The Dodgers swapped out lefty reliever Tanner Scott for Justin Wrobleski on their division series roster Thursday, just before the team took the field for Game 4 of the NLDS — and less than 24 hours after he underwent a procedure.
Manager Dave Roberts described the treatment as a lower-body abscess.
“As I understand it, it was an abscess excision, some type of lower-body, minor procedure. So I don’t know a whole lot about it, to be quite honest with you,” Roberts told reporters before Thursday’s game. “But I do know that he’s recovering well. And it took place last night. That’s kind of where we’re at.”
Roberts previously said that Scott was not at the ballpark Wednesday night — after the Dodgers’ 8-2 loss to the Phillies — and that it was a personal matter that would be announced at a later time.
Scott, 31, is still eligible for a playoff return, but the earliest he would be able to is the World Series due to the MLB’s rules regarding postseason roster removals.
Scott signed a four-year, $72 million deal with the Dodgers this past offseason, but he struggled during the season with a 4.74 ERA and had not appeared in any of Los Angeles’ playoff games this year.
There had been some questions as to why the Dodgers waited to make a move with their roster until now. Waiting to make the move led to Los Angeles using Clayton Kershaw for an extra inning of work in Game 3, turning a 3-1 deficit into a rout.
“I don’t think we knew exactly the extent of it,” Roberts said of Scott. “And so to kind of make that preemptive decision, I think we were probably a little bit more in flux.”
Wrobleski, a 25-year-old southpaw, appeared 24 times this season for the Dodgers, recording a 4.32 ERA through 66⅔ innings pitched.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
