Dodgers left-hander Justin Wrobleski could have been content with his performance the first couple months of the season. After all, he’d come into the year fighting for a rotation spot, and he’d shown in that time that he was ready to be a full-time major-league starter.
That wasn’t enough.
While still holding onto his identity as a pitcher who goes right at hitters, over Wrobleski’s last two starts, he tallied 20 strikeouts.
“I think we’re just doing a good job with the plan,” Wrobleski said last week, days before he was named an All-Star. “I feel like I’m continuing to get better at knowing where to go with two strikes, knowing where to go versus a certain hitter with two strikes and just kind of reading the game.”
Wrobleski is the only Dodgers pitcher set to appear in Tuesday’s All-Star Game in Philadelphia. Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shohei Ohtani’s schedules didn’t line up — and Ohtani eventually pulled out of All-Star activities altogether in order to have his left knee drained on Sunday.
The story of how Wrobleski got there, in his first full season in the rotation, after debuting two years ago, includes plenty of twists and turns.
“It’s a chronicle story in his young career, the down to up, but at the end of the day, he’s been a rock for us these first three months,” Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior said in a conversation with The Times. “Was hoping he got in on the first set of announcements, but at the end of the day, he’s an All-Star, and he’s earned every bit of it.”
When Wrobleski wasn’t included in the initial NL All-Star roster, the Dodgers coaching staff went to work lobbying for him to be a replacement player. Manager Dave Roberts publicly made the case for Wrobleski and closer Tanner Scott whenever he had the chance.
Then, a week later, Wrobleski (10-2, 2.69 ERA) got the call after Reds right-hander Chase Burns bowed out due to tightness in his groin.
“He’s done so many intangible things that I think get lost in the shuffle of numbers and metrics,” Prior said. “But he’s eaten innings, he’s provided length for us when we needed length. He went toe-to-toe with [Phillies three-time All-Star Zack] Wheeler. He went toe-to-toe with [José] Soriano when he was dealing with the Angels, kept us in ballgames.”
Admittedly, a year and a half ago, Prior wouldn’t have imagined Wrobleski would be an obvious All-Star pick this quickly.
The tipping point came when Wrobleski surrendered eight runs to the Nationals in his first major-league start of the 2025 season. And it didn’t help that his last start of the previous season was a 10-run slog against the Diamondbacks.
“It was a long, raw emotional sit down with him,” Prior said. “And [Roberts] and I, and [assistant pitching coach Connor McGuiness] and the staff, we left with like, ‘Which way is this going to go?’”
But persistence has been a hallmark of Wrobleski’s career, dating to his college years, when he infamously bounced back from a car hitting him on a scooter, and a baseball breaking his jaw. He also underwent Tommy John surgery two months before the Dodgers selected him in the 11th round of the 2021 MLB draft.
So, committing to a delivery change last April wasn’t all that intimidating.
Wrobleski returned to the majors in mostly a bullpen role. And his steadiness in those shorter outings culminated in a strong postseason run that included four scoreless appearances in the World Series.
“We talk about, who can you depend on to not let the moment get too big?” Prior said. “And I think Wrobo had proved that all the way through September, but clearly proved that the moment is not too big for him to continue to make pitches. And that was exciting to see, too, as a staff.”
Still, Wrobleski wasn’t guaranteed a rotation role in 2026. And Prior was frank about that over the offseason.
Wrobleski’s first outing of 2026 was in relief, but the Dodgers had earmarked him as their sixth starter for the second turn in the rotation.
In his first five starts, Wrobleski posted an eye-popping 0.56 ERA.
His swing-and-miss rate and strikeouts were down, but pitching to soft contact was getting him positive results. The most glaring example came against the Cardinals in early May, when he threw six shutout innings without recording a punch out.
Wrobleski wasn’t going to coast on that early success, however. He kept fine-tuning his delivery and adjusting his pitch mix, right through a rough patch in late May, and into a consistent June.
“He went from paring down his arsenal to kind of two pitches, to regrow his arsenal while he’s learning how to pitch at this level,” Prior said. “I think the big thing is now these guys have different looks.”
Throughout the year, Wrobleski’s four-seam fastball and slider have done the heavy-lifting. But the rest of his secondary pitch mix has been a moving target.
He and the pitching coaches have talked through the most effective use of his curveball. He started integrating his sinker more consistently in late April, especially against left-handed hitters. He’s tinkered with different grips for his changeup, a pitch he started deploying more in mid-May. Three weeks ago, he introduced a sweeper. And in his last two starts, he’s thrown that pitch 19 times.
“At the heart of it, though, is he never lets off the gas pedal,” Prior said. “He just gets the ball, he’s on the rubber, he puts the hitter on defense from the get-go before they’ve even seen a pitch. And that’s something that not everybody can do.”
So, despite the journey, when Wrobleski looks back at the pitcher he was a year and a half ago, he doesn’t see a complete overhaul.
“Same guy but different, I guess,” he said. “It’s crazy. I’ve had to go through a lot of small tweaks and changes. And it’s just all been about just having belief that I could continue to do it. And I knew that there were a lot of things that I could do just to get better, and I wasn’t as far away as maybe it seemed on the outside — or, as people thought it was.
“I felt like I was close, that whole time, even though the results weren’t really there. It’s been cool to see the results come.”
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