Five Dodgers Most Buried on Their Loaded Depth Chart

No one has ever accused the Los Angeles Dodgers of suffering from a lack of talent. Every year, the team perennially rolls out one of the most stocked rosters in all of baseball. Last year, that ended up with the franchise’s eighth ever championship.

In 2025, the Dodgers aren’t just stretching the purse strings to add more top players to their talent-laden roster, they’re blowing the purse wide open. The result is one of the most overall talented rosters in MLB history.

Some of the best players at their position were already with the Dodgers in 2024 in Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith, and more. It almost seems unfair then to also add players like Blake Snell, Kirby Yates, Roki Sasaki, and Tanner Scott to the mix as well.

Los Angeles has so many talented players on their roster that some of them will struggle to even find playing time. Here are five such Dodgers players that are the most buried on their team’s depth chart.

SP Dustin May

A top-three team prospect before making his debut in 2019, May was supposed to be a future leader of the Dodgers starting rotation. He was good pitching mostly out of relief in that debut year and then was even better the following year largely as a starter, taking fifth in NL Rookie of the Year voting.

Then, May didn’t just get bitten by an injury bug so much as get assaulted by a swarm of them. He has only pitched 101 innings over the past three seasons combined, missing time for everything from Tommy John surgery in 2021 to a torn esophagus just last year.

When he has been able to toe the rubber, May has been a top pitcher for the Dodgers. The righty has a career 3.10 ERA and 1.049 WHIP in 191.2 career innings while sporting one of the filthiest two-seamers in the game.

But with newcomers Snell and Sasaki joining Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, and Tony Gonsolin in the rotation, May might not be able to return to starting right away in 2025. He’ll likely have to start the year in the bullpen, which is at least better than the injured list.

INF Miguel Rojas

When the 2024 season began, Rojas did a little bit of everything for the Dodgers, playing every spot in the infield at one point. When Betts got injured in mid-June, he moved from utility man to primary starting shortstop.

In addition to filling multiple defensive roles for L.A. in 2024, the 11-year MLB veteran also had his best season at the plate since 2020. In 103 games, Rojas slashed .283/.337/.410 with 21 doubles, six homers, and 36 RBIs.

At a cost of just $5 million for the 2025 season, it wasn’t too surprising that the Dodgers elected to exercise the team’s club option on Rojas. That money just might be paying him to serve a big different of a role this upcoming season.

The Dodgers not only have Betts returning to shortstop after finishing last year in the outfield, but landed one of the top international signees in Hyeseong Kim to join the infield. That likely pushes Rojas to more of a bench role and less playing time than the soon-to-be 36-year-old got last year.

OF James Outman

2023 saw a fun race for NL Rookie of the Year play out. You had super-prospect Corbin Carroll battling a top international signing in Kodai Senga. You had a trio of Reds rookies, including the electric Elly de la Cruz, vying for votes. Nolan Jones of the Rockies was breaking out in his new home.

Joining the race was an arguably more unexpected candidate from Los Angeles: outfielder James Outman.

Outman, a seventh-round pick in 2018 out of Sacramento State, did start out as a top Dodgers prospect, but he blazed through the L.A. system after being drafted. In 2023, he wound up slashing .248/.353/.437 with 23 homers and 70 RBIs in 151 games and took third in Rookie of the Year voting behind Carroll and Senga.

That ended up setting some high expectations for Outman in 2024, of which he ended up falling well short. His slash line dropped severely to .147/.256/.265 with his home run and walk rates dropping while his strikeout rate rose. He would end up spending more games in Triple-A (69) than the majors (53).

And Triple-A might be where he spends a majority of time again in 2025. The Dodgers traded for Tommy Edman at last year’s trade deadline, signed Michael Conforto this offseason, and brought back Teoscar Hernandez. They also still have veteran Chris Taylor and sophomore Andy Pages as backups. Barring injury, Outman will now be blocked for some time in the outfield.

SP Landon Knack

What’s that? Another starting pitcher? You got that right, that goes to show just how insanely deep the Dodgers starting pitching corps is.

Knack was a second round pick by L.A. back in the shortened 2020 draft out of East Tennessee State. After working his way up the Dodgers system for a few years, he made his MLB debut last season.

Knack was very solid pitching for the Dodgers in his rookie season, adding to the team’s embarrassment of riches at the position. In 15 games, 12 starts, the right-hander pitched to a 3.65 ERA and 1.101 WHIP over 69 innings.

On just about any other team, Knack would be preparing for a season in his team’s MLB starting rotation. But with Los Angeles, he’ll almost certainly start the season down in the minors and wait for a call back up to The Show.

RP Ben Casparius

We’ve mentioned a few different Dodgers players who are buried on the team’s roster. But Casparius may quite literally be the most buried player of all the current members of the 40-man.

Casparius, a fifth round pick in 2021 out of Connecticut, got a quick, three-game cup of coffee in his 2024 MLB debut season. In those games, he gave up two runs in 8.1 innings on nine hits and four walks with 12 strikeouts.

And yet, he might be the lowest man on the totem pole when it comes to the 40-man roster. That title previously went to fellow reliever Ryan Brasier, but he was designated for assignment last week when the Dodgers finalized the deal for Yates.

Brasier was a solid pitcher for L.A. in 2024 with a 3.54 ERA and 0.964 WHIP in 29 games, but the Dodger bullpen is so loaded that even he was expendable. Casparius at least has minor league options left, so unless the team has more moves planned he should start the year in the minors. That’s probably where he’ll stay for a while unless the bullpen is plagued by injuries.