Yusei Kikuchi is closing in on a return, and that’s about to force the Los Angeles Angels into another uncomfortable decision with their rotation.
Kikuchi, sidelined by shoulder inflammation since April 29, made his latest rehab start on August 15 and now appears close to rejoining the big-league staff. The 35-year-old has gone four rehab outings and the line has been all over the map: 12⅔ innings, 22 hits allowed, five homers surrendered, 22 earned runs, and 24 strikeouts. Ugly in one sense, electric in another.
Even with those numbers, Kikuchi believes he’s ready to get back into the starting mix. The Angels are considering giving him one more minor league outing, though that would be less about building him up and more about shaking off the rust and tightening the execution. He’s already stretched out to 80 pitches.
However it shakes out, Kikuchi’s return will create a roster squeeze. Reid Detmers and Walbert Ureña are not the ones getting bumped, and George Klassen has looked better in his two starts since being recalled from Salt Lake earlier this month. That leaves Ryan Johnson or Grayson Rodriguez as the likely casualty.
And that choice should not be a difficult one.
Rodriguez has to be the odd man out, even if the Angels’ offseason trade makes that a painful call. The 26-year-old right-hander has been brutal this year with a 7.17 ERA, and while Johnson hasn’t been much better at 6.41, there’s a key difference between them: Johnson still feels like a pitcher the Angels can try to shape.
Rodriguez, by contrast, comes with a long injury trail that’s hard to ignore. He has never logged more than 23 starts or 122 innings in a season, and recurring lat problems plus other injuries have repeatedly interrupted his progress. He missed all of 2025 because of a lat strain and then an elbow injury, and since arriving in Anaheim he’s already landed on the injured list twice with shoulder inflammation and lower back issues.
There’s no denying he’s been better in the past when healthy. But there’s also no escaping the bigger truth: he still doesn’t look like a locked-in ace, and the one thing you can count on is that he’s unlikely to stay off the IL.
Johnson’s path has been messier in a different way. The Angels’ return for losing Shohei Ohtani in free agency, he has dealt with his own health issues this season. But his real battle has been with the organization’s handling of his development.
Los Angeles rushed him straight into high-leverage relief work without a single minor league pitch. When that didn’t stick, the club shifted him to High-A to start.
Since then, he’s been shuffled between the minors and majors, between the rotation and bullpen, and even through different bullpen roles. That kind of constant movement makes it awfully hard for a 24-year-old to find any rhythm.
That’s why the decision points one way. Rodriguez feels like a known quantity, and the outlook isn’t especially encouraging. Johnson still has something worth investigating.
If Perry Minasian were still in place, there might be a temptation to keep Rodriguez around to help justify the Taylor Ward trade. But the Angels could have done better than Rodriguez for Ward at either the 2025 or 2024 trade deadlines, and even last offseason they should have landed a stronger return.
With John Mozeliak now in charge, there’s no need to protect anyone’s pride. His job is to clean up what came before, and moving Rodriguez out of the rotation should be part of that process.
The Angels need to think about what comes next, and Johnson may still be part of that picture. Rodriguez, for all the baggage and injury history, probably isn’t.
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For a team still looking for steadier answers on the pitching staff, it is the kind of low-risk move that makes sense this time of year. The Angels do not need every waiver claim to become a late-inning fix, but they do need more usable options, and Martin gives them another shot at finding one without much downside. [Read more 🡒]