Dodgers athletic trainer Nancy Patterson Flynn, left, accompanies Andre Ethier off the field in the eighth inning. (Associated Press photo)

Dodgers head athletic trainer Stan Conte resigned in October to further his baseball injury research. Wednesday, we learned that the Dodgers are losing assistant athletic trainer Nancy Patterson Flynn, who made her resignation Facebook-official:

Patterson joined the Dodgers organization in 2009 with the Inland Empire 66ers, then the club’s Single-A affiliate. She worked for the Double-A Chattanooga Lookouts in 2010 before joining the Dodgers’ major league staff in 2011.

I missed this at the time, but Conte did a fantastic interview (in podcast form) with Baseball Prospectus shortly after he left. He talked about the vital role athletic trainers play during the free agency period, helping teams assess the risk of potential signees every off-season. Conte spoke at length about pitcher Brett Anderson — a free-agent gamble who worked out better than even Conte predicted when the Dodgers signed him last year.

That interview is relevant now because free agency begins Friday and the Dodgers are without two of their top medical folks.