homer game on Sunday. Hanley Ramirez, who played in only 86 games last season because of multiple injuries, matched Kemp with two homers on Sunday and went 6-for-11 in the series with two doubles to go along with the home runs. Adrian Gonzalez also had two doubles and a homer. 

A healthy Kemp and Ramirez and a productive Gonzalez hitting in between them could give the Dodgers the most dangerous “heart of the order” in all of baseball. 

As Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times noted, the Dodgers have never been able to pencil in a healthy Kemp and Ramirez in the same lineup. 

“Hanley is on a different level,” Dodgers pitcher Zack Greinke said. “If Matt’s like that, like he was today, you don’t want to face this lineup.”

Of the potential middle-of-the-order trio, Gonzalez added, “That’s a pretty good three-four-five.”

The Tigers lineup as a whole, though, has been much more impressive. Second in baseball with an .825 OPS through five games, this group is quickly easing concerns over how to replace Fielder’s production behind Miguel Cabrera. 

Leading the charge is Austin Jackson, who has moved down from the leadoff spot to protecting Cabrera and cleanup man Victor Martinez in the No. 5 hole. The 27-year-old center fielder is 7-for-20 with two doubles and a triple. Rookie third baseman Nick Castellanos (5-for-13, 2B) is also off to a strong start, as is veteran shortstop Alex Gonzalez (4-for-11, 3B) and outfielder Rajai Davis (3-for-9, HR, SB).

Bottom-of-the-order production could be key to the Tigers’ season, as well as in this series against the Dodgers. Only Martinez (9-for-26, HR, 2 2B) has success against Dan Haren, who will start Tuesday’s game. 

In game two, they’ll face either Josh Beckett, who might be activated from the disabled list, or lefty Hyun-jin Ryu, who would be making his fourth start of the season.

The Tigers were shut down by the lone lefty starter they faced so far this season. Kansas City Royals pitcher Jason Vargas allowed only one earned run against them in seven innings on five hits, one walk and six strikeouts. 

While the most interesting storylines involve the stars—Kemp and Ramirez versus Scherzer and Sanchez—each team’s ability to get the ball to their respective closer could be the difference in these games. 

Dodgers setup man Brian Wilson is on the disabled list with nerve irritation in his elbow, while the guy who was supposed to be the Tigers’ primary setup man, Bruce Rondon, is out for the season after undergoing Tommy John surgery. The next most viable candidate, free-agent acquisition Joba Chamberlain, allowed two runs and four hits in his lone inning of work this season. 

J.P. Howell, Chris Perez and Chris Withrow have more than made up for Wilson’s absence, however, accounting for a combined 12.1 scoreless innings.

On the other hand, the Tigers have yet to find that reliever who will step up and take hold of a late-inning setup role. Al Alburquerque and Phil Coke have each had shaky outings, and closer Joe Nathan has struggled, allowing runs in each of his last two appearances and blowing a save.

If the baseball world is to be treated to a first-ever World Series matchup between the Dodgers and Tigers, the Dodgers will need their stars to stay healthy. The Tigers will need to strengthen their bullpen and continue to get production from the bottom of the order. 

But most teams, if not every single one of them, have questions to answer at this point of the season. It’s quite possible that the two most talented teams in baseball will take the field at Chavez Ravine on Tuesday and Wednesday before continuing on journeys that could lead them back to the same place as World Series opponents in late October.

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