Shortly before the Los Angeles Dodgers were scheduled to take the field at Rogers Centre for a World Series workout on Thursday night, the team announced Alex Vesia was not on hand due to being with his wife, Kayla, because of a “deeply personal matter.”
Additional details were not provided but manager Dave Roberts suggested it was unlikely Vesia would be included on the Dodgers’ World Series roster when it was officially set Friday morning.
That came to be, as Vesia and Ben Casparius were removed from the Dodgers playoff roster and replaced by Edgardo Henriquez and Will Klein.
The Dodgers conceivably had an option to put Vesia on MLB’s family medical emergency list or bereavement, but did not move forward with either scenario.
“I think we exhausted a couple different options, but just considering, obviously, what he’s going through, baseball’s certainly on the back burner,” Roberts explained. “So I just think that’s kind of the right process, I think that we as an organization was probably the best way to handle it.
“To be quite honest, I don’t know a lot of what went into it.”
Dodgers avoided putting pressure on Alex Vesia
Had Vesia been placed on the family medical emergency list or bereavement, MLB roster rules would have dictated he miss a minimum of three days but no more than seven. It could have amounted to Vesia joining the Dodgers as soon as Game 3 of the World Series at Dodger Stadium.
But given the situation Vesia and his family are navigating, the Dodgers chose to respect the human aspect over their pursuit of back-to-back World Series titles.
“We just didn’t want to have any potential for any kind of pressure,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “This is so much bigger than baseball. For us, it was doing whatever small part we could to just a hundred percent be supportive.”
Roberts added the Dodgers have “even more motivation” against the Toronto Blue Jays and deemed it “most likely” that Vesia misses the entire World Series.
Given they didn’t utilize either of the tools for roster flexibility, the only manner with which Vesia would be able to join the team is if he’s replacing an injured player.
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