Will Klein was one of the best stories in the Dodgers' bullpen for most of 2026, a 26-year-old righty who kept climbing the trust ladder while big-name arms battled injuries around him. Now he's the one facing a scary word: surgery.
#Dodgers reliever Will Klein may need elbow surgery https://t.co/uXGTt8ihb0
The news broke that Klein may need elbow surgery after tests turned up bone chips in his right elbow, according to MLB Trade Rumors. It's the kind of update that lands hard on a Dodgers pitching staff that's already been picked apart this year, with Klein now the third arm in the organization dealing with bone chips, joining Edwin Diaz and Blake Snell.
The performance dip in hindsight looks like it was telling on itself. Klein's ERA sat at a sparkling 2.12 back on June 16 before creeping up to 3.67 by August, and he allowed runs in 8 of his last 11 appearances before landing on the 15-day IL. His last scoreless outing came all the way back on July 4 against San Diego, meaning the wheels had already been coming off for weeks before anyone had a name for why.
The Dodgers reportedly haven't committed to a path yet — it's either rest and rehab or go under the knife. Surgery would be the safer long-term call but risks wiping out the rest of his season, including a potential October run. There's a faster-recovery precedent floating around too: Tarik Skubal had a bone spur removed using the newer NanoNeedle procedure and was back in about 5 weeks, way under the usual 2-to-3-month elbow recovery window.
Either way, this is a real problem for a bullpen that had quietly leaned on Klein as a set-it-and-forget-it arm before the deadline. Losing him for any stretch — let alone the stretch run — pushes more innings onto a relief corps that's already been stretched thin by injuries to bigger names, and it torpedoes his fantasy and betting value just as he'd become a name worth rostering.