Dodgers, Diamondbacks announce NLDS rosters with few surprises

The Dodgers and Diamondbacks had a 10 a.m. deadline for their National League Division Series rosters to be submitted. Here are the official rosters:

#ThisTeam! https://t.co/jxpAEp4BuC pic.twitter.com/rWgonVmbht

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) October 6, 2017

And my final prediction from Monday wasn’t far off (24/25).

The biggest difference here is Alex Wood will get a chance to start while Hyun-Jin Ryu won’t even be on the roster. Ryu being left off opened the door for Pedro Baez to be in the bullpen because of his strong finish to the season (i.e., the last 4 1/3 innings of work). Here’s hoping to no high-leverage situations for Petey, because that will not end well. It also opened a door for Ross Stripling to make the roster to make sure there’s enough coverage in the bullpen, even in a short series. Once it was confirmed Ryu wouldn’t make it, Stripling’s chances of making it improved substantially.

On the position player side, Kyle Farmer did make the roster. The two biggest reasons he made the roster over a guy like Joc Pederson is because he: a) frees up Austin Barnes and/or Yasmani Grandal to pinch-hit b) hits right-handed. For the third consecutive year of talk about implementing a “burner” for the postseason, Tim Locastro did not make the cut. Robbie Garvey and Edwin Drexler were under consideration in years past. The rest of the roster is pretty self-explanatory.

Here is Arizona’s NLDS roster:

Starting Pitchers (4): Zack Godley, Zack Greinke, Robbie Ray, Taijuan Walker
Relief Pitchers (7): Archie Bradley, Andrew Chafin, Patrick Corbin, Jorge De La Rosa, David Hernandez, Fernando Rodney, Jimmie Sherfy
Catchers (2): Chris Iannetta, Jeff Mathis
Infielders (8): Daniel Descalso, Brandon Drury, Paul Goldschmidt, Jake Lamb, Ketel Marte, Kristopher Negron, Adam Rosales, Christian Walker
Outfielders (4): Gregor Blanco, J.D. Martinez, David Peralta, A.J. Pollock

No surprises on the pitching side. The only place there might be a swap is Godley to the bullpen and Corbin to the rotation, but that would be dictated by the situation.

On offense, Chris Herrmann gets left off the roster in favor of guys like Negron and Walker, who bat right handed and are better matchups against the Dodgers’ left-handed pitchers. And if it seems like they’re short an outfielder, they’re really not. Drury has experience in the corners should they run low on outfielders.

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Seven and a half hours. Hold on to your butts.