Hyun-Jin Ryu greets Seth Rosin after the Dodgers’ 7-5 victory over Arizona. Jon SooHoo’s photos from the second game of the season can be found here.
By Jon Weisman
As I write this, it has only been 16 hours since the Dodgers recorded the final out of a 241-minute game in Australia, showered and then headed to the airport for a flight home that, thanks to the International Date Line, will almost allow them to turn back time.
And in a way, turning back time is a bit what the coming week is like for Los Angeles.
There will be gameless workouts midweek, like it was in mid-February, followed by a series of exhibition games against the Angels from Thursday through Saturday, and then, just like the days of yore before we paid any attention to the Sydney Cricket Ground, a simple road trip to San Diego, where the Padres will open their season against their northern Southern California rivals.
The week ahead will also bring a new series of roster decisions for the Dodgers, who theoretically cut down to 25 players before Saturday’s opening game but have been carrying four extra — three on the exempt list in Zack Greinke, Dan Haren and Brandon League, plus one on paternity leave in Carl Crawford. All four, presumably, will move onto the active roster within the next week.
Among the players the Dodgers could option to the minors to make room for the quartet are Alex Guerrero, Jose Dominguez, Paco Rodriguez and Chris Withrow. The latter two played a significant role for the Dodgers in 2013, Rodriguez even more so than Withrow, but sending them down would allow the Dodgers to stockpile pitching depth. We’ve already seen this in action with the Dodgers optioning Tim Federowicz to the minors so they could retain Drew Butera.
The wild card in the upcoming roster decision is Seth Rosin, whose Rule 5 acquisition status forces him to stay on the active roster all year or be offered back to the New York Mets. The Dodgers used 11 pitchers in Australia, seven in the final four innings, but Rosin was not one of them. Still, that doesn’t mean they will let him go away.
In April, of course, expect the Dodgers will have to carve out more room for the returns of Josh Beckett and Matt Kemp, and then a bit further down the road, Chad Billingsley and Scott Elbert.
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