SAN DIEGO — After spending the last month of the regular season making constant transactions to stay ahead of their pitching needs and injuries, the Cardinals had to find ways to exhaust their roster.
For the first round of the playoffs, they sought ways to exploit it.
The Cardinals submitted Wednesday morning their 28-man roster for the wild-card series against the San Diego at Petco Park, and they downsized their pitching staff while upsizing the number of innings they could ask the bullpen to handle because of the starters put into it. Johan Oviedo, Daniel Ponce de Leon, and Austin Gomber will all start the playoffs in the bullpen, and freshly back from the injury list Kodi Whitley will be in bullpen.