Julio Urias wins the first of a possible four game stretch of Dodger rookie starts

Phil Gurnee ♦ June 29, 2016 ♦ Leave a comment

On Tuesday night Julio Urias won the first game of a bizarre stretch of games.  It is very possible,  the Dodgers will start four straight rookies over  four games.  Yesterday I tweeted to Eric Stephen if any Dodger rookies had started three straight games, eventually, Eric found that the last time the Dodgers used three first-year pitchers was in 1960.

Dodgers started Jim Golden, Phil Ortega & Ed Rakow on final 3 days of the 1960 season. Last time they started 3 straight 1st-year pitchers

Those games,  however,  were the final three games of the 1960 season, not smack dab in the middle of a pennant race in June.

How did we get here?

Urias has basically taken the place of Alex Wood who went on the DL May 31st. Wood was supposed to start a throwing program this week. The initial diagnosis was a posterior impingement in his throwing elbow. Wood was supposed to be shut down for four weeks, but once he starts throwing, there is no guarantee he is going to be okay and his return is completely up in the air.

Brock Stewart is going to make his major league debut tonight. He deserves his own column, but for this article, he’s replacing Nick Tepesch who replaced Mike Bolsinger who replaced rookie Ross Stripling who replaced Brett Anderson.

Kenta Maeda is only technically a rookie because of major league rules but just like Jackie Robinson in 1947, he’s hardly a rookie.  We got a rookie ringer. Which makes most of this silly, except…

With Clayton Kershaw headed to Los Angeles to have his back examined, it is possible he will miss his start on Friday. And the pitcher lined up to make that start just might be a rookie and Futures  All-Star Jharel Cotton.