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The Dodgers have a message for Emmet Sheehan: stop thinking so much and just pitch. Per Dodger Blue, Sheehan has been encouraged to “be an athlete” on the mound rather than getting bogged down in mechanical adjustments — a mentality shift the organization hopes can unlock the version of him we saw last year.

Sheehan broke out in 2025 with a 2.82 ERA and a 0.97 WHIP, establishing himself as a legitimate piece of our rotation future. The right-hander’s combination of size, velocity, and swing-and-miss stuff made him one of the more exciting young arms in the organization. He looked like a guy who could slot into the middle of a contending rotation and hold his own, which is exactly what the Dodgers needed from their homegrown pitching pipeline.

This season has been a different story entirely. Through 95.1 innings, Sheehan is carrying a 5.29 ERA — a dramatic regression that has made his outings more stressful than productive. The stuff hasn’t disappeared, but the results have, and the suggestion that he’s been too focused on his mechanics rather than competing tells you a lot about where the problem likely sits. Pitchers who live in their own heads on the mound tend to lose the aggressiveness and conviction that made them effective in the first place. That sounds like what’s happening here.

I’ve seen this pattern before with young pitchers who have early success and then try to perfect everything in year two. They tinker, they overanalyze, and they lose the feel that got them here. The best version of Sheehan is the one who trusts his arm, attacks the zone, and lets his natural ability take over. It’s a simple concept but genuinely hard to execute when you’re in the middle of a rough stretch and every pitch feels magnified.

For the Dodgers, getting Sheehan right matters — and not just for the rest of 2026. With the rotation already navigating injuries and workload questions across the staff, they need internal options who can eat innings and keep games close. If Sheehan can flip the mental switch and get back to competing rather than engineering, there’s still a version of the second half where he looks a lot more like his 2025 self. The talent is there. The organization clearly believes the issue is between his ears, not in his arm. That’s actually the more encouraging diagnosis — mechanical problems can be stubborn, but a mentality reset can click overnight. We’ll see if this one does.

Source(s): Staff (Dodger Blue) | First reported: August 8, 2026 2:38 PM UTC

God Bless and Go Dodgers