This article was generated by artificial intelligence and is automatically updated as news breaks. All credit belongs to the original reporters and their publications.

Tyler Glasnow says his recovery from back spasms is stalled. The Dodgers right-hander told reporters he’s “not really” making “any progress,” a discouraging update for a pitcher who initially expected to miss only a short stint on the injured list, per DodgerBlue.com. Glasnow is still not throwing and has no clear timeline for a return.

Glasnow landed on the 15-day IL in early May after back spasms surfaced during his May 6 start. At the time, he believed he could have pitched through the issue — and there was optimism around the organization that this would be a brief absence. That optimism has evaporated. We’re now six weeks past the initial injury, and instead of ramping up toward a rehab assignment, Glasnow is stuck in neutral. That’s a bad sign no matter how you frame it.

This is a familiar kind of frustration for Glasnow, whose career has been defined by elite stuff and fragile health in roughly equal measure. Before arriving in Los Angeles, he’d already lost significant time to Tommy John surgery, a flexor strain, and various other ailments across stints with the Pirates and Rays. When he’s on the mound, he’s one of the more dominant pitchers in baseball — a high-spin fastball, a devastating curveball, and the kind of slider that makes right-handed hitters look foolish. But availability has always been the question mark. Last season he gave us stretches of brilliance and stretches on the shelf. This year is shaping up the same way, and this latest setback is the worst kind: vague, lingering, and without a clear endpoint.

Back injuries are tricky for pitchers. They can resolve in a week or drag on for months, and the fact that Glasnow isn’t even playing catch yet tells me this one has dug in deeper than anyone initially expected. There’s no sugarcoating it — “not really any progress” after six weeks on the IL is a concerning phrase from any pitcher, let alone one with Glasnow’s injury history.

For the Dodgers, this extends an already tough stretch of rotation management. We’ve been leaning heavily on Yoshinobu Yamamoto (who, as we covered, is forcing his way into the Cy Young conversation) and piecing things together behind him. Shohei Ohtani is dealing with knee inflammation tied to his pitching mechanics. DJ Stewart is dealing with a bone spur issue of his own. The depth that Andrew Friedman and the front office have built is being tested — hard — and losing Glasnow for what could be a significantly longer stretch than originally planned puts even more pressure on whatever internal options the club can find. I’d expect the Dodgers to start exploring external reinforcements more seriously if Glasnow doesn’t show tangible improvement soon. This rotation can’t afford to keep running short-handed into July.

Source(s): Staff (DodgerBlue.com) | First reported: June 16, 2026 1:06 PM UTC

God Bless and Go Dodgers