Dodgers News: Dave Roberts Blunt in Assessment of Craig Kimbrel's October Role

Dodgers closer Craig Kimbrel has not had the smoothest of seasons this year, his first in Los Angeles. The active MLB leader in saves with a 2.18 ERA coming into the season has blown four of his five one-run save opportunities and has an untidy 4.36 ERA on the year.

There's certainly some element of luck involved, as Kimbrel has allowed a batting average on balls in play (BABIP) of .378 this year, more than a hundred points higher than his .263 career BABIP allowed coming into the season. But BABIP isn't based entirely on luck, and when October rolls around, all anyone cares about is results.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has been pretty firm all season that Kimbrel has not lost his closer role, although lately the focus has been more on getting him a Goldilocks amount of work — not too little, not too much, juuuust right. But on Wednesday, Roberts was asked a slightly different question. It wasn't "Who is the closer right now?" but instead "Who is the closer in October?"

According to J.P. Hoornstra in the Orange County Register, this answer was just a little different.

“My expectation, my hope is, it’s Craig,” Roberts said when asked who would close games in October. “It should be a meritocracy. It should be about performance. I do believe that if he’s closing games, we’re better for it.”

Now, this answer isn't news in the sense that it's new information, as the writing on the wall has been clear for a while now that Roberts and the Dodgers are going to do everything they can to help Kimbrel get to a point where they're comfortable with him closing games in October.

But it is news that Roberts is saying this out loud. This isn't a change in direction for Roberts, just a decision on his part to be more open with the media about what the direction already was. And now that it's been said, everyone can be on the same page in assessing Kimbrel's progress.

It was surprising to not see Kimbrel in last night's game, even though it was a blowout. He hasn't pitched since Sunday, and with an off-day today, it seemed like a good time to get him some work. It could be that Roberts doesn't want to mess with Kimbrel's psyche by having back-to-back appearances in blowouts, or there could be reasons we're not totally aware of.

But the plan for Kimbrel over these final 39 games of the regular season will be for him to get regular, consistent work, with an emphasis on throwing strikes, commanding both his fastball and his curveball, and most importantly, getting outs.

When Roberts says "if he's closing games, we're better for it," what he's saying is the Dodgers are a better team when Kimbrel is pitching well enough to deserve the closer role. The Dodgers have been historically good this season even without a dominant Kimbrel; just imagine how good they could be with him at his best.

That's what Roberts is hoping to see heading into October.