LOS ANGELES — A baseball team’s postseason roster is often a work in progress. For the Wild Card round? Consider it an opening statement.
Yes, the Dodgers are getting the hang of this best-of-three first round, the playoff equivalent of clearing your throat. And yes, there were some opening surprises among their 26 actives announced Tuesday morning, hours before they roughed up Cincinnati Reds starter and local product Hunter Greene (five runs, six hits, three homers in three innings) and put a few dents in the Reds’ bullpen as well. The result was a 10-5 Game 1 victory that featured two-homer nights from Shohei Ohtani and Teoscar Hernández as well as another near meltdown from the bullpen.
We knew as early as Sunday that Clayton Kershaw would not be on the Wild Card Series roster, after pitching into the sixth inning in the regular-season finale in Seattle. People who have been following the Dodgers understood perfectly, since Kershaw is ticketed for a relief role but wouldn’t be available in the first series anyway. Still, the talking heads on MLB Network’s afternoon programming reacted to the development Monday with some surprise.
But there are only 26 spots, and no room for ceremonial picks. (And keep in mind that the list can and likely will change for each series should the Dodgers advance.)
Outfielder Michael Conforto, given plenty of runway during a season in which he never could quite keep his batting average above .200, was omitted. Will Smith was included, suggesting that while he might not yet be ready to catch, the hairline fracture in his right hand had healed enough that he could be a potent bat off the bench if needed.
There were three catchers on the roster: Smith, Ben Rortvedt (the starter Tuesday night) and Dalton Rushing. The Dodgers carried 14 position players and just 11 full-time pitchers – and yes, Tanner Scott and Blake Treinen are on the list – plus two-way player Shohei Ohtani, who is available for an if necessary Game 3 on Thursday after Blake Snell’s solid outing in Game 1 and Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s start Wednesday. Tyler Glasnow will join Emmet Sheehan in the bullpen for this series, and it would not at all be surprising if Glasnow was asked to protect a lead in the ninth at some point.
Then again, the regulars in the bullpen were at it again, playing with their food after inheriting a 10-2 lead from Snell. Roberts wound up having to use three pitchers in the eighth, Jack Dreyer finally getting out of the mess that Alex Vesia and Edgardo Henriquez created but not before the Reds cut the margin to 10-5. Mercifully, Treinen got the side out in the ninth to end it.
Maybe Anthony Banda would have helped. He was also left off, a mild surprise, although as Manager Dave Roberts noted, the predominantly right-handed Reds wouldn’t provide many left-vs.-left situations for Banda.
The 15 position players listed represented a hedge, Roberts said, given that both Tommy Edman and Max Muncy – both of whom were in Tuesday night’s lineup – were working their way back from maladies.
The other surprise: Justin Dean, a late-season callup due to Edman’s injury who was primarily utilized as a pinch-runner or a late-inning defensive replacement in the outfield, was added to the roster, basically at Conforto’s expense. And this makes sense in a way, because you never know when a pinch-runner can provide a key moment in the postseason.
(For example: Roberts, and his 2004 stolen base for the Red Sox against the Yankees to trigger a comeback from a 3-0 series deficit and ultimately a long-awaited World Series championship. That series-turning event, maybe the biggest moment in New England since the midnight ride of Paul Revere, was shown on the Dodger Stadium video board before Tuesday night’s game, part of a segment from Bob Costas’ MLB Network interview with Roberts that aired Sunday.)
As for Conforto, he has had some key hits as a Dodger, just not many. And while it’s trendy among the analytics community to say that batting average is no longer important, when your average goes under .200 in April (it slipped to .194 on April 20), doesn’t resurface until 147 days later (.200 on Sept. 14) and slips back to .199 on the final day of the regular season, that does get and hold fans’ attention. And not in a good way.
The question in assembling the roster, as Roberts put it: “You’re basically kind of thinking, are you going to take Will’s bat off the bench or Michael’s at-bat right now.”
Assuming Smith is healthy, the answer is easy.
It’s “very difficult because it’s been really difficult for Michael,” Roberts said. “But he’s … owned his performance, hasn’t run away from it. He showed up to work every single day, offensively, defensively. So he’s one of my favorites. He’ll be ready if called upon, and hopefully we have a long run and we’re going to need him.”
Another factor might be to make sure there are plenty of opportunities for Kiké Hernández – who also should answer to “Señor Octubre,” as vibrantly as he steps up in the postseason. Before Tuesday he had a career .278 average and .874 OPS in 86 postseason games, with 15 home runs and 35 RBIs.
“I think we’ve all seen the level of focus and energy that Kiké brings, especially in October,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said Tuesday afternoon, calling that a “big factor in wanting to bring him back this offseason. That being said, you never know how a season is going to play out and what things are going to look like. But he’s had a good little run here lately and feels like his swing’s in a better spot.”
Kiké started this postseason with two singles in three at-bats before leaving with what Roberts said was back tightness, but the manager added: “He’ll be in there tomorrow.”
After all, it is the first day of October.
jalexander@scng.com