The Los Angeles Dodgers have identified their contingency plan, and it comes with a five-year, $110 million price tag that could reshape the rotation’s fragile foundation. As the baseball world braces for a potential reverse lockout, the front office is reportedly zeroing in on Trevor Rogers, a left-hander whose career has been a study in violent volatility. The move is not a signing, but a prediction from Bleacher Report’s Tim Kelly, who sees the Dodgers as the ultimate landing spot for a pitcher who has yet to prove he can sustain success.
The stakes are immense for a franchise that watched its two highest-paid starters—Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow—combine for just 22 starts in 2026. Rogers, by contrast, made 30 starts and threw 169. 2 innings, a career-high that screams durability.
Yet, the numbers tell a darker story. Rogers posted a 1. 81 ERA in 2025, then cratered to a 4.
03 ERA in 2026, with a FIP that suggests the real pitcher lies somewhere in between. That gap between perception and reality is exactly what the Dodgers are being asked to gamble on.
The qualifying offer hangs over every conversation. Baltimore extended Rogers a $23. 15 million deal for 2027, with a November 17th deadline looming.
He has until then to decide whether to accept a one-year pact or test a free-agent market that is suddenly short on elite arms. Kelly’s projection of $110 million over five years is a bet that Rogers’ ceiling is worth the risk, especially when compared to the $31. 3 million Snell earns or the $27.
3 million Glasnow commands. But the opt-out after 2028 is the real tell—if Rogers blossoms, he walks; if he falters, the Dodgers are stuck.
The history is not kind. Rogers finished second in Rookie of the Year voting in 2021 with a 2. 64 ERA, then fell apart in 2022 with a 5.
47 ERA across 23 starts. From 2022 to 2024, he made just 52 starts with a 5. 09 ERA, a stretch so bad that the Marlins shipped him to Baltimore, where he posted a 7.
11 ERA in four starts. Then came 2025, when he rediscovered his form with a 1. 81 ERA across 18 starts, only to regress again in 2026.
The pattern is a sine wave of brilliance and failure, and the Dodgers are being asked to bet on the next swing upward.
Kelly’s argument hinges on paying for future production, not past performance. He believes at least one team will convince itself that the best is yet to come, and he sees the Dodgers as that team. But the data is sobering.
Rogers’ FIP in 2025 was 2. 82, meaning his ERA was 1. 01 runs better than it should have been based on strikeouts, walks, and home runs.
In 2026, his FIP was 3. 45, a number that paints him as a solid mid-rotation starter, not an ace. The real Rogers is a 3.
45 FIP pitcher, not the 1. 81 ERA phenom that headlines the highlight reels.
The second-half splits offer a glimmer of hope. In his first 17 starts of 2026, Rogers walked 31 hitters in 90. 1 innings with a 4.
48 ERA. In his final 13 starts, he walked just eight batters in 79. 1 innings with a 3.
52 ERA. His strikeout rate jumped from 6. 87 per nine innings to 9.
98, and his chase rate ranked in the 92nd percentile. This is a command guy, someone who doesn’t hurt himself with free passes. The problem is the long ball—19 home runs allowed in 2026, with nine coming after the All-Star break.
The walks and strikeouts improved, but the homers did not.
The Dodgers’ rotation is a house of cards. Snell made nine starts, Glasnow made 13, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto has been inconsistent. The team is paying $390 million against a luxury tax line of $247 million, according to Spotrac, meaning they are $143 million over.
Another $22 million per year for Rogers is not a financial obstacle—it’s a rounding error for a franchise that stopped caring about the cap long ago. The real question is whether Rogers can be a reliable number three starter, not the ace that Kelly’s prediction implies.
There is a twist, of course. The Dodgers are not buying Rogers because they want him; they are buying him because they may lose Corbin Burnes. Kelly has Burnes going to the Mets on a nine-year, $387 million deal, a record-breaking contract that would reset the market.
Burnes, who came over from Detroit and posted a 2. 72 ERA with 186 strikeouts in 158. 2 innings, is the ace the Dodgers need.
Rogers becomes Plan B, a fallback if Burnes chooses New York. The Mets are the likely top suitor, and ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports that Andrew Friedman is not tipping his hand on the plan.
The timeline is tricky. Rogers must decide on his qualifying offer by November 17th, while Burnes could sign before any lockout. If Burnes goes to the Mets, the Dodgers hit the panic button and pivot to Rogers.
If Burnes stays, Rogers is off the table. The two moves are interconnected, and the Dodgers can’t afford to wait too long. Other teams are circling, including the Giants and the Pirates, according to multiple reports.
San Francisco’s Susan Slusser wrote that the Giants could be in on Rogers if they are serious about contending, and Bowden has the Pirates as a fit.
The contract structure is the most contentious part. Kelly’s deal is five years and $110 million, with an opt-out after 2028. Joel Reuter of Bleacher Report has him at four years and $70 million, while Jim Bowden has three years and $64 million.
Kelly is the high number by a wide margin, and he leans on Zack Wheeler’s deal—five years and $118 million from the Phillies in 2019—as a comp. Wheeler turned down a qualifying offer and became one of the most team-friendly contracts in baseball. The Dodgers would lose a second-round pick to sign Rogers, which is a significant cost for a team that values draft capital.
Rogers’ own words add another layer. After his 30th start, he said, “I finally get a say about where I want to go and also to be honest I would love to be back here.” Orioles president Mike Elias responded three days later, saying, “We would love for him to stay.”
But Rogers has repeatedly noted that the Orioles never approached him about an extension, a telling omission that suggests he’s ready to move on. The same site that predicted he’d stay in Baltimore in October now has him in Los Angeles in November, a sign of how little anyone actually knows right now.
What has to be true for $110 million to work? Three things. First, the walks stay down—eight in 13 starts in the second half of 2026 is a good start.
Second, the home runs come down—he gave up six in 109. 2 innings in 2025 but 19 in 169. 2 innings in 2026.
Third, he stays healthy—30 starts was a career-high, and he had never made more than 25 before. If all three happen, Kelly looks like a genius. If even one fails, the Dodgers are paying $22 million a year for a pitcher who exists only in small samples.
The Dodgers don’t need Rogers. They need Burnes. Rogers is a number three or four starter on a good team, and Kelly’s pick only works if the Dodgers treat him as the second move, never the first.
The opt-out after 2028 is a double-edged sword—if Rogers is great, he walks after two years; if he’s not, the Dodgers are stuck with three more years of a $22 million contract. The front office has never been shy about spending, but they’ve also never been reckless with long-term deals for pitchers with this kind of history.
The market is fluid, and the reverse lockout could change everything. Players are bracing for a stoppage, and Rogers has until November 17th to decide on the qualifying offer. The Dodgers are prepared to move quickly, but they won’t overpay for a pitcher who has shown he can’t be trusted.
The 2027 rotation already has Snell and Glasnow, both of whom are injury risks. Adding Rogers would be a calculated gamble, a bet that the 3. 45 FIP pitcher is the real version, not the 1.
81 ERA mirage or the 4. 03 ERA disaster.
The urgency is real. The Dodgers are one missed opportunity away from a rotation that falls apart by June. Rogers is not the answer—he’s a stopgap, a stabilizing presence who can eat innings and keep games close.
But at $22 million a year, that’s a fair price. The question is whether the Dodgers believe he can do it for five years, or whether they’re just buying time until something better comes along. Kelly thinks they’ll pull the trigger.
The world is watching.
