Dodgers: How to best handle eight starting pitchers

Hyun-Jin Ryu

Ryu’s case is so interesting he gets a section of his own.

He started the All-Star game. He is the NL leader in ERA, over established aces like Jacob DeGrom and Max Scherzer. And yet, his role is up in the air, despite him having a 19-8 record and 2.22 ERA over his last two seasons (239.2 innings).

Why? His recent struggles.

On August 16, he had an NL leading 1.45 ERA and a 12-3 record.

Then he pitched on August 17 and allowed four earned runs. Then he pitched two more times, each time allowing seven earned runs. He now has a 2.35 ERA and three straight losses to his name. He’s trending 100% in the wrong direction.

And yet he’s still the best starter on the team in terms of ERA. Until a few weeks ago, he was garnering strong consideration to start Game 1 of a playoff series for the Dodgers.

Now? I think the team will continue to rest him and utilize some of the other eight available starters to give him rest and limit his outings to 70 pitches or less, or even to four innings or less.

Pitching Ryu once through the order before turning things over to Dustin May, Kenta Maeda, Julio Urias, and Ross Stripling does two things.

One, it allows Ryu to get reps against the top of the order while keeping his stuff sharp, and maintaining his stuff for when it really matters. Two, the other starting-capable pitchers need innings, especially if there isn’t room to get them real starts.

But more on that next.

Tony Gonsolin and Urias, Stripling, May, Maeda

This, for me, is an important distinction. Right now, Gonsolin seems deserving of a postseason start more so than any of the other four pitchers in this section.

Urias is only just now beginning to be stretched out, as is Stripling. May has had effectiveness problems on top of his recent injury. And Maeda, though I love him in the starting rotation, is a proven asset in the bullpen, as the past two postseasons have shown us.

So, on to Gonsolin. He has 20 innings in August, with four starts. Unlike Ryu, who has an ERA over 7.00 in that span, Gonsolin’s in the same span is under 2.00, as he checked in at 1.80 for the month. Better yet, three of the four starts came against potential playoff opponents in the St. Louis Cardinals, New York Yankees, and Atlanta Braves.

He’s good, plain and simple, and he’s even got strikeout potential, as he racked up seven against the Cards back at the beginning of August. He’s allowed one run or less in all but one of his last five appearances, one of which was a four-inning save at Coors Field, in which he allowed one single run.

If Gonsolin earns the fourth starter position for the postseason, all four of the other pitchers on this slide could follow him after his first two or three times through the order, as all have better stuff than the low-end of the current Dodger bullpen (sorry Josh Sborz).

For me, the coolest combination stuff wise would be to back up Gonsolin with Urias for an inning before going back to Maeda or Stripling or May to bridge to Kelly or Baez in the eighth or Jansen in the ninth.

This starter-bolstered bullpen has me very excited.

And we haven’t even gotten to one of the best postseason pitchers on the roster.

Rich Hill

One of my favorite Dodgers, D. Mountain may be back in the middle of this month. Hill has pitched nearly 50 postseason innings since joining the Dodgers, and he has a sub-3.00 ERA in that span.

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Wow. That’s just not something that can be said about most of the Dodger rotation. The only other pitcher with that much postseason work, Kershaw, since 2016 (when Hill arrived), has actually thrown over 75 postseason innings, but not quite with the stellar ERA Hill has.

But unlike Kershaw, Hill has been hurt for most of this season. His odds of starting in the postseason, beyond a role as an opener for Gonsolin, which in my opinion makes too much sense not to happen if Hill is right, will be limited.

Hill will probably not reach double-digit postseason innings, but any innings amount he can muster in what may be one of his last hurrahs, will be important to the Dodgers.

Think back to his domination in his last playoff start, the 6.1-inning, seven-strikeout start that got blown by Scott Alexander and Ryan Madson, ultimately giving the Red Sox the 3-1 lead and the edge in the series.

If Hill can come back and take down the top of the order, either at the beginning or middle of the game, especially when the top of the order involves a killer lefty, he should be the man for the job.