L.A.'s Betts day-to-day after stubbing toe in mishap

LOS ANGELES -- Mookie Betts stubbed a toe on his left foot during an off-the-field incident and was out of the Los Angeles Dodgers' lineup Friday night for the opener of a highly anticipated weekend series against the New York Yankees.

Betts was scheduled to undergo X-rays at Dodger Stadium at some point before first pitch. Until then, the team will hold its breath.

"It's day-to-day right now," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. "So, that's where we're at."

The incident -- affecting Betts' second toe -- was believed to have occurred late Wednesday night, after the Dodgers returned from a six-game road trip through New York and Cleveland. Roberts didn't find out until Betts called him Friday morning. He was vague on the details.

"I really don't know," Roberts said when asked how the injury occurred. "I think it was at home. It's probably a dresser, nightstand, something like that. It's just kind of an accident. I think that Mookie will be able to give more context, but that's kind of from the training staff what I heard. So hopefully it's benign, it's negative. Not sure, but I feel confident saying it's day-to-day. It's kind of for his tolerance. But putting on a shoe today was difficult for him."

Betts' injury isn't even the Dodgers' most serious at the moment. That belongs to late-inning reliever Evan Phillips, who was rehabbing a forearm injury. Phillips didn't feel right playing catch earlier this week and will undergo Tommy John surgery next week, knocking him out for all of 2025 and most of 2026.

Phillips, 30, was released by the Baltimore Orioles in August 2021 and designated for assignment by the Tampa Bay Rays less than two weeks later. The Dodgers picked him up and turned him into a valuable late-game weapon. From 2022 to 2024, Phillips posted a 2.21 ERA and 0.92 WHIP, saved 44 games and struck out 206 batters in 179 regular-season innings.

But Phillips dealt with an assortment of arm issues during last year's postseason run and was left off the team's World Series roster. He then went on the IL with a rotator cuff strain in the middle of March, returned a month later, notched seven scoreless appearances, then went back on the IL on May 7 with what the team called forearm discomfort. Platelet-rich-plasma injections did not take. Phillips never got better.

"As we started getting into it, it wasn't really responding," Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes said. "We felt like this could be a possibility, so as he got deeper into the process and it wasn't really getting better, the decision to do it was pretty much evident with our information."

The Phillips loss is coupled with the fact that the Dodgers have four other high-leverage relievers on the IL -- Brusdar Graterol, Blake Treinen, Kirby Yates and Michael Kopech, all of whom throw right-handed.

The Dodgers tried to back fill some of that depth by trading for former All-Star closer Alexis Diaz on Thursday. But Diaz, who struggled so badly this season that the Cincinnati Reds optioned him to Triple-A, will initially work out of the Dodgers' spring training complex in Glendale, Ariz.

The Dodgers also have three starting pitchers -- Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Roki Sasaki -- recovering from shoulder injuries, with Shohei Ohtani not expected to join the rotation until sometime after the All-Star break.

The lineup, at least, had been healthy. Until now.

Betts, 32, got off to a slow start offensively but was still slashing .254/.338/.405 with eight home runs and five stolen bases while slotting between the hot-hitting Ohtani and Freddie Freeman in the No. 2 spot. More notably, Betts had proven to be a capable major league shortstop after working the entire offseason at the position.

But the toe injury could set him back, in much the same way a broken left hand robbed him of nearly two months in 2024.

At this point, Roberts said, "I don't see it being long term." But the Dodgers can't say that definitively just yet.

"We need to see the doctors and kind of get a better sense of it," Gomes said. "It happened pretty recently, so it'll take some time before we have a better understanding."