How Justin Wrobleski has aced Dodgers’ rotation opportunity

At the end of last year, Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior called left-handed youngster Justin Wrobleski.

It was a normal season review that finished with a forward-looking twist.

For most of their conversation, the two broke down Wrobleski’s 2025 campaign –– in which the 25-year-old prospect found his first taste of success at the big-league level, serving as a valuable swingman in the Dodgers’ bullpen.

But then, as they looked ahead to 2026, Wrobleski stated some ambitions.

He felt he could be a quality MLB starter. And he was eager for an opportunity to prove it.

“That’s what this organization is so good about,” Wrobleski said. “Having that conversation, free-flowing, where you’re able to say what you’re thinking.”

At that early point of the winter, of course, Wrobleski understood his uncertain place within the club’s roster plans. The Dodgers already boasted four Cy Young-caliber stars in Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shohei Ohtani and Tyler Glasnow. They were also going to move Roki Sasaki back into the rotation.

Even among the team’s younger arms, Wrobleski was less established than other former top prospects such as Emmet Sheehan and Gavin Stone.

If they needed him back in the bullpen, he was happy to embrace it.

All Wrobleski was hoping for, however, was simply a temporary runway at some point to be a starter. A few weeks where he could make consistent outings, find a rhythm in that role and prove himself as more than a multi-inning relief option.

Thus, he informed Prior of his aspirations. He reiterated it to teammates during spring training.

“He just wanted to have the chance to see if he could do it, having the opportunity to have six or seven starts,” veteran shortstop Miguel Rojas said.

A month into the season, it turns out four might have been enough.

After opening the year with a four-inning appearance out of the bullpen, then moving into a placeholder spot in the Dodgers’ six-man rotation with Snell, Stone and others out injured, Wrobleski has not only gotten his chance to start games but also quickly opened eyes with unexpectedly dominant performances.

He has given up just two runs in 26 innings in four games as a starter. He has a 4-0 record that ranks third best in the majors. 

And if he keeps it up, it’ll be hard to envision the Dodgers sending him back to the bullpen –– even with Snell only a few weeks away from his return.

“A lot of young pitchers are trying to find their identity,” manager Dave Roberts said. “And I think with Justin, the one thing with him is that he knows who he is as a pitcher.”

The latest example came in Sunday’s 6-0 victory against the Cubs, when Wrobleski pitched six scoreless innings on a day he wasn’t at his best.

In the first two frames, he lacked his typical command and faced a traffic jam on the bases. And while he stranded two runners with no outs in the first, then escaped a bases-loaded, one-out threat in the second, the 51 pitches it required signaled an early exit was near.

“Early on,” Roberts acknowledged, “I didn’t see him going six-inning shutout.”

But before he returned for the third inning, Wrobleski gathered with Prior and catcher Dalton Rushing to reformulate their game plan.

“Mark kind of let us know, ‘Stay on the attack,’” Rushing later recounted.

In his latest moment of growth, that’s exactly what Wrobleski did.

Over the rest of the game, he allowed only four more baserunners. By the time his 109-pitch outing was done, he’d set a season high by striking out six batters. 

“I think had those first two innings not happened, we probably could have got a little deeper, so that’s a little frustrating,” Wrobleski said afterward, just two starts removed from a scoreless eight-inning gem against the Mets earlier this month. “But managing that adversity we had today was good … Just making pitches when you need them.”

Wrobleski has adopted a bit of a throwback mindset, preferring to challenge hitters over the plate (he had MLB’s third-highest rate of pitches in the zone entering the day) and work quickly by generating a string of soft contact (his average exit velocity allowed was in the 70th percentile of the league).

The plan has worked thus far, with his near-league-worst strikeout and whiff percentages offset by a .172 batting average against since he began starting games.

That’s why, when asked about his goal of sticking in the rotation Sunday, Wrobleski pivoted to focus on the things he can control –– “Making sure I’m attacking the hitters, attacking the zone,” he said –– before later expressing gratitude for even getting the opportunity to do it.

“There’s so many guys that would kill to be in this spot that I’m in,” he said. “To start games here at Dodger Stadium for these fans and just start games for this team in general.”

For now, after all, it’s all he could have hoped for. After letting the Dodgers know about his ambitions, he isn’t letting his chance go to waste.