Kuzul

A New York Mets starting rotation that was supposed to be the mightiest force on this or any other planet has become battered, broken and badly in need of a hero.

Enter Thor.

Noah Syndergaard was not the biggest difference-maker in the Mets’ 4-3 victory over the Washington Nationals on Tuesday. That honor belongs to T.J. Rivera, whose first career home run was a go-ahead shot in the top of the 10th inning that erased Jeurys Familia’s blown save.

But none of that could have happened had Syndergaard not first led the way in arguably his most dominant start of the second half. He lasted seven innings, giving up just one earned run on four hits and a walk. He struck out 10, pushing his total for the season to 205.

So it goes for the fire-balling right-hander. Syndergaard now has a 2.43 ERA in 174 innings, and that ERA is trending down in a hurry.

His ERA in his five most recent starts is 1.06. And that comes with 34 strikeouts in 34 innings to boot.

Let’s acknowledge this for what it is: pretty much the only piece of good news the Mets have gotten about their starting rotation in recent days.

Matt Harvey has long since been felled by injury. Jacob deGrom and Steven Matz are more recent victims of the injury bug. Those two could probably use more time to recover, but Rafael Montero’s ouster from the rotation is forcing Terry Collins’ hand. The manager’s considering bringing back both deGrom and Matz to “piggyback” in the same game on Sunday.

“If things are moving forward,” Collins said (via Anthony DiComo of MLB.com), “then we’ve certainly got to take a look at it.”

Meanwhile, the numbers are about as ugly as you’d expect. The Mets have used eight different starters in the last month. Syndergaard has pitched well. The other seven have a 4.46 ERA.

The silver lining is that the Mets keep finding ways to win. Their defeat of the Nationals on Tuesday was their eighth win in their last 10 games and their 17th in their last 23 games. They hold a half-game lead over the St. Louis Cardinals for the National League‘s second wild-card spot.

Among the many reasons for this is that Syndergaard has been a much-needed rock when his turn comes up every five days. He’s done so stealthily, as Tuesday was his first double-digit strikeout game since June 15. But with that now in the bag, there’s no escaping the sense he’s getting back to being the overwhelming force of nature that had everyone’s attention earlier this season.

The road in between was bumpy. Syndergaard battled a dead arm and elbow trouble in the middle of the summer. Per Brooks Baseball, his velocity responded accordingly with a slight dip in July. He had a seven-start stretch between early July and mid-August in which he didn’t pitch more than six innings.

But things are different now. After drifting upward, Syndergaard’s release point is closer to where it was earlier in the year. And the adjustment process is ongoing.

“I made a slight adjustment in my mechanics the other day that allowed me to get over my front foot quite a bit easier,” Syndergaard said after Tuesday’s game (via ESPN.com’s Adam Rubin). “So I had quite a bit of extra late life on my two-seamer.”

Speaking of that two-seamer, Syndergaard has dusted it off in September:

This is not including Syndergaard’s effort against the Nationals on Tuesday, but the raw PITCHf/x data shows he once again threw his two-seamer in equal tandem with his four-seamer.

It’s not surprising Syndergaard is heating up again as he’s bringing his two-seamer back into the fold. His four-seamer is an outstanding pitch in its own right, sitting in the high 90 mph range with some nifty vertical action, according to Baseball Prospectus. But it serves him best on the glove side of the zone. To work the other edge, he needs his two-seamer.

So, this is the Syndergaard hitters are seeing now: He’s more mechanically comfortable and can work both sides of the plate with high-90s heat. That’s enough for them to worry about, and that’s before they can think about the slider, curveball and changeup that have done the heavy lifting for his strikeout rate (10.6 per nine innings).

This has helped Syndergaard forge an overpowering six-start stretch, and the Mets’ schedule leaves room for three more. Considering the state of their rotation outside Syndergaard, these three starts may be the difference between going home and going back to October.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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When the Detroit Tigers gave Jordan Zimmermann a $110 million contract over the winter, they could have imagined his spearheading a charge into the postseason when September came around.

Now they must worry about whether he’ll contribute anything at all, and how many chips that stacks against them in an American League wild-card race that’s getting tighter by the day.

This kind of hand-wringing can’t be avoided after the loss Zimmermann and the Tigers endured at the hands of the Baltimore Orioles at Comerica Park on Saturday. Making his first start since Aug. 4 and only his second start since June 30, Zimmermann doomed the Tigers to an 11-3 defeat by collecting only three outs and surrendering six runs on four hits and three walks. Three of the hits left the park.

In other words, he was somehow even worse than he was in his last start back in early August. Zimmermann lasted only an inning and two-thirds in that one, giving up six runs on six hits and two walks to the Chicago White Sox. That’s a 49.09 ERA in his last two outings, a mark that makes only Allan Travers look good by comparison.

Zimmermann was obviously rusty in each of these starts. The veteran right-hander apparently wasn’t fully recovered from a nagging neck injury in the first one, as it put him right back on the disabled list afterward. He may not be fully recovered now, either.

“I have no expectations,” Tigers manager Brad Ausmus said beforehand, via Chris McCosky of the Detroit News. “I want him to pitch well, but he’s been hurt.”

This situation is similar to what the Los Angeles Dodgers are going through with Clayton Kershaw, save for one major difference. He at least showed good stuff in his return from a long DL stint Friday, so he only needs to find his command to reestablish himself as an ace in the coming weeks. Zimmermann showed neither of these key components Saturday.

“Zimmermann threw 42 pitches. He did not look particularly sharp, or crisp, on any of them,” Anthony Fenech of the Detroit Free Press wrote.

The data bears this out. Per Brooks Baseball, Zimmermann sat at 91.8 miles per hour with his fastball, thus continuing a downward trend that hit a nadir in his last outing:

To boot, Zimmermann threw most of his low-velo fastballs right down the heart of the plate. It’s a trend that predates even his last two stinkers. His usual hard-high, slow-low approach has been compromised.

Metrics like FIP and xFIP suggested Zimmermann was lucky to have started the season out with a 2.58 ERA through his first 10 starts. If he were due for a regression no matter what, all his neck woes did was hasten its arrival. Now it’s fair to wonder if this regression is permanent.

If nothing else, it’s a bummer the first year of the Tigers’ big investment would go into the books as a bust. It would be an even bigger bummer if not having a vintage Zimmermann for the stretch run proves to be the difference between the Tigers going to the postseason and them going home.

The latter would be their fate if the season ended today. At 76-65, the Tigers are six games behind the Cleveland Indians in the AL Central race and one game behind the Orioles for the AL’s second wild-card spot. Meanwhile, the New York Yankees are also 76-65 after winning their seventh in a row Saturday. The Houston Astros also won, putting them just a game-and-a-half behind Detroit and New York.

Point being: The Tigers aren’t going to be able to stumble into the postseason. The time is now.

According to Katie Strang of ESPN.com, Ausmus would not commit to starting Zimmermann again when asked after Saturday’s game. As Jason Beck covered at MLB.com, the choice is between sitting him or running him out there again so super-rookie Michael Fulmer can have extra rest. Either choice puts more pressure on Justin Verlander, Anibal Sanchez, Daniel Norris and Matt Boyd to get their jobs done. The only one that inspires real confidence is Verlander.

With their starting rotation not well set up for crunch time, the Tigers’ best hope is that they’ll be able to downplay their starting pitching question marks. And this is not a fool’s hope.

One thing they have is an offense that’s been clicking since a July slump, and which is due to get another weapon back when Nick Castellanos returns to the lineup. It’s easy to imagine a lineup with Castellanos, Miguel Cabrera, Victor Martinez, J.D. Martinez, Ian Kinsler and Justin Upton doing some damage.

The Tigers also have a semi-favorable schedule down the stretch. They’re due to play 12 of their final 21 games at home. They also have seven more games against the lowly Minnesota Twins, and they end the season with a trio of games at the lowly Atlanta Braves.

Compare that to what will be happening in the AL East in the next few weeks. The Orioles, Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox, who are just a game ahead of Toronto in the division race, are going to be beating up on each other. That could prevent any of the four from taking off.

What are the odds the Tigers make it? Pretty good, actually. FanGraphs gives them a 40.4 percent chance of earning a wild-card spot. That’s higher than the Orioles, Yankees and Astros have.

A tad optimistic, maybe. But also believable. As much as getting Zimmermann back at full strength would have helped the Tigers, not having him hasn’t slowed them down in the last two months. While their rotation is in a modest state of disarray with him in its plans, at least the Tigers don’t need to risk letting him drag them down.

There are no promises to make. Not in this year’s AL wild-card race. No, sir. But for a team that’s not getting an ace it paid for, the Tigers could be in a worse spot.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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There was neither a red carpet nor a flourish of trumpets at Marlins Park on Friday night, but there might as well have been. For the mighty Clayton Kershaw had returned.     

… For three innings.

Out since June 26 with a bad back, the Los Angeles Dodgers ace was going to have a tight pitch count no matter what. The Marlins’ tough at-bats hastened the speed with which he racked ’em up, so he was done after throwing 66 pitches and allowing two runs on five hits. The Dodgers mustered just three hits of their own against Jose Fernandez, who struck out 14 in seven innings, before going down 4-1.

So, yeah. It wasn’t a prodigal-son-level return for Kershaw. But then, that’s what any rational person would have been prepared for after such a long layoff. It’s what Dodgers manager Dave Roberts and pitching coach Rick Honeycutt expected.

“Rick pointed out to expect him to be in midseason form is unfair,” Roberts said, per Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register. “We all know Clayton is going to expect himself to be dialed in. We’ll see. I think we all hope for the best and expect to see a lot of good things from Clayton. But I think the most important thing, the most encouraging thing is to make sure he gets out of the start feeling well.”

There are positive takeaways from the left-hander’s oh-so-brief return. After Jon Heyman of Today’s Knuckleball reported Thursday that Kershaw is still “pretty banged up,” the biggest is that his back didn’t break down. He didn’t look like he was struggling physically, and he walked away unharmed when he had to make a tough play on a swinging bunt by Christian Yelich in the third inning.

And right out of the gate, Kershaw showed that the long layoff hadn’t robbed him of any electricity. Mike Petriello of MLB.com noted he came out spinning some A-OK heat:

Kershaw also featured some good breaking balls, and he wasn’t wild, having 46 strikes out of 66 pitches. With five strikeouts and no walks Friday, he has 150 strikeouts to just nine walks all season. The two runs he allowed only pushed his ERA to 1.89. On balance, his 2016 season is still worth gawking at.

It’s not going to have a happy ending unless he and the Dodgers go out on a high note, though. And that’s not happening unless Kershaw fixes the ills that plagued him against Miami.

Kershaw may have been throwing strikes, but his three-inning stint is a case study for the difference between throwing strikes and throwing good strikes. He had trouble hitting catcher Yasmani Grandal’s targets with his fastball. Considering he was throwing a career-high 63.1 percent of his fastballs in the strike zone before Friday, it’s not like Kershaw had this problem before he got hurt.

His breaking stuff, meanwhile, was a mixed bag. Here’s Andy McCullough of the Los Angeles Times:

Those bad breakers included two the Marlins whacked for run-scoring hits: a solo home run off a hanging slider by J.T. Realmuto and an RBI single off a hanging curveball by Chris Johnson.

In so many words: Kershaw looked partially like himself and partially like he had some rust.

I know—I’m also wearing my surprised face. His three National League Cy Youngs, his MVP and his numerous statistical achievements make Kershaw a pitching god among his peers, but a little over two months is a long time to spend on the disabled list. He made just one rehab start that lasted three innings and 34 pitches prior to his major league return, which should count as his second rehab start despite the hype.

The Dodgers can be cool for now. They have 22 regular-season games remaining, giving Kershaw space for up to four more starts. That could give him enough time to build up his stamina and find his bearings.

L.A. holds a 4.5-game lead (as of this writing) in the NL West that the San Francisco Giants seem incapable of erasing, so he could be back to his usual self in time for the National League Division Series.

It’ll be time to worry if/when Kershaw isn’t up to speed for October. Maybe his back will give out again. Maybe he won’t be able to get back in a groove. Or maybe both. One way or the other, it wouldn’t be good.

No one doubts the Dodgers can muster up some hits. With runs typically at a premium in October, though, they’re not going to go far unless they can pitch. It won’t be easy to do that without Kershaw. His absence would up the pressure on Kenta Maeda and Rich Hill. That’s not to mention L.A.’s bullpen, which went from a league-leading 2.83 ERA in the first half of the season to a 4.11 ERA in the second half.

Things would look different with a healthy and operational Kershaw in the Dodgers’ plans for the postseason. Cliff Corcoran for USA Today noted how well a trio of Kershaw, Maeda and Hill would match up against the Washington Nationals, who just lost Stephen Strasburg to injury indefinitely. That would give the Dodgers the chance to start off on the right foot.

And while having Kershaw in the rotation wouldn’t fix the Dodgers’ bullpen, it would shorten the bridge to Kenley Jansen on days he pitches. That plus their surging offense could allow for a deep trip into October.

However, Kershaw’s thud-like return to action is a reminder that all of this is theoretical until he shakes off the rust. The Dodgers didn’t need him to be his best right out of the gate, but they need him to get better as soon as he can.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Time waits for no man. It’s mean like that. It’s even meaner to baseball players, systematically robbing them of their skills as they drift further from their youth.

Except for Adrian Beltre, who’s playing like he’s 37 going on 27.

It feels like Beltre has been lost in the shuffle in the Texas Rangers‘ rise to the top of the American League in 2016, but he’s been creeping back into the spotlight since the All-Star break. The creeping continued in a 12-4 thumping of the Houston Astros on Saturday at Globe Life Park in Arlington, Texas. Beltre pitched in three hits, including his 439th career home run.

So it goes for Beltre in the second half. He was just OK in the first half, hitting .281 with a .778 OPS and 12 homers. But since the break, he’s hit .311 with a .985 OPS and 14 homers. The veteran third baseman has been among the American League’s top hitters.

Just like that, a season that once seemed ticketed for mediocrity is now looking a lot like the other five seasons Beltre’s given the Rangers since he arrived in 2011. He averaged an .872 OPS and 27 homers in the first five. He now has an .852 OPS and 26 homers in 2016.

It would’ve been understandable if Beltre had never gotten to this point. After all, his modest first half came on the heels of a modest age-36 season last year, in which he OPS’d just .788 with 18 homers.

Plus, we know what the usual aging curves say about the progression of offensive skills over time. Per research offered by Jeff Zimmerman at Beyond the Box Score in 2011, hitters normally peak in their mid-to-late 20s and are well below their peaks by the time they hit their late 30s. By all rights, Beltre should be an Albert Pujols-like shell of his former self.

But he’s not. And it’s not as if we’re watching a guy who’s gotten hot because he’s getting little dinkers and duck snorts to fall in.

Compared to the first half, Beltre’s second half has seen him improve an already strong contact habit and make better contact through a higher launch angle and more exit velocity (per Baseball Savant):

This is number-y nerdspeak for stating the obvious: Beltre is locked in.

He usually is in the second half. He has a career .857 OPS after the break, compared to .783 before the break. More specifically, he’s at his best in August and September. 

“I think he is a player who smells the playoffs,” Rangers manager Jeff Banister told Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News. “The desire to win and advance is what he plays for. Playoff races and opportunities sharpen great players and heighten their drive. That’s why you see great players do great things at big moments.”

Another thing that’s not out of the ordinary is the excellent glovework Beltre is providing at the hot corner. Defensive runs saved and ultimate zone rating both rate him as one of baseball’s elite defensive third basemen. Since these metrics are now taken into account in the voting, it’s possible his Gold Glove collection will grow from four to five this winter.

It’s unlikely any of this will garner Beltre American League MVP attention. Nonetheless, it shouldn’t be lost on what he means to the Rangers. They wouldn’t be much worse than their 82-54 record without him, but wins above replacement confirms he’s been by far their best everyday player:

1. Adrian Beltre: 4.9
2. Ian Desmond: 3.1
3. Rougned Odor: 2.2

From where he is now, Beltre is a lock for another 5-WAR season. That would give him 10 of those since 2004, more than any other player.

To boot, seven of these 10 seasons will have come since Beltre’s age-31 season in 2010. Aging curves and rational logic insist that’s not supposed to happen, and it’s not like third basemen have a history of being exempt from the rule. Once Beltre crosses the 5-WAR threshold this season, he’ll become the only third baseman in history to collect as many as seven such seasons past the age of 31.

This will be just the latest feather in the cap of a career that will merit consideration for not just induction into the Hall of Fame, but also induction on Beltre’s first ballot when his time comes. Cooperstown is picky with third basemen, but WAR rates him has one of the five best to ever play the hot corner.

The one thing missing from Beltre’s career is a World Series ring. He came close to winning one in 2011, hitting .300 with an .889 OPS in a World Series the Rangers (famously) lost in seven games. He’s played in only four postseason games since then, including three in last year’s American League Division Series against the Toronto Blue Jays in which he was badly beaten up.

But now, Beltre’s red-hot bat is just another reason to like the Rangers’ chances of getting it done this season. He’s part of a deep lineup that can do it all. Cole Hamels and Yu Darvish are a deadly one-two punch in the Rangers’ starting rotation. In their bullpen is a parade of hard-throwers no team will want to face in October.

Beltre will need to defy age for a couple of more months to see the Rangers’ quest through to the end. But hey, since he’s already made it this far…

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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When the injury bug ambushed and carried off Giancarlo Stanton in mid-August, the Miami Marlins lost a power source that still hasn’t been replaced.

But give it up to Christian Yelich for giving it his best shot.

The slender left fielder isn’t known for his power, but he’s changing that more and more with each day. He clubbed seven home runs in August, or as many as he hit in 2015. And on the first day of September, one of his three hits in a 6-4 win over the New York Mets was a three-run job that just cleared the left field fence at Citi Field.

That was Yelich’s third home run in as many days, and he is now hitting .310 with 18 dingers. His previous career high was nine. According to math, he’s doubled that. According to logic, that’s good.

Yelich’s latest helped the Marlins snap a five-game losing streak and climb to within three games of the National League‘s second wild-card spot. But while that’s worthy of lip service, the Marlins’ postseason chances are teetering on the edge of not even being worthy of discussion. They’re 11-18 since August 1 and aren’t in good shape for the stretch run.

But if they ultimately take anything away from a disappointing finish to 2016, it could be that they got to watch Yelich begin his transition from underrated star to legitimate superstar.

We’ve known for years that Yelich can rake. He was a .311 hitter in the minors and a .290 hitter in the majors heading into 2016. He also ran the bases well and played Gold Glove-caliber defense, earning WAR’s approval despite the fact he had just 20 career homers at the end of 2015. You could rub your palms together and say, “If only he had some power…”

That didn’t seem likely to come true, however. As MLB.com’s Andrew Simon illustrated, Yelich was established as a unique (read: “pretty darn weird”) hitter by last season:

Hard contact is, indeed, a good thing, and 2015 was just the latest year in which Yelich made plenty of it. He didn’t even have his highest hard-hit rate, yet he still managed to land in the top 25 in Baseball Savant’s average exit velocity leaderboard at 92.0 miles per hour.

But hard contact alone does not power make. Launch angle is another key ingredient. The higher the launch angle, the more balls in the air, and the more balls to find the gaps or go over the fence. Yelich’s average launch angle in 2015 was 0.7 degrees, pretty close to zero and my making a lame crack about his not even having a launch angle.

Yelich’s aversion to launch angle before 2016 created the highest ratio of ground balls to fly balls of any hitter in the majors. As a sort of bonus, he also had one of the lowest pull rates of any hitter.

The CliffsNotes: Yelich was showing he could barrel the ball well enough to hit for power, but his entire approach was about as far removed from a power hitter’s as you could imagine. 

Obviously, things have changed in 2016. According to the man himself, the adjustment he’s made in working with Marlins hitting coaches Frank Menechino and Barry Bonds (himself a fairly accomplished power hitter) has been a mental one.

“We worked on some stuff in [the cage], I liked it and got a feel for it,” the 24-year-old told Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald. “The stance and the mechanics are the same. I’ve kept the same approach. It was more of a thought process that helped.”

Mental adjustments are more difficult to turn into hard evidence, but a few things stand out.

Thing 1: Yelich is getting under more balls, posting an average launch angle of 2.0 degrees that’s led to the lowest ground-ball-to-fly-ball ratio of his career.

Thing 2: He’s been pulling the ball more, entering Thursday with a career-high 35.1 pull percentage. 

Thing 3: Yelich hasn’t needed his newfound pull habit to hit for power, slugging .417 on pitches on and off the outside edge of the strike zone. He had never done better than .320 before. Not surprisingly, the key has been driving the ball to left field.

In addition to trying new things, Yelich has made his quietly good raw power downright elite. He’s averaging 96.8 mph on his fly balls and line drives. That’s 0.1 mph south of Miguel Cabrera, who is literally Miguel Cabrera.

Apologies for the ongoing number barrage, but the last one we need to look at is one that relates back to that half-baked thought about what Yelich could be with more power. Per Baseball-Reference.com’s WAR, it turns out Yelich with power is arguably the best left fielder in baseball:

1. Christian Yelich: 4.8
2. Starling Marte: 4.5
3. Ryan Braun: 3.9

It makes sense. Left field isn’t a big superstar position. And considering that he can now run, field, hit and hit for power, Yelich is making a darn strong case to be called a superstar.

It’s probably too late for this to mean anything for a Marlins team that has too little. But Yelich isn’t going anywhere, and Miami is entitled to the warm thought that this is just the beginning.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Yoenis Cespedes is just one guy on a 25-man roster, and he’s still feeling a quadriceps injury that put him on the disabled list Aug. 4. It’s not fair to expect him to carry the New York Mets to October.

But darn it, he’s going to try.

This has been apparent for the week-and-a-half that Cespedes has been off the DL, as he’s come back with his bat ablaze. In Monday’s 2-1 win over the Miami Marlins, a key foe in the National League wild-card race, Cespedes played the hero at Citi Field by slamming a walk-off home run in the 10th inning.

It was a classic Cespedes dinger, so the thing to do is drop your jaw now so as not to be caught off guard by how hard the ball was hit and how far it flew:

With that, Cespedes delivered the Mets’ seventh win in nine games. Their 67-64 record is tied with the Marlins at two-and-a-half games off the pace for the NL’s second wild card. They haven’t won anything yet, but this will do for a sign of life from a club that was under .500 as recently as Aug. 20.

Cue manager Terry Collins with the on-the-nose quote, as he told Anthony DiComo of MLB.com after the game: “Cespedes is one of those guys that people pay to see him play. He’s a special guy.”

More to the point, Cespedes is a special guy New York is paying $27.5 million precisely so he can do things like this. And he’s delivered. With a .949 OPS and 27 home runs, he’s just as good as he was in his 57 games (.942 OPS, 17 home runs) with the Mets last season.

And just as that stretch helped propel them to their first postseason since 2006, the veteran left fielder seems to be trying to do it all over again. After going a quiet 1-for-4 in his first game off the DL in San Francisco on Aug. 19, Cespedes has hit .406 with five home runs in eight games since.

These numbers don’t misrepresent how well he’s swinging the stick. We’re comparing a big sample size to a small one, but it is in the interest of what-the-heckery that we’ll turn to Baseball Savant for a look at Cespedes’ exit velocity before and after his DL stint:

• Before: 92.9 mph
• After: 96.2 mph

Put another way, Cespedes is on an exit-velocity binge that would make even Nelson Cruz or Giancarlo Stanton blush. To boot, that bolded figure doesn’t even include the rocket he hit to walk it off Monday night. That’ll only increase it, as Cespedes mashed that ball at roughly the speed of sound.

It’s all good for now, but the specter of the Mets plummeting back to mediocrity can’t be ignored. Things are set up to lean one way or another: Either Cespedes’ broad shoulders can bear the weight of the team, or the injury bug will swallow him and the rest of the squad whole.

The latter is a Godzilla-level clear and present danger. Cespedes is part of a lineup that won’t get David Wright or Lucas Duda back, and it’s also feeling nagging injuries to Asdrubal Cabrera and Neil Walker. Cespedes is among the walking wounded, as concern over his tender quad led Collins to sit him Sunday, when the Mets lost to the Philadelphia Phillies.

“Any time you have the expanded rosters, it helps you, it protects you, because you’re banged up,” Collins said, per DiComo. “But let me tell you something: If Yoenis Cespedes goes down, that’s an awful lot to ask for Brandon Nimmo or Michael Conforto to make up for him. If you don’t have your good players, your best players, and they don’t play good, it’s tough to replace them.”

Monday’s game offered a hint that Cespedes’ quad may render him just as likely to taketh away as giveth. The one run the Marlins scored came on a Xavier Scruggs double that Cespedes was unable to catch up with.

If Cespedes’ defense is compromised, that’s yet another hit to the Mets’ run prevention. With Matt Harvey gone for the season, Jon Niese on the DL and Steven Matz still working his way back from a shoulder problem, a once-heralded pitching staff has grown thin. Hence its 4.69 ERA in August.

So far, though, Cespedes’ hot bat is having a larger impact than his potentially compromised glove. And looking ahead, the Mets aren’t exactly tasked with tracking down the 1927 New York Yankees or, for that matter, the 2016 Chicago Cubs.

As expected, the struggle has been real for the Stanton-less Marlins. The Pittsburgh Pirates, who were a game-and-a-half ahead of the Mets as of this writing, are hot, but they’re facing depth issues reminiscent of what’s going on in Queens, New York. Leading the charge in the NL wild-card race are the San Francisco Giants, who have been terrible since the All-Star break, and the St. Louis Cardinals, who are seemingly immune to any kind of consistency.

This is a winnable race for any of the teams involved. And while it’s not the same as saying it’s the favorite in the bunch, any team with a hot Cespedes is a team with a chance.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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We’ve talked plenty about David Ortiz, for reasons that amount to “duh.” We’ve talked about Mookie Betts, who’s an MVP candidate. We’ve had good things to say about Xander Bogaerts and Jackie Bradley Jr., too. And about the entire Boston Red Sox offense, for that matter.

But Dustin Pedroia is the one Red Sox star we really haven’t singled out yet. Let’s change that.

It’s the least we can do after the veteran second baseman came this close to making a bit of baseball history at Fenway Park on Saturday. Pedroia entered the Red Sox’s evening tilt against the Kansas City Royals with seven straight hits dating back to Thursday, and he added four more in his first four at-bats of an eventual 8-3 win. 

If Pedroia could have added one more hit, he would tie the all-time record for consecutive hits. That was not to be. He ended his hit streak (and his evening) by grounding into a double play in the bottom of the eighth.

But judging from how he heard that he was closing in on history, he’s probably not too shaken up about it. From Brian MacPherson of the Providence Journal:

OK, so, Pedroia doesn’t hold a record that’s somewhere below 762 home runs and 511 wins on the scale of baseball importance. Boo and/or hoo.

What he does have, though, is a .320 batting average. That ties Pedroia with Betts for tops on the Red Sox, and it puts him behind only Jose Altuve in the entire American League. That’s pretty good company, and it can’t just be me that feels like Pedroia has joined these ranks out of nowhere.

It’s not that he’s been a bad player. Pedroia undeniably peaked with his American League MVP season in 2008, a year in which he was every kind of great. But he’s been consistently good ever since then. Despite a fair number of games missed with injuries, he put up a .294 average and an .803 OPS between 2009 and 2015, adding three more Gold Gloves to his collection in the process. And this year, he’s been a rock-solid presence in an outstanding Red Sox lineup from day one.

Rather, Pedroia‘s under-the-radar act to this point is more a matter of optics. 

He’s surrounded by players who boast both great numbers and great narratives. Big Papi is a larger-than-life character in any year, and he’s making life look especially puny with a farewell season for the ages. Meanwhile, Betts, Bogaerts, Bradley and, recently, Andrew Benintendi have been cementing themselves as the Red Sox’s stars of the future.

Pedroia is neither a legendary slugger in his final season nor a young up-and-comer gearing up for many great seasons still to come. He’s just…well, he’s kinda just Dustin Pedroia. Same as he ever was.

But while it may indeed be difficult to appreciate Pedroia as a story unto himself, it’s as easy as ever to appreciate him as a player.

If nothing else, the fact that he’s been healthy throughout 2016 has allowed him to be his usual self on an everyday basis. That’s been rare in recent years. However, you don’t go from being a .290-ish hitter to a .320 hitter without at least one new trick. Pedroia knew what his was going to be before 2016 even started.

“He told me, ‘I’m going to use the whole field this year. I’m going to be a better hitter this year,'” Red Sox hitting coach Chili Davis told John Tomase of WEEI.com, referencing an offseason conversation. “And he stuck with it in practice. He stuck with it in spring training. And he’s sticking with it now.”

The proof is in Pedroia‘s opposite-field hit rate. FanGraphs had it at 32.9 percent heading into Saturday, the highest of his career. Because visual aids are fun, this leads us to a pretty-looking spray chart from Brooks Baseball:

Matt Collins of Baseball Prospectus posited this could be related to how Pedroia has changed his approach against breaking balls. It’s a fine theory, as Pedroia has indeed been hitting more breaking balls the other way.

These aren’t earth-shattering changes, but they’re really all Pedroia needed to go from being a good hitter back to being a great hitter. He could already work pitchers, posting above-average walk rates and below-average strikeout rates. And his swing itself has always been made for line drives and generally harder contact than you’d expect from a guy who would look right at home in the cubicle next to you.

As the Red Sox get closer to what they hope will be a return to the postseason, Pedroia‘s well-rounded hitting is only looming larger. He was doing fine as a No. 2 hitter. He’s been doing a lot better than fine since manager John Farrell moved him to leadoff on August 10, batting .459 in 18 games. Not so coincidentally, the Red Sox’s offense has experienced an uptick in the last two weeks.

Meanwhile, what Pedroia is doing on the other side of the ball is not to be overlooked.

The defensive metrics aren’t right all the time, but their poor ratings for Pedroia in 2015 did reflect what was a strangely off year with the glove. But this year, he’s once again looking and rating as arguably the best second baseman in the sport.

With all this in mind, let’s check in on the latest Red Sox wins above replacement rankings from FanGraphs:

1. Mookie Betts: 6.5
2. Dustin Pedroia: 4.6
3. Jackie Bradley Jr.: 4.2
4. Xander Bogaerts: 3.9
5. David Ortiz: 3.8

He’s not on Betts’ level (few are), but Pedroia is the next best thing the Red Sox have. Getting 11 straight hits has sure helped his cause, but getting it done day in, day out and as good as ever is a much greater influence on why he’s there.

It’s been hard to notice until now, but you know what they say about late being better than never.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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If Max Scherzer‘s American League Cy Young Award is beginning to feel lonely, it could soon have company.

In the wasteland that is the National League Cy Young race without a fully functioning Clayton Kershaw, anyone could claim this year’s award. From Madison Bumgarner to Johnny Cueto to Noah Syndergaard to Jake Arrieta to Jose Fernandez, there’s no shortage of strong-armed dudes vying for it.

But if anyone had forgotten about Scherzer, well, it’s suddenly easy to remember him after what the Washington Nationals ace did to the Baltimore Orioles on Thursday at Nationals Park. To stave off a four-game sweep, he paced the Nats to a 4-0 win with eight shutout innings in which he allowed two hits, walked nobody and struck out 10.

The finish was especially strong. Scherzer bore down and retired the final three Orioles he faced in noticeably angry fashion. Apparently, any Orioles fans upset about that have only themselves to blame.

“The O’s fans started making noise there in the eighth and it really kind of ticked me off,” he said afterward, per Ben Standig of CSN Mid-Atlantic.

The madness of this particular Max aside, we’re looking at a season that keeps getting better. Scherzer picked up another win to run his record to 14-7, lowered his ERA to 2.92 and the average against him to .191, and raised his innings to 182.0, his strikeouts to 227 and his strikeout-to-walk ratio to 5.16. 

This is obviously Cy Young-caliber material. But whether any of it makes Scherzer an obvious front-runner is anyone’s guess. The only time there was a front-runner for the NL Cy Young this year was when Kershaw was healthy and leading the league in everything. That was a while ago, and now the NL Cy Young race is a different strokes/different folks kind of affair.

Scherzer leads the NL in innings and strikeouts, which are important, but he doesn’t lead other categories that voters gravitate toward. Arrieta leads with 16 wins, two more than Scherzer’s 14. Kyle Hendricks leads with a 2.19 ERA, a category in which Bumgarner (2.44), Syndergaard (2.61), Arrieta (2.62), Cueto (2.86) and Fernandez (2.91) are also ahead of Scherzer. 

And keep in mind, there’s still more than a month of baseball left. Cliff Corcoran of Sports Illustrated was right when he wrote that this race could change drastically in September. We’re not here to hand Scherzer anything now, nor to promise with 100 percent certainty that he’ll get something come November. 

What can be said now, however, is that Scherzer could be awfully tough to beat.

The veteran right-hander may not have the most wins or the best ERA among his fellow NL aces, but that’s OK. The former isn’t the deal-maker it used to be in Cy Young discussions, and the latter is a stat that doesn’t fully capture the sheer dominance of Scherzer’s 2016 season.

Those league-leading 227 strikeouts are a big reason why the .191 average against him is second behind only Arrieta (.183). There’s no ignoring the 25 home runs Scherzer has given up, but most of the contact that hitters have made against him has been quiet.

He entered Thursday with a 22.5 soft-hit percentage, second only to Hendricks (26.3) and Tanner Roark (24.1). And with a rate of 2.2 walks per nine innings, Scherzer hasn’t issued many free passes when he hasn’t been completely overwhelming hitters.

It’s times like these that nerds like me point to obscure statistics that tie everything up with a neat little bow. In this case, it’s “deserved run average.” It’s a Baseball Prospectus specialty that gets more in depth than metrics like fielding independent pitching (FIP) and expected fielding independent pitching (xFIP) to cut through the nonsense that clouds ERA and get to a pitcher’s true performance level. 

Here’s how the top of the DRA list looked among starters with at least 150 innings heading into Thursday’s action:

1. Chris Sale: 2.70
2. Corey Kluber: 2.88
3. Max Scherzer: 2.91

Just two pitchers ahead of Scherzer, neither of whom is in the National League. That, folks, is how you make a guy look good.

Or, you could opt for the much simpler route to appreciating Scherzer’s dominance.

His latest outing was the 15th time all season in which he’s lasted at least seven innings and given up no more than two runs. No other National League pitcher has more than 12 such starts. His 11 starts with at least 10 strikeouts, meanwhile, are two more than anyone else has. One of those, of course, was his record-tying 20-strikeout game against the Detroit Tigers back in May.

Scherzer didn’t peak with that game. He hit a rough patch in his two starts prior to Thursday’s outing, but he still has a 1.94 ERA over his last 11 starts. Rather than slowing down, he’s streaking to the finish.

Washington’s schedule will make it easy for him to continue this. The Nationals have the NL East’s only good offense, and the only non-NL East opponents they face the rest of the way are the Colorado Rockies, Pittsburgh Pirates and Arizona Diamondbacks. The Rockies have a scary offense, but they’re up next, and Scherzer will get to miss them.

Scherzer was an easy pick when he won the American League Cy Young as a Tiger in 2013, getting 28 of 30 first-place votes. Given the state of the race, it’s unlikely he’ll fare that well in this year’s NL Cy Young voting even if he does take it.

But make no mistake: He can win it.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Even with Adrian Gonzalez‘s awesomeness meter at less than 100 percent for most of the season, the Los Angeles Dodgers haven’t had much trouble hitting in 2016.

Just imagine what they can do now that his meter is far past 100 percent.

There was a hint of what it could be like Monday afternoon at Great American Ball Park. The Dodgers opened a proverbial can of whoop-ass on the Cincinnati Reds, beating them 18-9 to split a four-game series. Gonzalez was responsible for eight of those runs, seven of which came on a trio of home runs.

Here, gaze upon said dingers with glee:

This is the second time Gonzalez, 34, has clubbed three homers in a game. The other time he did it was April 8, 2015, which seemed to signal his seemingly long-lost power was ready for a comeback. Sure enough, he hit 28 homers last year—the most since he clubbed 31 in 2010.

It’s a similar story this time around. The home runs Gonzalez hit were only his 13th, 14th and 15th of 2016, but they upped his total in August to six. That’s twice as many as the veteran first baseman hit in any other month this year.

Now, you could point out that while one of Gonzalez’s dingers was a legit moonshot, the others were pop flies that may not have been home runs in other parks. If you do that, you’re either a nitpicker…or Adrian Gonzalez himself.

“It’s tiny; the ball flies,” Gonzalez said of the Reds’ digs after the game, per Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register. “Right field’s really short. Left field plays short.

“I hit two fly balls for home runs today. It could easily have been a 1-for-6 game with five outs. It ends up being a pretty good day.”

Still, we’re not about to let Mr. Modesty bust a perfectly good narrative. Especially since this one’s, well, perfectly good.

This season hasn’t been Gonzalez’s best, but it has been a tale of two stretches in which the second is better than the first. That’s an easy thing to pull off if you start from a low enough place—such as the one Gonzalez occupied earlier this year.

Through May 16, he was batting .282 with a .408 slugging percentage—well short of his .493 career mark. Over half his batted balls were going on the ground, and he was also pulling the ball just 31.2 percent of the time.

It turned out Gonzalez was still battling a bad back that had plagued him down the stretch in 2015. That prompted Dodgers skipper Dave Roberts to give Gonzalez a couple of days off, during which he received treatment.

Not counting Monday, Gonzalez had hit .304 with a .451 slugging percentage since his return. In this span, he’s put only 44.8 percent of his batted balls on the ground and pulled the ball 40.8 percent of the time.

By getting more balls airborne and using his pull side more frequently, Gonzalez has been using two of three recommended ingredients for power hitting. The other? Hard contact, which leads us to the monthly progression of his hard-hit rate:

• April: 30.0%
• May: 31.9%
• June: 32.9%
• July: 27.4%
• August: 43.1%

Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs highlighted how Gonzalez’s hard-hit rate hasn’t experienced a peak like this since about two-thirds of the way through 2015. And since he was already doing everything else he needed to do to hit for power, finding this upturn was probably inevitable.

Gonzalez was hitting .368 with a 1.014 OPS in August even before he went off for three jacks. If this is at all indicative of what he can be for the Dodgers down the stretch, Roberts has every right to feel the way he does about his lineup.

“Very excited for our offense,” he said after Monday’s game, per Andy McCullough of the Los Angeles Times.

The Dodgers offense has been the best in the National League since the All-Star break, and not just because Gonzalez has gotten hot. Also heating up any room they walk into are young studs Corey Seager (22) and Joc Pederson (24) and ol’ standbys Justin Turner, Yasmani Grandal and Howie Kendrick. Chase Utley hasn’t been consistent since the break, but he’s been powerful, with six home runs.

The timing couldn’t be better. Los Angeles had been getting away with makeshift starting pitching all season, but not anymore. After Scott Kazmir’s latest flop Monday, Dodgers starters have a 6.67 ERA in August.

Help is on the way. Trade-deadline acquisition Rich Hill, he of the 2.25 ERA, is slated to make his Dodgers debut Wednesday. Clayton Kershaw, ace pitcher extraordinaire, could return in September.

But as we talked about over the weekend, there’s a nonzero chance Hill and Kershaw are rusty when they come back. Whatever regular-season innings they log could be just as much about getting back into form as they are about shutting down opposing lineups.

As such, the Dodgers’ need for offense will remain intact. It can only help that vintage Gonzalez has returned. He’s in a lineup that’s facing a tall order, but the unit looms that much larger now that he’s swinging a hot stick.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Just when the Los Angeles Dodgers have finally caught up with the San Francisco Giants, their starting pitching has gone and quit on them.

Clayton Kershaw and Rich Hill, that’s your cue to come back and fix everything.

Both are on the comeback trail from injuries, and Hill in particular is making real progress. He has yet to pitch for the Dodgers since they acquired him and Josh Reddick from the Oakland A’s at the Aug. 1 deadline. But Andy McCullough of the Los Angeles Times reports the veteran left-hander is slated to pitch Wednesday:

Hill has been dealing with blister problems that have sidelined him since the middle of July. But in a 78-pitch simulated game in Arizona on Thursday, everything was green on his screen.

“Everything felt great,” Hill said, per Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register. “The ball came out really good, the velocity maintained, breaking ball was really sharp.”

Kershaw, meanwhile, has been out with a bad back since late June. But on Friday, he was able to throw off a mound for the first time in over a month. And contrary to the bad vibes that came from his last mound session, the world’s best pitcher was practically beaming after this one.

“I felt good,” Kershaw said, per McCullough. “I don’t know. Until you face hitters, you don’t really know for sure. I feel 100 percent right now, so that’s a good sign.”

Unlike Hill, Kershaw’s return is not imminent. Don’t hold your breath waiting for it. In fact, I’m legally obligated to repeat that. Seriously, don’t.

But the idea that Kershaw’s return could happen at all is a big enough development on its own. It wasn’t long ago that Jon Heyman was casting doubt on Kershaw coming back at Today’s Knuckleball. According to McCullough, the Dodgers now “hope he could start again at some point in September.”

Talk about a September call-up. It seems like Kershaw last toed the mound ages ago, but it’s hard to forget just how absurdly good he was in his first 16 starts. With an MLB-best 1.79 ERA, 16.1 strikeout-to-walk ratio and other such fantastical numbers, the lefty was on his way to his fourth Cy Young and possibly his second MVP.

And don’t overlook what Hill could bring to the Dodgers. The 36-year-old journeyman put up a 2.25 ERA in 14 starts for the A’s, bringing his ERA in 18 starts since his re-emergence last season to 2.06. It all passes the smell test, too. 

Of course, Hill and Kershaw have been out so long that there’s hardly a guarantee that both will pick up right where they left off. There could be some rust. Potentially lots of it.

But no matter the amount of rust, there’s not a team in the league that wouldn’t roll the dice on two such dangerous arms at this point in the season. And if there’s one club that has no choice but to hope for the best, it’s the Dodgers.

The Dodgers are owed all the credit in the world for not letting Kershaw’s absence crash their pursuit of the Giants in the NL West. They instead did the opposite. As San Francisco collapsed out of the gate in the second half, the Dodgers surged. This past Tuesday, they finally took over first place.

But now the Giants are back on top again, having taken a half-game lead. And while they still have their problems, the Dodgers have come face-to-face with a big issue that we mentioned way back when: starting pitching.

As our own Danny Knobler pointed out, L.A.’s starters didn’t pick up the slack during Kershaw’s absence. They were mostly mediocre. Now they’ve become downright bad. After Brett Anderson paced the Dodgers to an 11-1 loss to the Cincinnati Reds on Saturday with six runs allowed in three innings, L.A.’s starters now have a 7.03 ERA in August.

This feels like a reckoning. Outside of Kershaw, the Dodgers rotation was a motley crew coming into the season. Five months later, not much has changed. Kenta Maeda has been a nice find, but Scott Kazmir has been up and down and Anderson, Brandon McCarthy, Alex Wood, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Julio Urias, Ross Stripling and Bud Norris have been a mixed bag of injured and ineffective.

As such, the only real surprise is that the Dodgers rotation hasn’t been a team-crippling liability. As Corinne Landrey noted at FanGraphs, Yasmani Grandal has done his part by framing everything for strikes. Otherwise, it speaks to how good the team’s offense and bullpen have been. The latter, in particular, is arguably the best in the National League.

With those assets being as good as they are, it would be hyperbole to say the Dodgers can’t make it to October without Kershaw or Hill at their best. They’re in a comfortable spot in the wild-card race as things stand, and the Giants aren’t going to run away and hide with the division race.

But after three straight NL West titles, simply getting into the postseason is a mere formality for the Dodgers. It means nothing if they don’t go far into October. If they can pair Kershaw and Hill with Maeda, their strong offense and (finally) a strong bullpen, they’ll have everything they need to do just that.

Again, it can’t be taken for granted that Kershaw and Hill will save the Dodgers. But if nothing else, the timing works in their favor. This far from October, there’s plenty of time for the two of them to get back on the mound and back in rhythm. Had L.A. gotten the good news a week or two from now, the clock would be ticking a lot faster.

Having Kershaw and Hill arrive at the last minute and leading the charge isn’t how the Dodgers drew it up. But they’ll take it.

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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