Dodgers’ Colletti says Garland injury won’t require seeking outside pitching

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Jon Garland hopefully will at most miss one or two starts next month after an MRI confirmed the right-handed pitcher suffered a strained oblique muscle in his torso, Dodgers General Manager Ned Colletti said Thursday.

And if Garland does miss any starts, the club’s John Ely and Tim Redding are the leading candidates to replace him and the Dodgers don’t need to search outside the team for more pitching, Colletti said.

‘We still have three weeks left in camp and we really don’t need a fifth starter for a little while into the season, so hopefully [Garland] won’t miss much more than a turn or two,’ Colletti said at the Dodgers’ Camelback Ranch spring-training camp in Glendale, Ariz.

If Garland’s absence was ‘going to be half a season or more, yeah, you’d think about’ looking for another pitcher, ‘but that doesn’t make a lot of sense to go acquire somebody to fill a start or two,’ he said.

In the Dodgers’ clubhouse, Garland, 31, said all he could do with the injury was ‘give it time, let it heal,’ adding that ‘I sneezed last night and it hurt pretty bad.’

Garland suffered the injury Wednesday while pitching to the Seattle Mariners. He was acquired by the Dodgers during the off-season in a one-year deal after posting a 14-12 record last year with the San Diego Padres.

‘It’s one of those things that’s kind of out of your hands,’ Garland said of the injury. ‘I’m always going to hold out hope’ about not starting the season on the disabled list, he said, ‘but the Vegas odds aren’t looking too good right now.”

-- Jim Peltz in Phoenix