The Dodgers are in uncharted territory when it comes to this year’s postseason. While they’ve made the postseason every year since Major League Baseball expanded the postseason field in 2022, they’ve always earned a bye straight to the National League Division Series.

That may not be the case this year, as the Dodgers currently have the worst record among National League Division winners, which means they’re poised to host the lowest Wild Card team in a best-of-three series. They also still have the Padres breathing down their necks in the division, so there’s always a chance they could be a straight up Wild Card team as well.

The Wild Card Round requires some different preparation than the best-of-five division series, with the biggest one being that teams only need three starting pitchers.

As such, the Dodgers will need to make decisions about what they want to do with their surplus of starting pitching. We already know that Shohei Ohtani will get one of those starts, as will Yoshinobu Yamamoto. After that, the Dodgers can pick their poison between Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Clayton Kershaw.

But, according to a new report from MLB insider Bob Nightengale, it seems like there’s a pretty big chance that Kershaw could be left on the bench in this year’s postseason.

“Dodgers three-time Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw, 37, who has been flirting with retirement since the Dodgers won the World Series in 2020, is going out in style with his 10-2 record and 3.55 ERA in 21 starts this season,” Nightengale wrote in his new story for USA Today. “He announced that it would be his final regular-season start at Dodger Stadium, and it may be unlikely that he makes a postseason start, after reaching the postseason in Kershaw’s final 13 seasons.”

It looks like Clayton Kershaw won’t be on the Dodgers’ postseason roster

It’s interesting that Nightengale said that Kershaw wouldn’t get a start in the postseason as opposed to just the Wild Card Round.

As we mentioned above, it would make sense to leave him off the roster in the Wild Card Round since you only use two or three starting pitchers. But they’ll need more pitching in the best-of-five Division Series and even more pitching once the best-of-seven Championship Series and World Series roll around.

And Kershaw’s met the moment this year. He has a 3.55 ERA in 21 starts, though it’s worth pointing out that he’s posted a 6.00 ERA in 18 innings in September.

The one thing going against Kershaw may be his lack of flexibility. He’d likely have to work in relief in the Wild Card Series, and he hasn’t appeared in relief since his disastrous appearance against the Nationals in Game 5 of the 2019 NLDS.

The same could be said for the Division Series. In fact, the Dodgers may not need Kershaw until the Championship Series, and they may not want to take innings away from someone else who is pitching well.

The Dodgers ultimately have a good problem in having too many starters and not enough innings, but it still doesn’t change the fact they may need to leave a franchise icon on the bench come October.