4 Dodgers Who Don’t Belong on the 40-Man Roster

2. Gus Varland

After coming and going from the Dodgers' minor league system a bit, Gus Varland finally showed out at the Triple-A level. He turned in a 2.16 ERA across 30 appearances for the Dodgers.

That earned him the first major league action of his career, which ended up being pretty brutal. He pitched 20.1 innings between his time split with the Dodgers and Milwaukee Brewers, struggling to the tune of a 6.84 ERA. That wasn't just a run of bad luck either, as it was backed by a 5.71 FIP and brutal 6.69 xERA.

Varland is now 27 years old, and those 33 Triple-A innings are about the only positive we've ever seen from him. He was terrible in Double-A in 2021 (5.71 ERA, 6.65 FIP) and 2022 (6.11 ERA, 5.33 FIP) while pitching over 100 combined innings in those two seasons.

He's probably improved some since then, but if he was bad in 2021 and 2022, showed promise for 33 innings in 2023 then got rocked in the majors, which one do you really think is the "real" Varland?

He's quickly reaching that unfortunate in-between that's going to make it really hard for him to stick on any 40-man roster. He's getting too old to be a high-upside youngster, but he's not good enough to be a veteran presence.