Michael Grove’s season has already come to an end, as the Dodgers right-hander underwent surgery on his throwing shoulder and will now miss the entire 2025 campaign, The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya reports.
Grove’s last 2024 appearance came in Game 2 of the NLDS, and he was removed from the Dodgers’ playoff roster after that game with the first occurrence of this shoulder issue.
Manager Dave Roberts stated two weeks ago that Grove was expected to start the season on the injured list, as recovering from that postseason shoulder problem had cost the righty about a month of his normal winter ramp-up work. It isn’t yet known if Grove was trying to pitch through more discomfort or if a new issue was discovered after testing, but regardless, the 28-year-old will now unfortunately be sidelined until 2026.
This marks the second major surgery of Grove’s baseball career, as he had a Tommy John procedure in 2017 when he was still playing college ball at West Virginia. The Dodgers were still intrigued enough by his potential to make Grove a second-round pick in the 2018 draft, though between his injury rehab, the canceled 2020 minor league season and simply some struggles in his first taste of pro ball, Grove didn’t really start delivering good numbers until 2022.
That same year saw him make his big league debut in the form of 29 1/3 innings of 4.60 ERA work, as Grove started six of his seven games. The right-hander started 12 of 18 MLB appearances in 2023, with Los Angeles cycling Grove up and down from Triple-A multiple times whenever they needed a fresh arm in the rotation or bullpen. Grove was also shuttled back and forth several times last season, though he worked primarily as a reliever and posted a 5.12 ERA over 51 innings.
Grove’s 5.48 ERA over 149 1/3 career major league innings isn’t very impressive, yet his SIERA is a far more palatable 3.85. With decent strikeout (23.2 percent) and walk (6.9 percent) rates, plus several other solid peripherals, Grove’s under-the-hood numbers paint a far better picture of his ability, though he has a penchant for allowing home runs at inopportune times. Injuries also hampered Grove over the last two seasons, as he missed significant chunks of time with groin and lat-related issues, beyond the shoulder injury that took him off the Dodgers’ postseason roster.
Los Angeles overcame an absurd number of pitching injuries to capture last season’s World Series, and it already looks like the Dodgers’ staff will be facing more health issues in 2025.
As per RosterResource’s projections, 10 pitchers are set to begin the season on the injured list, with issues ranging from relatively minor injuries to season-ending problems (i.e. Grove’s surgery, or River Ryan and Kyle Hurt probably missing 2025 after undergoing Tommy John surgeries last year). This is on top of the several pitchers with checkered injury histories who are expected to be part of the Opening Day roster, such as Tony Gonsolin, Dustin May, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani.
The Dodgers are so deep in pitching that the team is hoping the sheer volume of available arms can help cover for any more injuries that might arise during the season, and this is also why L.A. was so aggressive in adding Snell, Roki Sasaki, Tanner Scott, Kirby Yates and others to their depth chart. While Grove isn’t exactly a household name amidst all of the Dodgers’ superstars, losing another innings-eating reliever removes another layer of security from the Dodgers’ plans.
