The good news is that the Dodgers have put together the best record in baseball without much help from Walker Buehler. The bad news is that they will be without one of their best postseason pitchers after he has surgery on his elbow next week. The goal will be to figure out the issue, and the hope is that Tommy John is not the result of that surgery.
The playoff implications of Buehler’s loss will almost certainly be felt. Across 4 years, he has appeared in 15 postseason games and pitched to a combined 2.94 ERA. That doesn’t even include game 163 of the 2019 season when he dominated the Rockies to win the West.