The Dodgers will badly miss righty Ross Stripling in the NLDS
When the NLDS rosters came out, I looked through the Dodgers pitching roster, and then I looked again. After checking injury reports, I went onto Twitter (that wonderful harbinger of great thought) to see why on earth the Dodgers would attempt the MLB playoffs without Ross Stripling.
Turns out, I was not the only one with this confusion. Sure, Stripling is not going to blow anyone away with a triple-digit fastball or freeze them with a killer curve. He was, however, a legit All-Star this season as he finished the year with a 3.02 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, and a 22/136 BB/K ratio over 122 innings.
Stripling spent much of August on the shelf, and when he returned in September, his base numbers weren’t pretty, with a 6.75 ERA and 1.75 WHIP over 12 innings. However, he had some bad luck in those games with a .364 BABIP. He did have his second-highest K/9 in a month on the 2018 season.
So, why would a guy who put up a 6.75 ERA over the final month be so important? Looking at the rosters, the Dodgers seem to have the starters that will start games and that’s really about it for multiple-inning arms. The Atlanta Braves are actually stacked up with guys who worked as starters in the 2018 season, and if a game went long or a starter is knocked out early, they are set up to handle that well, while the Dodgers could overly tax their bullpen to keep up with.