After toppling the Cardinals in walk-off fashion to advance beyond the Wild Card Game, the Dodgers on Friday announced their 26-man roster for their NLDS battle against the rival Giants. Both Walker Buehler and David Price, who were kept off the Wild Card roster, are on the NLDS roster in place of outfielder Luke Raley and utilityman Zach McKinstry.
Here’s a look at all 26 names…
Right-Handed Pitchers
- Phil Bickford
- Walker Buehler (Game 1 starter)
- Tony Gonsolin
- Brusdar Graterol
- Kenley Jansen
- Joe Kelly
- Corey Knebel
- Max Scherzer
- Blake Treinen
Left-Handed Pitchers
- David Price
- Julio Urias (Game 2 starter)
- Alex Vesia
Catchers
Infielders
Outfielders
There’s not a whole lot of note with the Dodgers’ choices. Buehler started Los Angeles’ regular season finale and was only left off the Wild Card roster in anticipation of his potential Game 1 start tonight. The southpaw Price wasn’t active for the Dodgers’ game against a Cardinals team that leans heavily right-handed, but it was always expected he’d be back to offer some multi-inning relief depth over a longer series.
Max Muncy remains inactive as he recovers from the elbow dislocation he suffered in the regular season finale. Muncy will not require surgery, but his elbow will remain immobilized for the next couple weeks, reports Robert Murray of FanSided (Twitter link). That timeline would seem to make his return at any point in a potential postseason run a longshot, but neither Muncy nor the Dodgers have ruled out that possibility as of yet. The 30-year-old figures to appear on some MVP ballots after popping 36 home runs and walking at an elite 14% clip this season, leading to a .249/.368/.527 slash line that checks in 40 percentage points above league average by measure of wRC+.
Steven Souza lives on!
And no more questions about tables!
Come on, Bellinger.
Smoke geese & salmon. Not dope.
Interesting. Dodgers keep their vet Price, giants cut Cueto. Wonder if Price actually pitches in this series
For a second lefty reliever, I thought they might have kept Justin Bruihl along with Vesia. Outstanding bullpen, though.
Price is not going to pitch much and if he does it’s probably a very bad thing for the Dodgers. Bruihl on a sample size may not be worse than Price, so agreed. The issue with using Pujols later in the game as a pinch hitter for Beaty is that you need to sub him out for a defensive player like McKinney, which seems excessive, or else risk way below first base defense. If you want multiple ABs for Pujols you need to pay the price defensively and/or burning an extra bench player.
Bellinger is also a late-inning option at first. A defensive outfield of Pollock, Taylor, Betts with McKinney as a late-inning option is not a bad thing. The main thing is getting a lead for that deep bullpen to protect. A bigger concern is infield defense around the horn. It’s far from elite. Muncy has been a master at scooping those bouncing throws from Justin Turner. Seager and Trea Turner up the middle can be shaky.
Ida kept Bruihl over Price 100%
Would be a huge boon for the rest of the playoffs if the starters could go 6-7 inns in games 1-3 and they could win in 4 …which will be a glorified pen game where Gonzo and Prices inns prolly are determined mostly by the score not their own abilities or lack thereof
* So odd for a team with so much flexibility to have a problem finding a suitable 1b candidate after Muncy….Just an anomaly here…I will say Beaty looked great defensively in the WC game vs Stl but I’m not getting too much confidence off 1 game.
Was really intrigued by Lux’s bat down the stretch, would be nice to see him get some postseason success as he’s going to be a MAJOR part of this team next year and I don’t see a better welcoming party than right now for that future comfortability
I hope this will be a great series!
The Dodgers and Giants have technically never met in the post-season. However, they did meet in a best-of-three tiebreaker to decide the National League pennant in 1962. The Giants beat the Dodgers, two games to one, to claim their first west-coast pennant. Listed alphabetically by team, here are the 17 living players who participated in that series.
DODGERS (10): Larry Burright, Doug Camilli, Tommy Davis, Tim Harkness, Frank Howard, Sandy Koufax, Ken McMullen, Phil Ortega, Dick Tracewski, Maury Wills.
GIANTS (7): Felipe Alou, Carl Boles, Bobby Bolin, Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal, Willie Mays, Gaylord Perry.
If the name Carl Boles doesn’t ring a bell, don’t feel bad as he only played in 19 games for the Giants. Boles was popular at the time with autograph seekers who often mistook him for Willie Mays. What fun it must have been disappointing those pushy kids.
sportsradioservice2013.wordpress.com/2020/04/25/he…
Larry Burright and Tim Harkness? Ask an original Mets fan.
The Giants gave us hell all season, this is a great matchup for baseball. Obviously I’m rooting for my Dodgers but they better come out firing because the Giants are hungry. May the best team win!
Also, it’s a shame that Belt and Muncy aren’t going to be involved. Hope Beaty stays hot.
It’s also a shame Kershaw, Bauer and May aren’t going to be involved.
Bauer never should have been on the dream, and I’m not just talking about character issues. Making an outsider the highest AAV player on the team was ridiculous. Thankfully, he is gone and the team has moved on. May and Ferguson’s lefty arm out of the pen are bigger losses.,
Comparing Benches (as it was a discussion in giants area):
Taylor, Lux, Pujols (assuming Beaty at 1b), Barnes, McKinney and Souza
vrs
Flores (assuming Ruf 1b), Solano, Casali, Dickerson, Duggar, Slater
Edge: giants for sure, After Taylor, Pujols, lux, defense/hitting dives down sharply
not like giants each bench member is pretty solid and having slater to PH against any Dodger lefty is a weapon.
Good points, Datashark. Of course, an equalizing factor is that most of those Dodgers bench pieces have been through deep playoff runs before, whereas this fresh territory for the Giants reserves. Yes, the Giants’ championship lineup core is partially intact, which mitigates this a bit, but I think that it’s not crazy to say that they’re nearly even.
Where I think Giants have the most significant advantage is in the bullpen. They can just keep throwing sub-3.00, one inning guys at you to where it really shortens up the game, even if the starter doesn’t go deep. As a Dodgers fan, this is what scares me most. Dodgers BP is really, good, but I thing the Giants relievers have been elite, almost from top to bottom.
Should be a great series, but I like the Dodgers in 5 due to superior starting pitching and the fact that their bats have really come alive the last couple of weeks.
Ashamed Besides Graterol and Price how many Dodger pitchers have an ERA of over 3.00?
Just those two, however, EVERY Giants reliever on the NLDS roster has an ERA of 3.00 or less.
Totally disagree about your bp take. Dodgers can throw 4 proven closers at you. All with filthy stuff and battle tested. Besides them you have Graterol, and Bickford throwing gas and Gonsolin and old vet Price ready to go multiple innings. That bullpen is going to be tough to beat in the postseason and the quality and experience of the Giants pen isn’t really even close. This is what will swing the series in the Dodgers direction.
I don’t care about reliever ERA. Since the all-star break, no team has had a better bullpen than the Dodgers’ group. Don’t forget Joe Kelly, who has now stranded 22 or 24 inherited runners. He has quietly had an excellent season, especially lately.
Id take the Dodgers pen over any pen in the game currently even the good Giants Pen –
Kelley
Graterol
Knebel
Trienan
Kenley is as good as it gets – And Ive been VERY critical of this pen the last 8 years so this doesn’t stem for homerism
Bickford and Vesia are also very promising indeed
The Giants have 7 RPs make at least 25 appearances this season, and only two of them (closer Jake McGee and Jarlín García) had double-digit meltdowns.
Tyler Rogers himself on SF has a 43-to-6 shutdown-to-meltdown
Jansen and setup man Blake Treinen combined for 75 shutdowns versus 19 meltdowns,
Meltdown is the game’s newest dumb stat. I’ll trust what I’ve been seeing. Jansen has been the best closer in MLB over the last couple of months. For the season, the only better has been Hader. Much credit should go to Dave Roberts, who has done a masterful job with that bullpen. Hall of Fame manager right there. His critics can go to hell.
@Cap & Crunch, Joc, Doogie, and Keekay have all homered today. I’m taking that as a good sign.
My preference is the Dodgers win tonight since I’ll miss most if not all of Saturday’s game. Just my third or fourth missed game of the year. I’ll also be missing possible games on the 19th and 20th. All are live music obligations. Tough choices though not really.
My money is on Graterol giving up a few long balls. I would have preferred another lefty.
I really miss Kiki today ….he was a player a guy like datashark could probably abuse 6 ways from sideways by twisting stats the way he wanted but there’s no denying when it came to a big game Kiki pushed all the silly stats aside and rose to the occasion 9 times outta 10
I truly wonder how many posters in here watch games and don’t just go to BR to tell/bless us with whose good/bad
Thrilled by Kiki’s success yesterday, one of my favorite current day players despite the current colors on the uni
hey I really like what kiki brought to the table, but…dodgers thought they had that with McKinstry…but he failed after coming back from injury. Kiki was a real pain for the Giants. Dodgers really lack having a kiki.
Kiki had a real knack at being that clutch player, which is what I see in Wade Jr. for Giants.
Dodgers without muncy are really hurting for clutch time.
Regardless of what happens during this playoff series, the future is bright for both the Dodgers and Giants organizations.
Both are well ran top tier organizations.
Dodgers took a massive dive in prospect future their top levels are limited
Pepiot looked great in AA but took a huge slide in AAA while Busch has not progressed.
Giants prospect looks better on the right now horizon
But to be fair any team that goes to WS often plucks their farm to keep riding the window of opportunity so dodgers are just in that window now there tends to be a downward effect and once the window diminishes replenish reoccurs.
The Giants are a better team, but they have an inferior owner. Go Dodgers!
Talent wise there isn’t a better team than the Dodgers in all of baseball. However the Giants are playing as a better team at the moment and it showed tonight. We’ll have to get our bats moving if we’re going to compete, we should easily be in a 4 run ballgame
What I find interesting is that a 106 win team is carrying THREE sub .200 hitters into the playoffs
Enough with the stats. The regular season is over.
If the ump is going to continue calling strikes on Webb’s sliders four inches outside the zone it’s going to be a long night for the Dodgers.
The ump did and it was.
Webb looked good tonight. I was hoping he’d have first postseason start jitters but he held us down. Moving on, let’s move on to game 2.
They left a name off the list here: Pat Hoberg.
He’s clearly on the Dodgers payroll with that BS strikeout call.