Walker Buehler Opens Up on Difficult End to Dodgers Tenure

The lasting image of Walker Buehler's final moment in a Los Angeles Dodgers uniform — arms extended toward the Yankee Stadium crowd, celebrating the final out of the 2024 World Series — was too perfect not to go out on.

Walker Buehler in the 2024 NLCS and World Series:

10 IP
5 H
0 ER
13 K
182 pitches

The Dodgers don’t win the World Series without Walker Buehler.

He will forever be a Dodgers legend. pic.twitter.com/Gh3fUt3zea
— Noah Camras (@noahcamras) December 24, 2024

Certainly Dodger fans could not think of a better ending to Buehler's decade in the Dodgers organization. Buehler might beg to differ.

But, as the saying goes, the writing was on the wall.

More to the point, the language in the Dodgers' last contract offer to Buehler spelled out their interest level. The standard qualifying offer at the time (a one-year, $21.05 million contract) differed little in years and dollars from the pact Buehler ultimately signed with the Boston Red Sox.

Buehler's one-year, $21.05 million deal with Boston included performance bonuses for games started. Their sum total had the potential to increase the value of Buehler's contract by $2.5 million. Instead, he was released midway through the 2025 season with a 5.45 ERA.

But one key detail stuck with Buehler, who is 4-3 with a 4.14 ERA in 14 starts for the San Diego Padres this season.

"The qualifying offer was something that was in play, and [the Dodgers'] offer was very similar to it, but not quite there," Buehler told the San Diego Union-Tribune. "And some of the reasoning behind that, at least what I thought it was — maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t — but their offer included a physical [where] they wanted to look at my hip.

"I just thought we were at a point where we would have conversations on the phone and not through agents if that was the thing."

To his credit, Buehler persevered to throw 126 innings in 2025 — his most in a season since 2021, the year before he underwent Tommy John surgery for the second time.

But his poor performance as a starter in Boston allowed him to linger on the free agent market until the middle of February, when he settled for a one-year minor league contract with the Padres. His $1.5 million salary can increase to $4 million via performance bonuses.

In hindsight, the Dodgers look wise for sticking to their guns. Buehler, for his part, is not bitter about how his time in Los Angeles ended.

"I hold no ill will about it," he told the Union-Tribune. "I got to go and experience a lot last year and play for two great organizations, and now end up here. I would love to be a guy that played for an organization his whole career and all that stuff, but I think given the way (the Dodgers) are spending money and the way they’re doing things, honestly, I wasn’t in a spot competitively to think that I would make a team or for sure have the role that I had always had.

"I think at the end of the day, it was just kind of time for me to move on."

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