Los Angeles Dodgers reliever Tanner Scott has not had the best season.
The All-Star southpaw who boasted a 1.75 ERA last season inked a four-year, $72 million deal this offseason with the defending champions. Things have been far from passable for Scott, putting up a 4.74 ERA across his 61 appearances this season, and an MLB-leading 10 blown saves.
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Scott was on the Wild Card roster for the Dodgers, but failed to make an appearance. After he was removed from the NLDS roster, it was revealed by manager Dave Roberts that he had been working through what he called a lower-body abscess procedure.
The skipper spoke on the decision to remove him from the roster, noting that the severity was initially unknown.
“I don’t think we knew exactly the extent of it,” Roberts said. “And so to kind of make that preemptive decision, I think we were probably a little bit more in flux.”
The New York Post’s Jon Heyman asserted that the abscess was on his butt.
“The Dodgers are calling closer Tanner Scott’s injury a “lower-body” injury, and let’s just [say] he’s hoping to put it “behind” him (hint there),” Heyman said.
Although Scott is close to being healthy enough return, the World Series isn’t quite the setting one would want to have a ramp-up period.
“He called the ailment an infection while a Dodgers official called it a cyst,” Heyman said. “Scott is working hard, but it’s uncertain if there’s enough buildup time to rejoin the team as a back-end reliever, which coincidentally is what his recent procedure accomplished.”
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Regardless, Scott hasn’t shown enough to rush him back to the Fall Classic roster, and the Dodgers might just be better off without him, especially with the emergence of Roki Sasaki to take the ball during high-leverage situations.
Sasaki has been lights out this postseason with a microscopic 1.13 ERA across eight innings of work. He has struck out six and walked two in his seven appearances this October.
Scott, on the other hand, ended his season with an ERA of 6.48 through the month of September. With his struggles as of late and however long it will take him to ramp up, it appears unlikely fans will see Scott in the World Series.
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