To Dave Roberts, the roster crunch facing the Dodgers might be a good problem to have.
But the situation still presents a problem.
The good news for the club: Mookie Betts is set to be activated from the injured list Monday, making his awaited return from an oblique strain that has sidelined him for more than a month.
What that means, however, is that someone will have to be squeezed off the active roster in a corresponding move.
And on the eve of that decision Sunday, no easy answer had yet emerged.
“It’s a potential tough conversation,” Roberts acknowledged, saying the club had yet to finalize its choice. “I could make a case for all the guys we’re considering.”
The three candidates for the chopping block have been obvious for a while: infielders Alex Freeland, Hyeseong Kim and Santiago Espinal.
Each of them, though, still offers value to the club.
A big caveat to start with: Espinal has easily been the worst performer of the three, batting .188 in extremely limited playing time (his 32 at-bats are the fewest among members of the Opening Day roster). But, the former All-Star utilityman is also the only one of the three without any minor-league options, meaning that he would have to be designated for assignment and exposed to waivers if he were demoted from the active roster.
Kim and Freeland, on the other hand, could simply be optioned to Triple-A, which would allow the Dodgers to preserve more organizational depth.
Another factor: When Betts returns, playing time will be limited for whoever stays with the club.
The Dodgers will still have a platoon opening at second base — at least until Tommy Edman makes his own IL return after missing the start of the year recovering from ankle surgery (he is still at least several weeks away and was transferred to the 60-day IL this week).
But where Kim and Freeland have started regularly over the last month, getting valuable at-bats as young players continuing to develop offensively, one or both of them could see their at-bats severely cut.
Thus, the Dodgers could opt to keep Espinal — a veteran who wouldn’t be as impacted by minimal opportunities — and send one of Kim or Freeland back to Triple-A to continue to play every day.
That would be easier to do, of course, if both players weren’t contributing in the way they have been lately.
Kim, who was sent to Triple-A the last time the Dodgers had to make a similar decision at the end of spring training, entered Sunday hitting over .300 since being called back up when Betts first got hurt. He has also accomplished the primary goal the Dodgers had for him after his up-and-down rookie season in 2025, cutting his strikeout rate from 30.6% last year to 18.3% this year.
“I think that he’s done a much better job of controlling the strike zone,” Roberts said. “He’s got the ability to put the bat on the ball, get hits, steal bases, play good defense. And I think he’s done all that.”
Freeland, however, has flashed a similar skill set while heating up at the plate in recent weeks.
After hitting .190 over his first 14 games this year, the switch-hitting former third-round draft pick entered Sunday with a .288 average over his last 18 games, improving his plate discipline and quality of contact.
Also of note: When the Dodgers picked Freeland over Kim for their final Opening Day roster spot, Roberts said there was “nothing left for [Freeland] to prove” at the Triple-A level, where he had spent much of the previous two campaigns.
Before Sunday’s game — in which Kim and Freeland once again offered little separation, going a combined 0-for-7 with five strikeouts on a day the whole offense struggled — Roberts said there could be enough playing time to go around to warrant keeping both upon Betts’ return. Read between the lines of his comments, though, and it certainly didn’t seem like the organization views that scenario as ideal.
Then again, none of the three players in question has exactly deserved to be cut from the roster.
One of them will have to be, anyway.
“Obviously, we’ve got a tough decision,” Roberts said. “All of the options, potentially for the corresponding move, these guys have done a great job and served a very good purpose for our club.”