Dodgers: How to best handle eight starting pitchers

The Dodgers currently have eight pitchers who have started games on the active roster. And Rich Hill is on the way, seeking a return in the coming weeks.

That makes nine potential starting pitchers with a less than a month separating the Dodgers from the postseason. Nine pitchers with varying degrees of health and length and postseason experience, but nine nonetheless.

That’s a lot of options for Roberts, which isn’t a bad thing.

Of course, with all of these options, a few are sure things.

Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler will be on the postseason roster and they will be starting games, health allowing.

But after this dynamic duo, the picture becomes far murkier, even though it includes plenty of All-Stars and top rookies. So what to do with all of these arms, a plethora of pitchers? Throw them all in the bullpen? Let all start down the stretch to keep them stretched out and ready for long relief and starts come October?

In this article, I look at the seven pitchers not named Kershaw or Buehler to try and sort out what role they should play in the rest of the regular season and in the postseason, simply by going down the depth chart of starting pitchers and transitioning to the starters listed as being part of the bullpen.

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.