The Dodgers Are All About the Playoffs

The Dodgers are acting like an NBA team this year, like the Cavs or Warriors or Spurs. In the NBA, the season is long and meaningless and teams have sewn up spots halfway through the schedule. In baseball, it's not so cut and dried a) because the distribution of talent is not nearly as lopsided and b) because making the playoffs is significantly more difficult and fraught with challenges.

Still the Dodgers have won their division and secured a playoff spot each of the last four years, but they've been stymied on the way to the World Series. A big part of that has been the relative ineffectiveness of all-World starter Clayton Kershaw in the post-season. Could he just be gassed by season's end?

It may be that Dodger brass thinks so. This year, with help from the truncated 7-day and 10-day Disabled List, something new is going on with the Chavez Ravine pitching rotation. Combining a quick hook (average start - 87 pitches) with liberal use of the DL, the team is stashing pitchers between starts and employing six starting arms. Of their first 46 games, Dodgers pitchers had 34 times rested more than four days between starts.

This puts more stress on the relief corps, but again, creative use of the DL can help spell relievers while rostering their temporary replacements. There has never been, and doesn't appear to be now, much patrolling by MLB of DL use.

You might think of this as prophylactic employment of the DL. Rich Hill, Kenta Maeda and Alex Wood have had their injury issues, so limiting their usage by shuttling them back and forth is a clever way of protecting their health.

The purpose of this would seem to be keeping arms fresh for a long playoff run, which can last 21 additional games for a team that gets to the World Series. And frankly, that makes sense, because for the Dodgers, just as for the Cavs and Warriors, it's not a successful season unless they get to the championship series.

The Questions Keep Coming

More Braindrizzling queue and eh, eh?

Q. Okay, Trout won't make the Hall with just five more seasons, but what if he plays for like, 12 average seasons. Would he make the HOF then?
A. There are two concepts that grease the HOF skids -- peak value and career value. Career value is Don Sutton -- a very good pitcher for a long time. Peak value is Ken Griffey Jr. who averaged .260 with 19 home runs a year after age 30. (Of course, that allowed him to compile career value as well.)  In your scenario, Trout would look like Junior, except for a shorter peak.

Q. Who is the best young play-by-play guy in Major League Baseball?
A.  No one. Only three of the PBP guys were even born in the '80s. I guess Vin Scully's replacement might qualify.

Q. Which of the big money relievers is most likely to flame out? 
A. There have been some questions raised about Mark Melancon because he's 31, signed a four-year deal with the Giants and is most prone to losing velocity. His four-seamers average 92 mph, a relative tortoise among closers.

Q. I've seen comparisons between Yoenis Cespedes and Edwin Encarnacion that are not favorable to Cespedes, yet EE was forced to accept a deal worth millions less. Are the Mets just stupid?
A. Here's the comparison to which you refer:

• Encarnacion, 146 OPS+, 21.1 WAR last five years.  3 years/$60 million with Cleveland
• Cespedes, 124 OPS+, 18.7 WAR last five years.  4/$110 milliion with Mets

Cespedes is three critical years younger (31 vs. 34) and plays the field. In addition, the Mets had no leverage; they had to sign a slugger.

Q. Realistically, how long can this Cubs team dominate baseball?
A. At least until the bulk of the lineup reaches free agency. Their combination of dominance and youth is kind of unprecedented.

Q. What is the next area of Sabermetric advancement?
A. Defense. Statcast is telling us exactly where balls are hit and what kinds of routes defenders take. And there's so much more to learn in that realm.

Q. If Clayton Kershaw pitched one more Kershaw-type season in 2017 and then retired after the requisite 10 years, is he in the Hall of Fame?
A. No doubt. Greatest pitcher of his time. Lifetime ERA+ an unfathomable 59% better than average. Top 5 Cy Young each of the last six years -- top 3 if he hadn't been hurt in 2016. Led league in ERA five times in six years.

Q. As of right now, which teams have no chance to win in 2017?
A. Fans of these teams can make other plans in October: Braves, Phillies, Reds, Padres, Rockies, Twins, White Sox and A's. I wouldn't cash in my Berkshire Hathaway stock on several other teams, but these are the lead-pipe locks.

Q. Which under-the-radar signing is most likely to pay big dividends?
A. Depends how low your radar is. Let's say it's a player who didn't command a Qualifying Offer. I like the Marlins signing Brad Ziegler and Junichi Tazawa, a reverberation of the Royals' World Series formula in which they teamed a shutdown bullpen with a wobbly rotation. Adding two consistent relievers to A.J. Ramos is critical in Miami because their best starter is no one.

The signing of Steve Pearce by Toronto is intriguing for several reasons. First, Pearce quietly hit .288/.374/.492 with 13 homers in less than half a season last year. Second, he'll play all the corners of the field for the Blue Jays. Third, he'll replace Edwin Encarnacion north of the border, which means we'll compare the two and wouldn't it be just like Baseball if Pearce, at one-fifth the cost, turns out to be every bit the addition Encarnacion is to Cleveland.

Of course, the real big-payoff signing is the one we can't predict, some guy with 13 lifetime home runs in parts of six seasons who slugs 28 and hits .280 this year. 2017's version of Adam Duvall.

Q.  Now that A.J. Preller has pushed San Diego fans through hell and high water, are you still impressed?
A. Young Preller took the reins of the Padres in 2014 and yanked them hard into expensive free agency with a bevy of stars who almost without exception cratered. Recognizing the error of his ways, he quickly reversed course and unloaded the bunch for prospects in 2015. His team has bumbled in both his seasons and he still hasn't steered the franchise entirely back on the road to success. To top it off, he was busted for falsifying information in a trade with the Red Sox. So while Preller's reign has been audacious, it has not been auspicious, but his full vitae has yet to be written.

Q. What would Matt Holiday have to do to make the Hall of Fame?
A. Age backwards? He's well short and turning 37. Hasn't played a full season in two years. When he's done, he can console himself with $160 million in career earnings and a World Series ring.

Q. Does Carlos Beltran need another crazy-good season to earn his Hall pass?
A. That would help but I think he's already in, based on the career value I described earlier. Beltran's been a very good, five-tool player for a very long time. So while he has never led the league in anything during his illustrious 19-year career, he's done a little of everything at one time or another -- won Rookie of the Year (1999) slugged more than 40 homers (2006), posted an OBP above .400 (2009), delivered an OPS+ above 150 (2011), won a Gold Glove (2006-08), stolen more than 40 bases (2003, 2004) and added post-season heroics (2004 with Houston, 2012 with St. Louis). He is rated the 9th best power-speed combination of all time.

Q. A lot of players and managers dismiss defensive statistics. Are they just Luddites or are they on to something?
A. Both. Defensive statistics are not sufficiently mature to tell the whole story. They are going to mislead us in some cases as the craft evolves. Observation by knowledgeable people has value.

At the same time, the defensive metrics add to the base of knowledge because they are unbiased. Players and managers can discern talent that stats can't, but they can also be mislead by confirmation bias and conventional wisdom. Derek Jeter was a great case in point: he was beloved, made a couple of high-profile circus catches and invented that jump throw, consequently, many observers believed he was a great fielder. But deeper analysis showed quite conclusively that he had extremely limited range on ground balls, which is the sine non qua for shortstops.

Anyone who relies on their eyeballs to the exclusion of the metrics, or vice versa, is a fool.

Q. You've railed against the ignorance of baseball media for years. Where are they now in understanding the science?
A. It's a little like race relations: we've come so far and have far to go.

Q. What do you make of Curt Schilling's HOF case?
A. Schill's arm belongs in the Hall but his mouth is keeping him out. A recent tweet about lynching journalists has prompted a serious number of voters to put his candidacy on the bench for now. Given the large number of legitimate candidates on a ballot limited to 10 choices, many of whom are more worthy than Schilling, that could cost him in the long run. This is particularly so because he has not been gracious about the very reasonable reaction to that indefensible tweet. He doesn't seem to recognize the difference between having a political point of view, which is his right, and being a jackass, which is getting him in trouble.

The NL Cy Young -- Grab Your Aspirin

Choosing 2016's best pitcher in the American League was a matter of dicing the available information. Do you more heavily weigh ERA or FIP? Which is more important, WHIP or K/BB? That kind of thing.

The problem with choosing the Cy Young winner in the NL is more one of philosophy. Does the Cy Young go to the best pitcher or the most valuable? Because it's pretty clear who the best pitcher in the world is, and was this season, when he pitched. At 12-4, 1.69, and a 15.64 strikeout-to-walk ratio, Clayton Kershaw is the universe's grand poobah of the mound. That's as obvious as a hurricane.

But Kershaw made only 21 starts this year, succumbing to injury for all of July and August. During those two months, he contributed a grand total of nothing to the Dodgers.

How do you compare that to, say, Max Scherzer, who went 20-7, 2.96 in 100 more innings than Kershaw?

Or to Kyle Hendricks, who bolted from the bottom of the Cubs' stacked rotation to lead the league in ERA, with a 16-8, 2.13 line? He allowed half-a-run more per game than Kershaw, but hurled 70 more innings.

The Crowd of Great Starters
In total, eight starters limited their opponents to fewer than three earned runs per game. That's a fat list of names to consider and it leaves off the likes of Jake Arrieta, Carlos Martinez and Julio Teheran. Among them are legitimate Cy candidates Jon Lester (19-5, 2.44 in 202 innings), Noah Syndergaard (14-9, 2.60 in 184 innings), Madison Bumgarner (15-9, 2.74 in 227 innings) and the special case of Jose Fernandez (16-8, 2.86 in 182 innings before his death, and 12.5 strikeouts per nine innings.)

Lester benefited from the great Cubs infield and Syndergaard from Citi Field. Bumgarner and Fernandez were a hair less impressive than the top three candidates, particularly if you discount hitting for MadBum and sentiment for Fernandez. Kudos also to Tanner Roark and Johnny Cueto for superb seasons, but not ultimately Cy Young quality this year.

So my top three are Hendricks, Kershaw and Scherzer. Let's consider them.

Parsing the Top Three
Because Hendricks played in front of the best infield in the Majors, he could record outs more often than other pitchers without fanning opponents. The advanced stats say Hendricks' ERA was heavily polished by the awesome defensive cast in Chicago.

Kismet smiled on Scherzer's ERA also, but unlike Hendricks he was a horse, leading the league in workload. He led pitchers in wins against replacement, because while Hendricks sat on the bench while a reliever finished the job and Kershaw sat in the clubhouse rehabbing, Scherzer was still on the hill, mowing down batters. 

Scherzer was the most valuable pitcher in the NL this year.

Ultimately, It's The Claw
But here's the thing: Despite missing all that time, Kershaw earned just half-a-win less against replacement than Scherzer. His output was so spectacular, and so transcendent, that he was still the second most valuable pitcher in the league, despite missing a third of the season.

That's why I would vote for Clayton Kershaw for Cy Young. He was simply the best pitcher, by a country mile, in the NL.

Max Scherzer, for his sustained excellence, earns my #2 vote and Kyle Hendricks #3. The ERA is gaudy, but peek behind the curtain and you do see some duct tape and bailing wire.

If your philosophical bent is more in the direction of value, put Scherzer's name on your metaphorical ballot (or real one, if you are honored with a vote.) More than any other NL pitcher, he took the ball every fifth day and gave his team a chance to win. Clayton Kershaw? He won games almost by himself.

The Mid-Season Cy Youngs

Going into the final two starts of the first half, Chris Sale had a stranglehold on the half-way American League Cy Young, perhaps better described as the Cy Adolescent. At 13-2, 2.79, with 23 BB and 109 K in 113 innings, the lanky lefty was keeping the White Sox in contention.

Then July burst upon him like a heat-seeking missile. After a five-run start that nonetheless added to his win column, Sale ran into the red hot Atlanta Whoaretheseguys, who hung eight runs and 10 hits on him in just five innings.

Suddenly Sale's ERA skyrocketed to 3.38, dropping him from third to 12th in the league as he enters the break. According to ERA, Sale isn't even the best starter on the Chicago staff: Jose Quintana comes in at 3.21.

Does one horrible start against the game's weakest-hitting team disqualify Sale from this phantom award? Oh yeah.

Because lurking in the shadows the whole time was Danny Salazar, a fourth-year Cleveland righty who showed a lot of flame-throwing promise last season. Salazar hasn't pitched as much as Sale -- 21 fewer frames -- but his 10-3, 2.75 ledger, and 118 strikeouts, are mighty impressive. According to wins against replacement, Salazar paces the league by a substantial margin.

Over in the NL, Whoa Nellie! It's the anti-presidential race, with a a whole host of qualified nominees:
Madison Bumgarner -- 10-4, 1.94 and two home runs of his own
Johnny Cueto -- 13-1, 2.47 and four complete games
Jake Arrieta -- 12-4, 2.68 and he's batting .282/.349/.561 with two homers
Noah Syndsergaard -- 9-4, 2.56, but only because he's hurt
Stephen Strasburg -- 12-0, 2.62 and 132 K in 107 innings
Jose Fernandez -- 11-4, 2.52 off Tommy John surgery
Drew Pomeranz -- 8-7, 2.47 though that's in San Diego
Jon Lester -- 9-4, 3.01, making him the #2 starter on the Cubs

Zak Grienke -- 10-3, 3.62 despite a brutal start
Max Scherzer -- 10-6, 3.03
Tyler Chatwood -- 8-5, 3.29 in Denver!

And yet, not one of these guys sniffs the award. Clayton Kershaw is 11-2, 1.79 and his BB/K numbers look like a typo: 9/145 in 121 innings. He's hurled three shutouts. The league has a .205 OBP against him.

In other words, Clayton Kershaw the pitcher makes the world's best hitters look like Clayton Kershaw the batter. He is the runaway halfway Cy Young over competition that could go five or six deep for the award.

What are the odds that Salazar and Kershaw are still the premier pitchers by season's end? For rising stars like Salazar the odds are -- off the top of my head -- less than 50-50. But Kershaw is the exalted poobah of his trade, with a Hall-worthy lifetime tally of 125-58, 2.39, more strikeouts than innings and a 4-1 K-BB ratio.

All hail to Clayton Kershaw.

Random Observations From An Unhinged Mind

Stuff floating around my brain with nowhere to go...

This is the year of the flexfielder. Ben Zobrist has made a career of playing everything but the battery. This year Cubs slugger Kris Bryant has donned an outfield glove, an infield glove and a first baseman's mitt. The Cardinals are talking about moving Jhonny Peralta and Matt Carpenter about the infield in order to keep shortstop Aledmys Diaz on the field.

The Royals lost two stars for extended periods on this one play. Then they lost their star catcher for a month. Then they stormed back from a 7-1 ninth inning deficit to defeat the division leader. They're just different.

Ryan Howard has more strikeouts than total bases. This is very hard to do. You need to start with a .172 batting average. Don't try this at home: this man is a professional.

You know how you have to get to a great pitcher early or you miss your chance? New research shows that's poppycock. In fact, almost every pitcher in history was worse the third time through the order, than the first time through, even though he generally had to be having a good day in order to still be in the game the third time through. 

 Are dominant starters more dominant than ever or am I just now noticing it?  Look at this:
Clayton Kershaw -- 7-1, 1.56; 5BB/105K
Jake Arrieta -- 9-0, 1.72; 21BB/67K
Chris Sale -- 9-1, 2.26; 14BB/69K
Madison Bumgarner -- 6-2, 2.12; 22BB/83K
Noah Syndergaard -- 5-2, 1.87; 9BB/79K

A 21-1 K-BB ratio for Kershaw? These are video game numbers.

Big Papi is halfway to matching the WAR of the greatest final season ever before retiring. (Shoeless Joe Jackson earned 7.6 WAR in his final season but he was banned mid-career, not retired. Roberto Clemente earned 4.8 WAR before dying in a plane crash.) At 2.3 WAR, he's closing in on Jackie Robinson (4.5 WAR), Barry Bonds, 3.4 WAR), Hank Greenberg (3.4 WAR), and Ted Williams (3.0). As of Memorial Day. Big Papi was hitting .339/.420/.720, leading the league in OBP, SLG, doubles and RBI.

Mike Trout's 150th home run last week added his name to a list of 18 players who have stroked 150 home runs before age 25 season. Two things to note here:
1. Trout has two-thirds of that season to add to his total.
2. Home run hitting is not his signature skill.

Home field advantage has gone all woolly mammoth on us. Fourteen of the 30 teams have winning road records, including Arizona, which is 8-18 at home. It doesn't include Colorado, which is .500 on the road and a losing record at home; or Atlanta, which is a mortifying 4-20 at Turner but 10-14 away from it.

In the decade of the shift, recent research shows batters actually have higher batting averages when shifted against -- but slug for fewer bases. It sounds as if they are purposely hitting the ball the other way through the hole left for them, but in effect sacrificing opportunities to hit for power. On aggregate, shifts have not been effective. Which means calls for prohibiting them is even dumber than you thought.

Royals rookie Cheslor Cuthbert hails from Little Corn Island about 43 miles east of the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. His home is a mile square. A tropical rain forest, it gets 170 inches of rain a year. Although residents of a Spanish-speaking country, Corn Islanders are English-speaking. A natural Royal, Cuthbert is a direct descendant of the last king of eastern Nicaragua. 

In a game on Saturday, Russell Martin, who had managed just four extra base hits all season, ripped a game-tying double to the wall against Craig Kimbrel, who had allowed just three extra base hits all season. It was Kimbrel's second blown lead of the game, about what he normally does in half-a-season.

The Big Reveal About Clayton Kershaw

If you watched the All-Star Game, you saw the moundsman who last year didn't even give up anything to the opposition for Lent allow a pair of runs and absorb the loss. Because the All-Star Game is an exhibition asymptotic to not mattering at all, no one could accuse him of choking in a big moment. In fact, he was responsible for the loss in a meaningless contest.

On the other hand, when he allowed a couple of ill-timed home runs in the playoffs last year, the prevailing narrative was that he "isn't a big-time pitcher" or "isn't a great post-season pitcher" or whatever colloquialisms get spewed to indicate transparent nonsense. 

Compared to his regular season, when he went 21-3, 1.77 and led the NL in basically everything that mattered, Clayton Kershaw could hardly have measured up in the playoffs. In fact, other than the home runs, Kershaw was the same magician in the post-season, fanning 19 and walking two. (I recognize that I've just made an "other than that Mrs. Lincoln" kind of statement, but it's relevant to understand that over 12 innings the result of three pitches can get exaggerated.)

Making matters worse, the Claw was being compared to Madison Bumgarner, who got filthier in the playoffs than Pig Pen. Leading the Giants nearly single-handedly through the playoffs to a World Series championship, MadBum's six starts and one long relief appearance stand in contrast to Kershaw's struggles.

But maybe you've noticed, those struggles have continued in 2015, at least relative to Kershaw's previous four Cy Young seasons. He's halfway through his worst full season, with the lowest ERA+ (i.e., relative to league average) since his rookie campaign.

Would you like to guess why that is? Right: his home run rate has doubled. He's dominating batters in every other way just as he had the previous two seasons, but Mr. Big Fly has already visited him more times this season than all of last. That's led to more crossings of the plate than all of last year, which makes him look a lot more human.

So here's the big reveal: Clayton Kershaw didn't become a different pitcher in last year's playoffs. He started to become a different pitcher then and has continued that way this season. Despite his pinpoint control and knee-buckling curve, he's lost that patina of invincibility, either because he's doing something different or because batters have adjusted in some small way to him. He's still an ace, an All-Star, a Cy Young candidate, but he's not the undisputed best in the game, at least not now.

So, there goes the idiotic narrative -- based on two starts! -- that Clayton Kershaw is a great regular season pitcher, but not the guy you'd want in a big game. 

Where Are the All-Time Greats?

A recent spate of Hall of Fame retirements has transformed today's Major Leagues from a repository of the enshrined to a roster of stars whose exact composition is a mystery. Players who are Hall of Fame locks right now number three: Albert Pujols, Ichiro Suzuki and Miguel Cabrera.

Compare that to 10 years ago when Alex Rodriguez could have cruised into Cooperstown with hardly a dissenter. Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza, Derek Jeter, Sammy Sosa, Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Thomas, Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman, Mike Mussina, Kurt Schilling, Greg Madduz, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine were all dancing their waltzes into baseball history.

Purely on the merits, of course, ARod is a no doubter, just as Bonds and Clemens were. The forecast for any of them seeing their bust carved is partly dubious with a chance of impossible. Illicit performance boosting may also work against the borderline case of David Ortiz. Infielders Chase Utley and Adrian Beltre have to rate as probably nots, barring late career second acts (or third acts in Beltre's case.) Carlos Beltran's candidacy depends on how much voters have evolved to appreciate all-around skills, and then which way their coins toss.

Of course, there are some mid-career probablies out there. You have to like Buster Posey's chances, particularly if he can remain behind the plate. On top of his lifetime .300+ batting average, he owns a Rookie of the Year, an MVP and three World Championships. In his sixth season, at age 28, Posey is at it again, posting a .314 TAv.

Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Andrew McCutchen, Giancarlo Stanton, Felix Hernandez, Clayton Kershaw and Craig Kimbrel are on promising trajectories as well, though Kimbrel has been lit up in 16 innings this year and Kershaw's powers seemed to have disappeared, Samson-style, with the loss of his hair, in his case facial. Those last three names illuminate how wanting the Majors are today in pitching greatness. The top active hurling careers belong to Mark Buehrle, Tim Hudson, Adam Wainright, Chris Carpenter and Joe Nathan, fine moundsmen all, but hardly bronze material.  Other than King Felix, there will not be a single legitimate pitching candidate for a decade or so after the current backlog clears out.

Then there is Yadier Molina, who needs to keep hitting in the sunset years of his career to be considered this generation's Ivan Rodriguez. Twenty-nine-year-old Evan Longoria has a shot if he returns to the form of his first five full seasons. Joey Votto would have to maintain that consistent excellence for another decade to earn Hall stripes.  And we can always dream on the second and third-year players like Puig, Cespedes, Harvey, Abreu and their ilk. But potential outnumbers fruition by a healthy margin.

Experience tells us that a couple of those named will slide off the list, just as Nomar Garciaparra, Tim Lincecum and Joe Mauer did. And others will climb on, following a path paved by Paul Molitor and Sandy Koufax, to name two. Still, it's likely that the ballot clogging now vexing Hall of Fame voting will not be an issue a decade or two from now.

Exalting A Streak Over A Season of Greatness

News item: Madison Bumgarner named Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year

It's a cliche that baseball is a marathon: it begins with the first stirrings of spring when hope has a heartbeat in every city. It runs through the blooming of flowers, then the dog days of summer and into the changing leaves of Fall. In this long race patience is a virtue and trends earn coherence only over the long haul.

So why do we ignore all but the final 100 yards?

Madison Bumgarner rewrote the history books in the post-season, leading the Giants almost single-handedly to the World Series crown. His 4-1, 1.21 performance over 58 frames of playoffs, with two shutouts and a five-inning save on two days' rest was sparkling and unprecedented. He won the World Series with 21 innings at an 0.43 ERA and 17-1 K/BB ratio.

For this dominance he was rightly rewarded with the MVP of both the league championship series and the World Series. No one could credibly dispute either.

And Bumgarner was no 1972 Gene Tenace or 1969 Al Weiss. At age 24 and already in his fourth full season, MadBum went 18-11, 2.98 in 217 innings, with a 5.1 K/BB ratio en route to a fourth place finish in the Cy Young voting.

In other words, Madison Bumgarner is a bonafide star who had pitched out of his mind in the playoffs. But sportsman of the year? He was fourth in Cy Young voting.

Allow me to introduce you to The Claw, whose entire season looked like Bumgarner's final 58 innings. Clayton Kershaw missed six starts in the first weeks of 2014 and still managed to unravel the record books. He terrorized NL batters to the tune of 21-3, 1.77 and a 7.7 K/BB ratio, earning him the Cy and the MVP. Kershaw's value, despite a lost month, was twice Bumgarner's during the regular season.

It's true that Kershaw blew up in his post-season starts. Maybe he can't handle cold weather; maybe opponents figured him out and maybe he's a sissy-ass choker who can't handle the pressure. Or maybe he just endured a four-game skid, as every other pitcher in baseball has done. Thirty-five frames of work aren't sufficient information to draw conclusions. 

But one thing is for sure. Madison Bumgarner, great as he is, couldn't pack Clayton Kershaw's lunch. In their careers, Kershaw owns three Cy Youngs and a second place finish. Fourth is Bumgarner's peak so far. Kershaw owns a 2.48 lifetime ERA; Bumgarner, 3.06 in 420 fewer innings. Kershaw has posted 41 wins against replacement to MadBum's 17. Etc. etc. etc.

Naming Bumgarner Sportsman of the Year exalts his final seven starts (including 21 innings against the light-hitting Royals) over Kershaw's full body of work, which was not just superior but vastly so. The tournament that follows the season may decide who gets to call themselves "champion," but it doesn't determine who's best.

Clayton Kershaw was the transcendent star of baseball in 2014. If Madison Bumgarner was second he was light years behind, making him a terrible choice for that award.

Let's Hear It for the Sister Kisser

It's difficult to talk NL pitching without meandering back to the subject of Clayton Kershaw, the most fearsome pitcher since Pedro Martinez. His 18-3, 1.67 performance this year is cartoonish, as is his 7.78 K/BB ratio, his .82 WHIP and his 7.4 wins against replacement despite missing the first month of the season because of injury and the last month of the season because of time travel restrictions. (That last item should be solved soon, notwithstanding Armageddon.)

Sporting his patented* knee-buckling hook, a paralyzing slider and a fastball with bite, Kershaw is 95-49, 2.48 for his career, producing more value in seven campaigns (about 40 wins) than Catfish Hunter in 15 Hall of Fame seasons. Kershaw will almost certainly win his third Cy Young in four years, a second-place finish in 2012 marring the record.

*It may not actually be patented. I'm not his lawyer. Patent may be pending.

But enough about the likely league MVP. Let's turn our gaze to the largely-forgotten sister-kisser who should finish second. 

At home in Great American Smallpark, Johnny Cueto's 18-8, 2.15 this season is noteworthy. In a hefty 222 innings he's shouldered four complete games and fanned four times as many as he's walked. His six-and-a-half wins against replacement would make Cy Young proud, had the stars not aligned to create Kershaw.
It's not like Cueto is a flash-in-the-pan. He's averaged 4.5 wins against replacement over those four years -- about the same as Max Scherzer -- despite missing most of 2012. He throws strikes, clamps down the running game, keeps the ball in the park and goes deep into games. And he's just 28.

Cueto and Adam Wainwright (18-9, 2.54) have been lost in Kershaw's shadow in 2014 but they deserve some recognition. They're both dominant hurlers in the full bloom of their talent whose careers, unfortunately for them, have coincided with the dominant mound force of their generation.

Is A Perfect Game Just Lucky?

Here's another entry from the Things We've Learned from Sabermetrics file:

No-hitters are just lucky three-hitters, and might not even be very well-pitched games.

In fact, as documented in this space, several recent whitewashings have underwhelmed. When the starter allows seven walks and a hit-by-pitch, fans just three, requires a fence-defying grab by an outfielder and enjoys an unearned strike call on a 3-2 count with the bases loaded, there's nothing to celebrate.

That's why Clayton Kershaw's essentially perfect game last night (his shortstop threw away an easy out) in an 8-0 shellacking of Colorado absolutely sparkled. There's not a ton of luck involved when the pitcher dispatches 15 batters without involving his defense. Last year's NL Cy Young Award winner employed such a filthy curveball and slider that the Rockies were able to produce only meek grounders for the majority of the remaining 12 outs.

In fact, basically any 0-walk, 15-strikeout game is a gem. Any hurler who can flummox the opposition so thoroughly is almost certainly allowing only fortunate singles. No one ever dominates the other team so profoundly while allowing six extra base hits.

Bill James's Game Score metric rates Kershaw's perfecto the second-best pitching performance in a nine-inning game ever, behind Kerry Wood's one-hit, 0-walk, 20-strikeout mindbender in May of 1998. (To make Wood's accomplishment even more amazing, he delivered it in just his fifth career start at age 20 against an excellent Astros team and received just two runs of support from the Cubs.)

Second best ever? Yeah, that sounds like Clayton Kershaw.

. . . And Now the NL Cy Young

When I was a college student, my school announced that they would be bringing concerts onto campus. Not the top names, like Bruce Springsteen and the Grateful Dead, but second-tier acts.

In my mind, that meant The Police and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. Because as an American, I was a hopeless front-runner. If you weren't number one, why even bother?

In fact, the school was booking bands that were not played regularly on the radio and did not sell out arenas. Second-tier meant bands that had to tour to earn a living. The Michael Stanley Band. John Hiatt. Nazareth. I couldn't believe that they actually wanted to charge us to see these no-accounts.

We're the same way with sports. If Johnny Cueto isn't the best pitcher in the National League, doesn't lead the league in wins or winning percentage or ERA or complete games or quality starts or innings pitched or VORP or strikeouts -- well, how well could he have pitched?

The answer is: remarkably well. Johnny Cueto is a candidate for the NL Cy Young. He's not the best candidate, but he threw 217 innings of 2.78 ERA ball, fanned three-and-a-half times as many batters as he walked and provided the Cincinnati Reds with 23 quality starts. Do that for 10 years as they start carving bronze of your likeness in Upstate New York.

There are quite a few pitchers, as it turns out, who fall into this same category. Cole Hamels struck out 216 batters in 215 frames and posted a 3.05 ERA in the run factory in Philadelphia. Gio Gonzalez won 21 games with a 2.89 ERA and whiffed 207 batters in 199 innings. Stephen Strasburg might have been the best pitcher in the NL until the Nats shut him down with more than a month to go.  Matt Cain served as ace for the World Champs, going 16-5, 2.79 while Adam Wainwright gave another great performance, 20-11, 2.42.

But this post isn't about those gentlemen, fearsome they may be when standing 60.5 feet away. This is about the top act, the number one best pitcher in the National League. The two hurlers who will battle for that distinction are Clayton Kershaw and R.A. Dickey. A pair as different as Abbot and Costello. The young fireballer against the veteran knuckleballer. The suddenly-flush Dodgers against the cash-strapped Mets. The phenom versus the phenomenon.

But Kershaw and Dickey do have two important things in common. Both pitch in stadiums designed for pitching stats and both made hitters mutter this season.

Kershaw's peformance looks like this: 
14-9, 2.53 in 228 innings and 25 quality starts. He struck out a batter an inning with a 3.63 K/BB ratio.

Dickey was even better:
20-6, 2.73 in 234 innings and 27 quality starts. He struck out not quite a batter an innings with a 4.26 K/BB ratio.

In fact, although Kershaw posted the league's lowest ERA, Dickey is first in innings, strikeouts, K/BB ratio, complete games, and quality starts among top Cy Young candidates. He also throws that groovy speed-knuckler and offers sportswriters the best opportunity to write about perseverance and redemption, and to weave a heart-tugging tale in which the good guy finishes first, Durocher be damned.

You could certainly make a case for Kershaw and for several others as well. But Dickey is the best choice not only because we want him to be, but also because while Kershaw logged two-thirds of his innings in the Ravine and performed significantly less brilliantly away from home, Dickey proved he was not a Citi Field Phenomenon. At 10-3, 2.90 with a better K/BB record on the road, Dickey was the best pitcher in the NL no matter where he performed.

Meet the New Best Pitcher. Same As the Old Best Pitcher

In season previews, I've heard/read several allusions to either Justin Verlander or Clayton Kershaw as the best pitcher in baseball.

Please. If a Cy Young makes a pitcher the best in the game, someone explain Randy Jones and Pete Vukovich.

The world's best hurler is not a flamethrower who combusted to a 4.84 ERA three years back.

He's not a hot young southpaw with three years of service in a hitting suppressant park.

The best pitcher in the game doesn't change from year to year. He was the best in the game five years ago and three years ago and still today at 34.

The Majors' best hurler is the essence of consistency who, since 2002, has gone 169-74, 3.19 with a 4-1 K/BB ratio, most of it in the toughest division in baseball.

It's Roy Halladay, and it will be until he relinquishes the crown.  

Now that's no knock on Verlander or Kershaw, either of whom could be ordering a bronze sculpture by the time he hangs up his spikes. Since his faceplant in '08, Verlander has delivered 53-23, 3.07, leading the AL in innings twice and strikeouts twice. He's an inner-orbit star on the mound and certainly one of the five best in his field right now. But a longer resume is required to be king, or Dexy's Midnight Runners would be in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

Kershaw's 2.88 ERA over his first 116 starts is head-turning even in Dodger Stadium, but it's no guarantee of future greatness. Let's see him wear the crown awhile before we starting warming up the anointing oil.

By the way, of the five Hall of Fame projection models, Halladay wins election right now in two of them and he's one good year away in the other three. And that doesn't include his season-openging gem against the Pirates of eight-inning, two-hit shutout ball.

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