ANAHEIM, Calif. — As the 2013 Major League Baseball season inches closer, both the Dodgers and Angels have humongous payrolls and some pretty big questions to be answered as well.
Both are being picked to make it into the 2013 playoffs with one large caveat: if they have enough healthy, quality pitching to get them there.
The Angels have perennial Cy Young Award candidate Jered Weaver — coming off his first 20-win season — as their No. 1 starter, joined by lefty C.J. Wilson.
The Dodgers situation pretty much parallels that of the Halos.
Their No. 1 starter is the brilliant left-hander Clayton Kershaw, who won the 2011 NL Cy Young. He’s joined by Zack Greinke, the 2009 AL Cy Young winner, who signed a $147-million free agent contract during the off-season. That combination gives the Dodgers one of the best one-two pitching punch in the game.
After that, it’s a slew of question marks for both staffs.
Numbers-wise, the Dodgers have the edge in starting pitching, with Chad Billingsley, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Josh Beckett, Chris Capuano, Ted Lilly and Aaron Harang having battled all spring for the final three rotation slots. Billingsley and Beckett — depending on their health — are locks, while Ryu sewed up his role with a brilliant outing in the first game of the spring training version of the Freeway Series.
Ryu retired each of the 12 hitters he faced in the Dodgers' 3-0 win over a full squad of Angels at Angels Stadium on Thursday night. (The Dodgers had a split squad game against their minor league affiliate in Rancho Cucamonga).
The South Korean lefty has now gotten outs from 29 of the last 30 batters he has faced in exhibition, likely earning him a start in the third game of the season against the World Champions San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday.
“Tonight was my best game of the spring,” Ryu said.
His manager was satisfied as well.
“(Ryu) has had a pretty nice spring,” said Dodger manager Don Mattingly. “He’s been pretty good and I think everybody is confident that this guy knows what he’s doing.
“He’s ready to go.”
This creates a touchy situation for Mattingly and his staff when the 25-man roster is announced on Sunday.
Because of past injury problems, Capuano and Lilly aren’t ideal candidates for bullpen roles. Harang would be fine in the long reliever position, but all three have been successful big league starters and will probably request a trade so they can continue to start.
General manager Ned Colletti has said numerous times this spring that he won’t trade someone just because they ask.
“To have real depth on your pitching staff, you’ve got to have six or seven quality starters,” he said last week. “Injuries always pop up, and I like our depth right now.
“If there’s a deal out there that could benefit us, we’ll look at it. But we won’t just give guys away.”
They might be able to look down the freeway about 35 miles for a possible trading partner.
Meanwhile for the Halos, former Dodger Joe Blanton solidified his hold on a starting job with six scoreless innings against his former team Thursday night. Injury-prone Tommy Hanson and newcomer Jason Vargas — acquired from Seattle for Kendrys Morales — make up the rest of the rotation after Weaver and Greinke.
Angels’ manager Mike Scioscia should have questions about some of his starting rotation, but he says he has none about Blanton, the right hander who helped Philadelphia win the 2008 World Championship.
“He’s right where he needs to be at this point, getting deep into the game,” Scioscia said. “He’s had an incredible spring and he did everything you could ask of a pitcher. We’re starting to see how it’s going to translate once the regular season begins. We’re hoping he’ll be big for us.”
Blanton signed a two-year, $15-million free agent contract with the Halos in December.
The Angels and Dodgers will have combined payrolls of about $350 million with the Dodgers putting out about $200 million of that. Both teams’ offenses should be ferocious, and defensively they should be excellent.
As always, though, it comes down to the arms race.
Will the Angels get enough from Blanton, Vargas and Hanson — as well as injured closer Ryan Madson — to be able to get past Oakland and Texas in the AL West? Will the Dodgers have healthy pitching — and a good enough bullpen led by sometimes erratic closer Brandon League — to blow away the rest of the NL West?
And how will they deal with their glut of starters?
We’ll find out at first pitch Monday.
