Although Dustin May has probably been one of the most unlucky pitchers in baseball history in terms of injury, Tony Gonsolin is not having an easy road to return after Tommy John either.
Both went down in 2023 and underwent major surgeries that kept them out for the entirety of 2024, and both have faced multiple hiccups in their roads back.
May’s involved an incident totally unrelated to baseball, in which he almost died while eating a salad, but his troubles resolved themselves quicker, and he got the last spot in the Dodgers’ rotation while Gonsolin started the season on the IL with back tightness.
He’s been rehabbing in Triple-A since April 3, but it’s unclear how long the Dodgers plan to keep him there.
Meanwhile, May has been making himself look like an invaluable piece of the Dodgers’ rotation, if he can stay healthy.
He has a 1.06 ERA in three starts, and his sweeper remains unhittable. Even though Clayton Kershaw is also on the mend and Shohei Ohtani is expected to return to pitching after the All-Star break, May might be too good for the Dodgers to let go of.
The same can’t be said about Gonsolin. His future is looking more questionable the longer he stays in Triple-A, and he could be a trade piece if the Dodgers are staring down the barrel of multiple roster crunches.
Noah Camras of Newsweek listed Gonsolin as a candidate for a potential Dodgers-Yankees trade, as New York’s rotation’s has struggled in their first 22 games.
Tony Gonsolin tabbed in blockbuster trade proposal between Dodgers, Yankees
The Yankees’ rotation currently has an ERA of 4.67, and it’s only that low because Max Fried has been doing some fantastic work through his first five starts.
Carlos Carrasco, Will Warren, and Marcus Stroman’s ERAs all exceed 6.50, and Stroman’s is the worst of them at 11.57 (and this was after he kicked up a fuss about even the potential of being moved back to the bullpen before Gerrit Cole’s season-ending Tommy John).
The Dodgers would definitely want to wait on a trade until Gonsolin gets a few starts in at the major league level, but his team control extending through 2026 and his status as a former All-Star both make him look like a decent option to take a flier on if the Yankees are still desperate by the trade deadline.
If the Dodgers still don’t know what to do with all of their rotation talent by then, there could be a match here.
