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The Los Angeles Dodgers lost to the San Francisco Giants on Friday night, courtesy of a Buster Posey walk-off home run. But more importantly, they may have lost their starting shortstop for a significant period of time.

Hanley Ramirez was helped off the field after he unsuccessfully attempted to go from first to third on a single by catcher A.J. Ellis. AT&T Park is not the field of dreams for Ramirez—he fractured his thumb in his last game there in March in the finals of the World Baseball Classic.

Clutching his hamstring on the way into the dugout certainly wasn’t a good sign, nor was the pained expression on his face. Manager Don Mattingly wasn’t too thrilled about it either. In fact, in comments made to reporters after the game, it was clear he’s downright shaken by it.

“We can’t keep losing guys at this rate,” Mattingly said. “This is going to end. Right now it doesn‘t look very good. … I’m not confident about anything at this moment.”

One Twitter joker suggested that Mattingly practice empathy instead of sympathy for his injured roster mates:

Who can blame Mattingly for feeling the way he does right now? He’s had to use nine starting pitchers already and the season is barely 30 games old. He was forced to use an infield on Friday night that had Jerry Hairston at first, Nick Punto at second, Justin Sellers at short and the slumping Luis Cruz at third.

My confidence would be pretty shaken just seeing an infield that looked like that too.

Adrian Gonzalez is nursing a sore neck, Carl Crawford is battling through his own hamstring issues, Mark Ellis could go on the DL with a strained quad and slugger Matt Kemp is still nowhere near 100 percent after offseason shoulder surgery.

Now, Ramirez, back for just his fourth game after returning from his thumb injury, could be lost for a substantial amount of time once again.

Mattingly likened Ramirez’s injury to that of Kemp’s hamstring strain last year. Kemp missed 51 games overall after two DL stints. Losing Ramirez for the same amount of time will absolutely force Mattingly and general manager Ned Colletti to reassess the left side of their infield.

Their third baseman—Cruz—is hitting .098 and clearly looks lost at the plate. There could be a Triple-A stint in his near future. Backup Juan Uribe is hitting .200 with two homers in 17 games—he’s not a choice for a long-term gig. Sellers is hitting just .194, so he’s not a replacement that makes the Dodgers breathe easier right now, either.

Dee Gordon is currently toiling away at Triple-A Albuquerque, attempting to hone his skills and work on a more consistent hitting approach. He’s hitting .314 with 14 stolen bases, but the Dodgers had wanted to keep Gordon there—that may no longer be an option.

The Dodgers’ anemic offense produced 11 hits on Friday against the Giants, but only one of them went for extra-bases, and that was provided by starting pitcher Clayton Kershaw.  They stranded 13 runners, further adding to their offensive woes.

What Do the Dodgers Do at This Point?

That’s a question that has no clear answers. Their inability to produce in key situations is indeed troublesome. Kemp is hitting .267 with just one home run and 11 RBI. He’s hitting just .161 with runners in scoring position.

Andre Ethier is hitting just .250, including a .148 average with RISP. That’s two players with a combined value of $33.5 million hitting .155 in crucial situations.

Skip Schumaker, acquired from the St. Louis Cardinals during the offseason, is hitting just .119 with one RBI, while Cruz is hitting .098 with two RBI.

If general manager Ned Colletti is looking for answers from within, he’s simply not going to find them.

Gonzalez’s neck injury is likely short-term, a Mattingly did say that he was available to pinch-hit if needed on Friday. So there’s that at least.

Aside from Gordon, Colletti doesn’t have many infield options internally. His best hitters at the Triple-A level include Scott Van Slyke and Alex Castellanos, both of whom man the outfield. Very few options are available on the open market as well, not to mention the fact that teams are generally unwilling to part with any pieces this early in the season unless they’re completely blown away by an offer.

And then there’s Mattingly himself. He was called into question for not playing small-ball on Friday night. In the top of the fourth inning of a scoreless game, catcher A.J. Ellis drew a walk, followed by a single by Ethier, putting runners on first and second with no outs. Cruz promptly followed up with a double-play grounder, ending the threat.

Fans on Twitter immediately questioned Mattingly’s failure to consider an important option:

Another fan was just a bit more to the point about his feelings:

You can find any number of experts who point to the sacrifice bunt as a useless offensive tool. Dave Cameron of FanGraphs is one of them:

Bunting for a base hit, putting on a well-timed squeeze, beating an overshifted defense, having a pitcher move a runner into scoring position… there’s room for bunting in baseball. The frequency of sacrificing bunting that is prevalent now, though, is simply incorrect strategy, and the sooner it is removed from the sport, the better off Major League teams will be.

Cameron and others may be right about that, but considering the Dodgers’ current state of affairs, couldn’t it at least have been considered? Especially with the struggling Cruz coming up?

Coming up with different ways to score—especially on the road in a pitcher-friendly park—has to be considered. Stranding 13 runners and the complete inability to produce in key situations warrants a change of thinking.

Mattingly isn’t helping his own cause by failing to consider these options with his team struggling mightily at the plate. Injuries aside, he needs to adjust his way of thinking when run-scoring opportunities are presented.

Answers aren’t going to come for the Dodgers via the trade market at this point. They’re going to have to ride out the injuries and hope that key offensive contributors like Kemp and Ethier can break out of their funks are start doing what they’re paid very handsomely to do: produce.

There are no quick fixes at this point in the season. Colletti isn’t in a position that gives him an advantage. Even if he were to reach out to other teams to find a fix, opposing general managers have the upper hand in knowing that the Dodgers are desperate for help. They will be looking for a return package in any deal that would be much more advantageous for them then it would be for Los Angeles.

If Colletti wants to deal, it will cost him dearly. And the Dodgers have already paid dearly for the roster currently assembled.

Fixing the offense is not going to happen overnight. Kemp isn’t suddenly going to have a shoulder that’s 100 percent healthy. There’s no magical cure that can put Ramirez back on the field any quicker.

The onus is on the roster to collectively pick itself up, dust itself off and start delivering. The onus in on Mattingly to be more creative with run-scoring opportunities. The onus is on the bullpen to keep the team in the game.

Ramirez will return at some point. Kemp will be completely healthy at some point as well. Players like Zack Greinke, Chris Capuano, Ted Lilly and others will return as well. It’s up to Mattingly and the roster to stay afloat and ride out the storm.

Doug Mead is a featured columnist with Bleacher Report. His work has been featured in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, SF Gate, CBS Sports, the Los Angeles Times and the Houston Chronicle.

Feel free to talk baseball with Doug anytime on Twitter.

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Hanley Ramirez was helped off the field Friday night after clutching his left hamstring following a slide into third base.

UPDATE: Saturday, May 4, at 6:21 p.m. ET by Tom Kinslow

—End of update—

The Los Angeles Dodgers (via Twitter) verified the injury after he was removed from play Friday night:

Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal reports that Ramirez is going to the disabled list.

Andrew Baggarly of CSN San Francisco originally speculated after the play that Ramirez likely would be headed back to the disabled list, which proves this is a serious injury (via Twitter):

If Ramirez misses any significant time, it will be another setback for the infielder. Nothing is official yet, but he could be heading back to the DL just three games after making his season debut.

He recently made his first start of the year during the Dodgers’ April 30 win over the Colorado Rockies. Ramirez was sidelined until that point after undergoing offseason thumb surgery to repair a torn ligament in the finger.

Ramirez homered in that first start to help spark a stagnant Dodgers offense that has scored just 91 runs so far in this young 2013 season. That’s good enough for second to last in baseball.

Expect the Dodgers’ offensive struggles to continue as long as they have key players like Ramirez in the dugout and not on the field. No one else on the diamond seems to be ready to play ball at this point, and Ramirez’s return was the lone beacon of hope for the club.

That beacon appears to be slowly fading, as the shortstop could have significantly injured his hamstring.

Slugger Matt Kemp has also yet to find his groove and could still be feeling the effects of offseason shoulder surgery.

The Dodgers aren’t in despair just yet. Despite their offensive woes, the team is close to .500. They should be all right in the long run if they can remain in contention in the NL West until their bats come around.

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The Los Angeles Dodgers ended April with a very appropriate 13-13 record. The .500 record was fitting because the first month of the MLB season provided as much hope as it did frustration for Dodgers fans.

While some of Los Angeles’ most important players got off to fantastic starts, others stumbled out of the gate. Injuries have also decimated the roster, just as it did during the second half of the 2012 season.

The Dodgers enter tonight’s three-game series in San Francisco a game under .500 at 13-14. However, they trail the Giants by just 2.5 games in the NL West standings.

Los Angeles is only 3.5 games behind the division-leading Colorado Rockies, who are off to a surprising 17-11 start.

The Dodgers still have 135 games remaining, so it is way too early to overreact to the good or the bad results thus far. Here are the 10 biggest winners and losers in Los Angeles after the first month of the season.

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The Dodgers‘ offense is so bad.

[This is where you’re supposed to chime in by shouting in unison, “How bad is it?”]

So bad it’s keeping the Marlins‘ offense company.

One of the big stories so far in 2013 is the utter ineptitude of Miami’s hitters, who own an aggregate triple-slash line of .229/.288/.315. This was, more or less, to be expected, given the club’s quadruple-A roster.

The Dodgers, though? The big-market, big-spending, big-name, revamped, retooled and revitalized Dodgers? Well, they were supposed to take the NL West and all of baseball by storm.

And yet, their 91 runs scored in 27 games is the second-lowest total in baseball.

Some storm.

Blame Matt Kemp, who may not be all the way back from offseason shoulder surgery just yet, as he is hitting just .260 with one homer, 11 RBI and a .655 OPS after a blistering April a year ago.

Or blame Andre Ethier, who’s sort of just coasting along with a .237 average, three homers, nine RBI and a .717 OPS.

Better yet, blame the left side of the infield, where the shortstop trio of Justin Sellers, Luis Cruz and Nick Punto has combined for a .584 OPS (eighth-worst in the majors).

And if we really want to get to the root of the problem, there’s the third base crew of Juan Uribe, Cruz, Jerry Hairston and Punto, who have managed an MLB-worst .443 OPS.

Forget the rain, we know who to blame it on now.

Enter Hanley Ramirez: Savior?

In baseball, one player is never enough to make an offense go, let alone fix what ails a collection of struggling stars like the Dodgers. But how much can Ramirez help the Dodgers’ floundering offense now that he’s returned from a torn ligament in his right thumb sooner than expected—but not a moment too soon?

Look, Ramirez is almost certainly no longer the five-to-six win player he was with the Marlins from 2006-10, when he compiled the fifth-most wins above replacement in the game over that five-year stretch.

Back then, Ramirez also ranked in the top 20 in weighted runs created plus, or wRC+, a metric used to determine how many runs above average a player is worth on offense (where 100 is league average). In Ramirez’s case, he was 36 runs better than the average player in that time-frame.

But even if Ramirez never gets back to his former self, he’ll be a major upgrade for the Dodgers. Essentially, by playing Ramirez at shortstop in place of that smorgasbord of atrocity that had been “holding down the fort,” the club will be getting addition by subtraction and addition by addition.

Together, Dodgers shortstops currently own MLB’s third-worst wRC+ with a score of 30—meaning the position has created 70 percent fewer runs than the league average.

By himself, Ramirez’s wRC+ in 2012 was 107, meaning he created runs at a rate of seven percent above league average. It’s not Hanley in his heyday, but the Dodgers don’t need that—they need someone to not be the worst in the entire sport on offense.

Even though we passed around the blame baton above, Ramirez won’t have to do everything by himself because not everyone on the team is at fault for the offensive-offense.

New Dodgers Adrian Gonzalez (.330 BA, 3 HR, 20 RBI, .888 OPS) and Carl Crawford (.308 BA, 4 HR, 20 R, .905 OPS) have proved to be rather productive in their first full seasons with the team, so Ramirez won’t have to do it all by himself.

Plus, both Kemp and Ethier will pick up their portion of the slack soon, too.

The other semi-good news is that the club’s .250 batting average is at least in the middle of the pack (16th overall), and the .327 on-base percentage is actually in the top 10.

Unsurprisingly, the Dodgers biggest problem on O is getting extra-base hits, as they rank third-worst with a .362 SLG and are in the bottom five in each of doubles (37), triples (1) and homers (20).

While Ramirez used to be one of the better hitters for average—he batted .313 from 2006-10—that has been trending downward over the past three seasons.

What Ramirez can still do, though, even if he’s only hitting .250-.270, is drive the ball, which is exactly what the Dodgers need and what Ramirez has done since returning, as he homered and doubled in his first start (see video) and hit another two-bagger in his second.

He might not be bringing sexy back, but Ramirez helps the Dodgers make up for the things they lack.

Through a sluggish start, the Dodgers have managed to hover around .500 (currently 13-14), and while they’re in fourth place in the NL West, they’re only 2.5 games-back of the Rockies for the division lead—not exactly an insurmountable distance.

Now, the Dodgers’ hitters just have to work on putting some distance between themselves and those Marlins.

All statistics come from MLB, FanGraphs and Baseball Reference.

Can Hanley help the Dodgers? Let’s hear it in the comments or come pester me on Twitter: @JayCat11

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It’s not even May yet, but the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ once-deeper-than-deep starting pitching staff is down to a small handful of able bodies. 

That’s their excuse to go out and make a big splash. Round up the usual suspects!

Actually, let’s slow things down and get on the same page first.

A couple weeks ago, the Dodgers whittled down their starting pitching staff by trading Aaron Harang. Then Zack Greinke broke his collarbone when he was bulldozed by San Diego Padres outfielder Carlos Quentin. It turned out Chris Capuano was also hurt in that incident, according to Ken Gurnick of MLB.com.

This brings us to today’s news, which is of the bad variety:

The Dodgers’ rotation is down to Clayton Kershaw, Josh Beckett, Ryu Hyun-Jin and the recently recalled Stephen Fife. Ted Lilly will make his return this week, but all bets are off on him seeing as how he hasn’t started since last May due to major shoulder woes.

So yeah, not good.

Now, the Dodgers aren’t going to be thin on starting pitching for the long haul. Capuano and Greinke will be back eventually. In the meantime, the Dodgers can look to tread water with in-house options. One of those is top prospect Zach Lee, who ESPN’s Keith Law (Insider post) thinks is ready.

But these are the Dodgers we’re talking about.

They demonstrated last year that they prefer to respond to adversity by making big moves. And because they have more money than Scrooge McDuck, there are a lot of big moves they can make. If they see fit to solve their rotation issues by making a big splash, the smart money is on them doing just that.

The hard part is figuring out what kind of big splash they could make this season. It’s a process of elimination.

What Do the Bad Teams Have?

The default plan of action in times like these is to pillage the bad teams. It’s not like they need their best players, and they’ve been known to jump at chances to unload salaries they don’t want to pay.

The five worst teams so far this year are the Miami Marlins, San Diego Padres, Houston Astros and both Chicago clubs. Since the White Sox contended last year and are still members of a weak division, let’s assume the Dodgers’ best bet is to do business with the other four.

The most attainable starter on the Marlins is Ricky Nolasco, who is owed a salary of $11.5 million that’s eating up a good chunk of Miami’s payroll. But he’s also a guy with a 4.68 ERA over the last four seasons, so he’s not overly appealing.

The Astros have Bud Norris, who Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com said was “available and drawing interest” during spring training. But with a 4.43 career ERA and 1.40 WHIP to his name, he’s another guy who’s not very appealing.

The Padres, meanwhile, are a lousy team in large part thanks to lousy starting pitching. Per FanGraphs, they began Tuesday ranked 28th in starters ERA. Pillaging their starting pitching is not a good idea. To boot, none of their guys stand out as  “big splash” options.

The Cubs have Matt Garza to offer, and they may be willing to move him rather than lose him to free agency like with Ryan Dempster last year. He’d be a good guy for the Dodgers to target if they knew they could count on him being healthy.

But they can’t. Between an elbow issue last year and a lat issue that popped up during spring training, Garza’s health has been a question mark ever since last summer. The Dodgers don’t need another starter with shaky health in their midst.

As for other free-agents-to-be the Dodgers could target…

The Free-Agents-To-Be

The 2014-15 free-agent class is set to feature some big-name starting pitchers.

The trouble is that some of these big-name starters are attached to questionable talent. Others aren’t going to be so easily attained.

Josh Johnson’s name stands out, but he belongs to a team in the Toronto Blue Jays that isn’t going to give up on contending so easily, not after trying so very hard over the offseason to put itself in a position to contend after so many years of mediocrity.

Even if the Blue Jays do fall out of the race, Johnson’s struggles so far this season—highlighted by a 6.86 ERA—muddy the picture. He’s another guy who wouldn’t be an automatic savior for the Dodgers.

Ditto Tim Lincecum, who’s still exhibiting the bad habits that led to a disastrous season in 2012. Besides which, the Giants aren’t trading him to the Dodgers A) because they can’t spare the depth and B) because they’re the Dodgers.

Other pitchers that stand out on the list of free-agents-to-be are Roy Halladay—who has a vesting option he has no hope of activating—Phil Hughes, Jason Hammel, Hiroki Kuroda, Paul Maholm, Ervin Santana and Jason Vargas. But like with Johnson, they all play for teams that are looking to contend.

That’s also true of the two superstar pitchers the Dodgers could look to acquire who aren’t due for free agency at the end of the season.

The Long-Term Superstar Targets

I’ll just go ahead and say the names: David Price and Cliff Lee.

The Tampa Bay Rays are going to have to trade Price eventually. That’s obvious now more than ever in light of the huge contracts that have been handed out to ace pitchers recently, as ESPN’s Buster Olney noted:

With Price due for free agency after 2015, the Rays stand to gain more by trading him sooner than later. But they won’t trade him this summer if they’re contending, and the Dodgers aren’t a great fit for him anyway.

The Rays are going to demand elite prospects when it comes time to trade Price, and the Dodgers don’t have a Jurickson Profar, an Oscar Taveras or a Dylan Bundy in their system. The best they’ve got is Yasiel Puig, who isn’t in the same league as the aforementioned names.

The Dodgers stand a better chance of nabbing Lee. ESPN’s Jayson Stark reported that the Dodgers claimed him when the Phillies put him on waivers last August, and Ken Rosenthal suggested in a recent video post that Lee could become available this summer of the Phillies fall out of the race.

The Dodgers may not have elite prospects, but they’re the one team in the majors that could take Lee’s entire remaining contract off Philly’s hands with no fuss.

And if the Phillies see their future crumbling along with their present, they could let the Dodgers have it with very little coming back the other way.

So…What, Then?

If the Dodgers are going to make a move for a starting pitcher, they have a best-bet scenario and a best-hope scenario.

Their best bet is to get one of the lousy teams in the league to cough up a starter. To that end, getting the Marlins to surrender Ricky Nolasco is easily the most likely thing to happen. He may not be overly appealing, but he’s very much attainable.

The Marlins will be free of big contracts if they unload Nolasco‘s salary, and there’s no point in him being there for much longer anyway. The longer the Marlins keep him, the more they risk him getting hurt. And if he gets hurt, Jeffrey Loria has to pay millions of bucks for nothing.

The Dodgers’ best hope, meanwhile, is that the Phillies plummet out of the race in the NL East and begin to consider jettisoning Cliff Lee.

It’s not hard to see this happening. The Phillies are already under .500, and they share a division with the National League’s best team (Atlanta Braves) and the best team in baseball last year (Washington Nationals). The New York Mets have some solid starting pitching, and their starting pitching can only get better if Zack Wheeler arrives and establishes himself.

If the Phillies do fall out of the race, it’s going to be because guys like Roy Halladay, Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Michael Young just aren’t getting it done. Since none of them are getting younger and three of them (Halladay, Utley and Young) are free agents at the end of the year, Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro is going to have every reason to believe that his club’s championship window is shut and that it’s time to move on.

If he can bring himself to believe that, then he could bring himself to send Lee and his contract west.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter. 

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The Los Angeles Dodgers announced today that right-handed starting pitcher Chad Billingsley will be going back on the DL with a season-ending elbow injury. This time, it will require Tommy John surgery, which is likely to keep Billingsley out for 12 months.

Given Billingsley‘s injury history and an apparent insistence on coming back from those maladies too early in the process, this was bound to happen. It’s still a shame to see a promising pitcher go down, and it causes a big problem for the Dodgers pitching staff.

Coming into the regular season, the Dodgers boasted one of the strongest pitching staffs in baseball, running eight starters deep. While Clayton Kershaw, Josh Beckett and Hyun-Jin Ryu are still intact, Zack Greinke hit the DL and Aaron Harang has been traded away.

Furthermore, southpaws Chris Capuano (started a game over the weekend before getting pulled and placed on the DL with a leg injury) and Ted Lilly (starting tomorrow; his first game back from an injury) are always on the brink of injury.

So what was once a team with eight options for the starting rotation, suddenly finds itself with three viable pitchers, surrounded by whomever they pull up from Triple-A and—for now—Lilly.

This offseason saw the Dodgers strengthen an already well-constructed team that many felt should win the NL West. Even with the defending champion Giants, upstart Rockies and always-dangerous Arizona Diamondbacks lurking, many experts picked Los Angeles to wear the division crown in 2013.

Though the pitching was nice, much of the reason for optimism is in the team’s offense. And once Hanley Ramirez returns and the lineup starts to click, the offense will be the reason why the Dodgers stay in contention.

Having guys who throw in a pitcher-friendly park under one of the best pitching coaches in the game means the rotation will likely continue to perform, but the team will ride its bats in the long run.

Last season, the Dodgers made due with a far worse group of starters and finished as one of the better staffs (by ERA) in the National League. It helps to have a Cy Young favorite as the ace of the rotation, but pitching coach Rick Honeycutt and manager Don Mattingly were even able to squeeze a mid-3.00’s ERA out of Harang in the fifth spot in 2012.

As far as changing the NL West picture, there’s no debating that an injury to a regular starting pitcher is detrimental to any team’s chances. And when he’s on, Billingsley can be absolutely dominant. So the Dodgers likely won’t find a replacement of his caliber in their farm system or in a trade, but they can lean on the knowledge that they’ve been here before.

When Greinke returns, they will still have a dangerous 1-2 punch at the top, followed by what looks to be a sturdy 3-4 in Beckett and Ryu. It’s not as good overall as the group you’ll find in San Francisco or Arizona, but it’s closer than many will think initially.

And again, the strength of this team going forward lies with the offense. If a team boasting Carl Crawford, Matt Kemp, Adrian Gonzalez, Ramirez, and Andre Ethier can’t stay in the playoff race, it won’t matter how well the pitchers are doing.

That being said, the elbow injury will close the gap between the Dodgers and their NL West counterparts. No matter how you look at it, you can’t replace that production in a fifth starter. But the fact that he was the fifth starter is something for Dodgers fans to hang their hats on.

As it stands now, the Giants are (and will be, until proven otherwise) the team to beat in the division. The Dodgers will have to contend with them, and Arizona, and Colorado, and the pesky Padres (who have four of their five wins this year against the Dodgers) if they want to win the West, regardless.

Losing Billingsley definitely doesn’t help the cause, but it may not be as crippling as advertised. When clicking on all cylinders–whether it’s Billingsley, Lilly, Stephen Fife, or an unknown trade acquisition holding down the last spot in the rotation–this team will be tough to beat. 

The NL West division title is a little bit more difficult to attain now, but it’s still well within the Dodgers reach. When all is said and done, losing someone like Greinke is much more perilous for their chances this year.

Follow @jamblinman

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Mothers are always right.

Fighting solves nothing and unfortunately for the Los Angeles Dodgers, they are learning that the hard way. 

Although Carlos Quentin is already slated to return to the San Diego Padres lineup following his suspension for charging Dodgers pitcher Zack Greinke, the Dodgers are still reeling from the affects.  Greinke broke his collarbone in a collision with Quentin and is currently on the 15-day disabled list.

As if the loss of Greinke wasn’t bad enough, fellow starter Chris Capuano was placed on the 15-day disabled list on Wednesday, and Major League Baseball reported that his injuries were also a result of the bench-clearing brawl with the Dads.

Apparently things really do happen in threes…hours ago, news broke that Dodgers starter Chad Billingsley will require Tommy John surgery and miss the rest of the season.

However, Dodgers fans should not be cancelling October quite yet.  Although it is true that April has been disappointing at the very least, the key word here is APRIL. 

Starter Ted Lilly is expected to return to the rotation next week.  Although he hasn’t pitched a game since last May, Lilly brings a veteran presence to the mound…something that the Dodgers will miss greatly in the series to come. 

The loss of Zack, Cap and Bill leaves only Clayton Kershaw and Josh Beckett as the only MLB veterans in the rotation as of today.  Rookie Stephen Fife and Korean newcomer Hyun-Jin Ryu make up the rest of the rotation while they await the return of veteran Ted Lilly.

Capuano may even find himself out of a starting job, dependent on the performance of Ted Lilly.  In essence, the Dodgers may only be losing two starters, but Lilly’s performance is impossible to predict due to his extended absence from baseball. 

April could not get much worse for the Dodgers.  Their offense has failed to show up, producing only 3.0 runs per game in their first 18 contests.  With one of the most feared lineups in baseball, the Dodgers are bound to begin to produce offensively. 

The Dodgers bullpen is also reassuring, posting a modest 3.67 ERA to start the season, and a 3.72 team ERA. 

Clayton Kershaw has been exactly what Dodgers fans expect.  With a 1.88 ERA in four starts, Kershaw is the least of their worries.  Beckett and Ryu have been average thus far, though neither are consistently dominant.

Take a deep breath, Dodgers fans.  Although the loss of the three starters is certainly a painful blow, it is also certainly not a fatal one.  Despite the rough April that the team has endured, they find themselves only two games below .500.  

The Boys in Blue are still a serious playoff contender, regardless of their injuries.  Hopefully, the team is just getting their adversity out of the way now so that they can come together later in the season.

After all, no one wins a championship because they had a stellar April. 

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Chad Billingsley will undergo Tommy John surgery tomorrow, April 24. Recovery time is expected to be 12 months.

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) April 23, 2013

That is very, very unfortunate news for the Dodgers. After losing Zack Greinke to a broken collarbone, trading away Aaron Harang, and seeing lefties Chris Capuano and Ted Lilly making regular trips to the DL, a once-stacked rotation is quickly dwindling.

Billingsley‘s injury seemed like a ticking time bomb all along, as he routinely came back too early from soreness or short DL stints. The Dodgers may have dropped the ball on his rehab, but either way they have a big problem on their hands.

After Clayton Kershaw, the Dodgers are now left with Josh Beckett, Hyun-Jin Ryu, whichever combination of Lilly and Capuano is healthiest, and Stephen Fife. It’s a far cry from the staff they started with, but it will have to do until July, when Greinke returns.

Unless, of course, the Dodgers spend some of that endless cash and dip into their prospect pool a little bit to pull off a trade. They have the means, but will they pull the trigger? And if so, will it be the right move? Here are three potential trade scenarios for the Dodgers to replace Greinke and Billingsley.

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When Clayton Kershaw steps on the mound Tuesday night, he’ll be after career win No. 64. If the Dodgers lefty, still just 25 years old, is ever going to have a chance to step on the mound to achieve his 300th win, when might that be and how will he get there?

Even though Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Randy Johnson each won their 300th game within the past 10 seasons (see chart below), 300 wins seems like an impossibility these days, a figment of the imagination from decades past, when pitchers would make more starts and throw more innings than they do in today’s game.

But given Kershaw’s age and success to this point of his still-young career, let’s map out a scenario in which he joins the club. 

Fellow MLB Lead Writer Zach Rymer recently considered Kershaw’s chances to crack the 4,000-strikeout club. Now let’s see how Kershaw’s trek to 300 wins might look in a fanciful world where we control his fate.

THE 300-WIN CLUB

Before anything else, here’s a reminder of the 24 pitchers who have won 300 or more games in MLB history, so we know what Kershaw is up against.

To provide further context on what Kershaw needs to do, here are the ages at which each pitcher won his 100th, 200th and 300th game:

*Denotes a player who debuted prior to 1900 (the modern era). Of the 24 300-game winners, 17 started their careers in 1900 or later.

**Spahn missed three full seasons in the middle of his career (1943-45) due to military service.

***Wynn missed one full season in the middle of his career (1945) due to military service.

The most important part of that chart is the last column, “Average Age.” That provides the benchmarks we should aim for with Kershaw. In short, if 300 wins is a realistic goal—we’re using “realistic” here in the loosest possible way—then Kershaw should shoot to have win No. 100 by age 27, win No. 200 by 32 and No. 300 by 38 or so.

That’s what we’ll use to guide us along Kershaw’s quest.

KERSHAW THROUGH AGE 25

Here’s where we apply this to Kershaw, who already has two wins in this, his age-25 season. If we conservatively project that he’ll win 12 more in 2013—to match his total from last year’s 14—then he’ll have exactly 75 wins through age 25.

(Quick aside: That has been done by 53 pitchers in the modern era of baseball, and of those 53, only five went on to win 300 for their career. Not exactly promising odds, huh?)

While we’re on the topic of the 2013 season, since we’re taking liberties with Kershaw’s career path, let’s just get the whole contract extension out of the way right here. While he is in line to hit free agency after 2014, for the purposes of this piece, Kershaw will be signing a 10-year extension with the Dodgers at some point in the near future. This will dwarft the recent extension Justin Verlander signed to stay with the Tigers at upward of $202 million.

Such a contract makes sense for both sides—and helps our perfect-world scenario move along—as the Dodgers have the dough and Kershaw would be able to stay in one of baseball’s best pitcher’s parks around, which of course, helps him toward his ultimate goal of 300 wins. Plus, being on a team whose owners are willing to spend big to acquire premium talent will only help Kershaw’s chances to keep piling up wins.

Okay, back to the task at hand—winning 300 games.

If Kershaw finishes 2013 with 75 career wins. That means he’ll have two seasons, at ages 26 and 27, to accrue at least 25 more wins to reach the 100-win mark to keep him on pace for 300 “W”s. Certainly do-able, right? In fact, forget our little world of make-believe, Kershaw might even do better than that in real life.

But what will he have to do to stay on that pace?

KERSHAW IN HIS PRIME

Since Kershaw will turn 26 just before the start of 2014 and the average age of our 300-game winners at No. 300 is almost 38, that gives him 13 seasons or so to rack up those 225 wins—or 17.3 wins per year.

Obviously, Kershaw could pitch a few years beyond his 38th birthday, but by that point, he’s going to need to be within, say, 25 wins of 300 to have any sort of realistic shot of getting there in his late-30s or early-40s.

That means Kershaw will need to use the first portion of his prime years to get well on his way to 200 wins by the time he hits the big three-oh, as the chart above reminds us.

In fact, Kershaw will have to be at his most productive from 26 through 32 if he wants to make a run at 300. That seems like common sense, since those years typically encompass a pitcher’s prime.

Plus, as the chart shows, it took the average 300-game winner fewer than five years to go from win No. 100 to No. 200; whereas it took nearly six years to go from No. 200 to No. 300. Simply put, a pitcher typically has to win the second hundred faster than the third hundred.

Let’s paint an optimistic picture here and say Kershaw wins an average of 18 games a year in his prime from ages 26 through 32 (2014-2020). That’s 126 wins over those seven seasons, which when added to the 75 we’re giving him through 2013, allows Kershaw to cross the 200-win barrier at 201 career double-yoos through age 32.

Whaddaya know? That keeps him right on pace with our chart. So far, so good.

KERSHAW VERSUS THE LAST 100

We’ve made it here by adopting an optimistic point of view (and perhaps by donning a pair of rose-colored glasses), but this is where a leap of faith is required.

Remember, Kershaw has crossed the 200-win line through age 32, but he’s done so by the skin of his teeth at 201, so he’ll need to make that up on the back end.

Only 54 pitchers have won at least 99 games after turning age 33, which is the exact win total to get Kershaw to No. 300 and the exact age Kershaw would be at this stage in his mythical career arc.

Now, if we limit the parameters to only since 1969, when MLB adopted divisions, to help make things a little more current, that number is cut in half to 27.

And if we go from 1980 on, well, it’s almost lopped in half again: only 14 pitchers have won at least 99 from age 33 on.

Here’s how it looks in graph form:

So it can be—and has been—done. In fact, of the 14 to do so since 1980, five have gone on to win 300. Pretty good odds at 36 percent, actually, and in our scenario, Kershaw is going to have to mae it six out of 15.

Now, of those five—the five most-recent 300-game winners—Maddux was the youngest to reach No. 300 at 38, whereas Clemens was 40, Glavine was 41, Ryan was 43 and Johnson was 45.

In all likelihood, then, Kershaw won’t hit 300 until he’s an age that begins with a “4.”

Remember, Kershaw is starting with 201 wins entering his age-33 season, so to get 99 wins before he turns 40, that would mean he averages just over 14 wins a year. Probably not happening, right?

But over 10 years, at which point Kershaw would be 42, he would have to average only 10 wins a year, which actually sounds possible, especially if he starts out that post-prime stretch with a 20-win season or two, or at least a few high-teen win-total campaigns.

KERSHAW REINVENTING HIMSELF

As Kershaw ages and loses velocity—both of which are inevitable—there will be the question of whether he can reinvent himself to stay afloat in his mid-to-late-30s and even into his 40s.

Based on what he’s done to this point in his career, signs point to yes. Kershaw broke into the majors at 20 years old, throwing primarily a mid-90s fastball and a knee-buckling curve, which is backed up by FanGraphs’ pitch types.

He’s since advanced that repertoire to also include one of the game’s best sliders and a changeup that’s not half-bad, per FanGraphs’ pitch type values since 2010.

Given his aptitude for learning and perfecting pitches, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Kershaw morph himself from a hard-thrower into a crafty lefty who gets by on poise, guile and an ability to exploit hitters’ weaknesses.

A HEALTHY KERSHAW

Of course, this whole script doesn’t take into account much in the way of injury, which is an obvious concern for a pitcher. But again, we’re trying to get Kershaw to 3-0-0, and if he suffers any sort of severe injury at any point along the way, well, it’s not going to happen. So we’ll just pretend it won’t.

KERSHAW AT 300

So that’s how Kershaw gets to 300…

• Win 12 more games in 2013
• Average 18 wins a season in his prime from 2014 through 2020
• Reinvent himself as he enters his mid-30s
• Close out his career with by a 10-year run of 10 wins on average
• Stay healthy the entire time

If the real Kershaw can follow the formula drawn up for our fantasy version, that gives him 301 victories at age 42.

At which point, Kershaw may be the last 300-game winner. Even in our imaginary world.

All statistics come from Baseball Reference, except when otherwise noted.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The Los Angeles Dodgers have a solid 6-4 record this season, largely due to hot starts from a few key players. With four of the five NL West teams posting winning records through the first 10 games of the 2013 season, those Dodgers must continue to produce if Los Angeles is going to emerge as division champs.

Matt Kemp is still struggling at the plate early on, and Zack Greinke’s broken collarbone is another crushing, early season injury for Los Angeles. There was plenty of uncertainty surrounding the Dodgers entering this season, but there have been some very encouraging signs from the team throughout the first two weeks of the year.

Many of the following Dodgers are playing at levels that are unsustainable over the course of a 162-game season. However, if Los Angeles is going to return to the postseason for the first time since 2009, these seven players need to keep playing at a very high level.

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