Dodgers likely to open season with Kershaw, Ryu

Perhaps no team will come under more scrutiny for announcing its Opening Day starters than the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Dodgers and Diamondbacks will open the 2014 MLB season in Sydney, Australia on March 22nd and 23rd. The Diamondbacks manager, Kirk Gibson has already announced his starters – Patrick Corbin and Trevor Cahill. The attention for Opening Day now turns towards Dodgers’ manager Don Mattingly.

Zach Greinke has been ruled out after suffering a calf strain after throwing just four pitches in his Spring Training debut. Rumors of his comments regarding the trip to Australia (they weren’t nice) impacting the trip have been thrown out there as well, but that leaves only two logical choices to start the season.

By slotting prospect Zach Lee to start the Spring Training game against the Texas Rangers on Friday, according to Ken Gurnick, everything seems to point to the starters for the two Australian games being Clayton Kershaw and Hyun-Jin Ryu. That’s not a terrible 1-2 punch either.

Clayton Kershaw is the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner. In 2013, he pitched to a 16-9 record over 236 innings, posting a 1.83 ERA and striking out 232.

Hyun-Jin Ryu burst onto the scene last year as an outstanding Korean free agent pitcher. Last season, Ryu went 14-8 with a 3.00 ERA in 192 innings pitched. He finished fourth in the Rookie of the Year vote.