Dodgers' playoff rotation evolving

Roberts eyes options after Kershaw, Miller

LOS ANGELES ❯❯ You want spots on a postseason roster, by any reasonable measure, to be earned and not given.

And, truly, a number of Dodgers hitters have heated up in this latter stretch of the season — hello, Jason Heyward — to make their cases for a spot on the Dodgers' final roster heading into the start of their best-of-five National League Division Series on Oct. 7. But with the team's starting rotation, currently held together by an aging Clayton Kershaw here and a rookie there and a reliable-but-patchwork carousel of openers, Roberts has less leeway to be picky.

“With the pitching, I think sort of by performance (and) by default, it's becoming pretty clear as well,” Roberts said Monday of the plans for the postseason roster. “But there's still going to be some tougher conversations that we still have time to evaluate.”

Kershaw, of course, is a lock to take the ball for a game if healthy, despite somewhat-ominous velocity issues that have nagged him in recent starts. Bobby Miller already has been tabbed for a start in one of the Dodgers' first two postseason games, on the heels of a standout rookie season in which he has posted a 10-3 record and a 4.02 ERA.

But with Tony Gonsolin out for the year and Julio Urias on administrative leave as the MLB investigates allegations of domestic violence, the other potential starters in the Dodgers' playoff arsenal might be a toss-a-dart-at-a-board

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