Thursday was a busy transactional day for the Dodgers, who exercised 2026 club options for third baseman Max Muncy ($10 million) and relief pitcher Alex Vesia ($3.65 million) but also made several other
moves.
Tony Gonsolin was designated for assignment, which made room on the full 40-man roster for Muncy’s return. But it was a tough break for Gonsolin, who came back from Tommy John surgery to make seven starts in 2025 but underwent another elbow surgery in August which included both an internal brace procedure and flexor tendon repair.
At best Gonsolin might return in the final month or two of 2026, and with five years, 152 days of service time he is eligible for salary arbitration and likely in line to make at least another $5.4 million next season.
Gonsolin was an All-Star in 2022 with the Dodgers, going 16-1 with a 2.14 ERA in 24 starts, then pitched through an elbow injury in 2023 before succumbing to Tommy John surgery that September. A ninth-round pick of the Dodgers in 2016 out of Saint Mary’s College, Gonsolin had a 3.34 ERA in 86 games with the Dodgers, including 78 starts, with 387 strikeouts and 149 walks in 411 2/3 innings.
The Dodgers also added slugging first baseman/outfielder Ryan Ward and left-handed pitcher Robinson Ortiz to the 40-man roster on Thursday. The deadline to set rosters for the Rule 5 draft isn’t until November 18, but both Ward and Ortiz would have been minor league free agents on Thursday had they not been added to the 40-man roster.
A relatively recent example of this early-offseason addition was left-hander Victor González, who was added to the Dodgers’ 40-man roster on October 31, 2019.
Ortiz was signed by the Dodgers out of Peravia in the Dominican Republic as an international amateur free agent in 2017. He pitched at all four minor league affiliates in 2025, posting a collective 2.73 ERA with 72 strikeouts (a 28.3-percent strikeout rate) and 33 walks in 59 1/3 innings over 48 games. The left-hander turns 26 in January.
Ward has been productive enough over the last three seasons in Triple-A that he set several Oklahoma City records for the Bricktown Era (1998-present) in various categories. Ward won Pacific Coast League MVP this season after hitting .290/.380/.557 with a 132 wRC+ for the Comets, and led all of minor league baseball in home runs (36), runs batted in (122), extra-base hits (73), and total bases (315).
With Freddie Freeman at first base and Shohei Ohtani at designated hitter, Ward’s only path to playing time with the Dodgers in 2025 would have been in the outfield, and the club instead opted to call up other outfielders with better defense and/or speed like Justin Dean and Esteury Ruiz.
Dean found a highly-specialized role with the Dodgers down the stretch, playing late-inning defense in center field and/or pinch-running. He played in 17 of the 28 games for which he was active during the regular season and only batted twice. In the postseason he played in 13 of 17 games but didn’t bat at all.
“The game is still the game,” Dean said in October. “So that might be a little bit more hyper focused, yeah, as far as my routine, but I’m still getting my hitting in and my working in the cage and stuff like that. So it’s still going through a normal day.”
The 28-year-old Dean was claimed off outright waivers by the San Francisco Giants on Thursday.
Michael Grove was sent outright to the minors. The right-hander did not pitch in 2025 after undergoing shoulder surgery in March. With three years, 90 days of service time, Grove would have been eligible for salary arbitration this offseason for the first time.
Grove, drafted by the Dodgers in the second round in 2018 out of West Virginia, pitched in parts of three seasons for the Dodgers, with a 5.48 ERA in 64 games, including 20 starts, with 151 strikeouts and 45 walks in 149 1/3 innings.
