Tag: Clayton Kershaw

Heralded Giants-Dodgers Rivalry Is Still Worthy of the Hype

LOS ANGELES – Gone are the days of pure hatred, the ones that caused Jackie Robinson to retire rather than play for the rival club, incited epic brawls and sparked beanball wars.

But the rivalry is not dead. Far from it. The fire still exists, as does the success.

Between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, five division titles and three World Series championships have been won in the last five seasons. Each team has had a National League MVP in the last three seasons and a combined five Cy Young Awards in the last seven.

They also play in two of the more gorgeous ballparks in the game—one with an aged charm nestled in a mountainous backdrop, the other a state-of-the-art joint sitting on a bay.

“They have a great place there, but so do we,” Dodgers outfielder Scott Van Slyke said Sunday, two days before the Dodgers’ trip to San Francisco for the teams’ first meeting this season on Tuesday. 

Three World Series runs in five years by the Giants and three consecutive division titles by the Dodgers have given this rivalry a new bounce in its step. But because players shuttle from one team to another on a yearly basis and guys become offseason acquaintances, some of the heat has been extracted from every major league rivalry.

This one is no different, as the two teams have a combined 22 players that are either brand new or relatively new to the rivalry. And aside from Yasiel Puig and maybe Madison Bumgarner, there really are no players on either side that extract authentic venom from the other side, since Buster Posey and Clayton Kershaw are more vanilla superstars.

“Obviously there’s a rivalry,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said. “You can feel it. There’s intensity that’s different when we play them. 

“As far as players changing teams, that happens all over baseball. So every rivalry is going to feel the turnover. But the fans never change sides.”

And that is where any rivalry truly lives—in the stands, in the bars, among the diehards.

While there have been rare and extreme examples of this rivalry tragically spilling into the fandom—the Bryan Stow beating and the stabbing fatality of Jonathan Denver—fans now argue about things like the Dodgers trying to “buy” a title, or the Giants getting “lucky” in October, and of course, which stadium is a better place to take in a ballgame.

These debates are never truly settled, but Giants fans currently hold the trump card with those three championships that have turned Dodger fans into short-term lovers of the Texas Rangers, Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals over the last five Octobers.

Sitting in the stands of these games, particularly in the outfield bleachers of either stadium, you understand the fervor. While fans usually refrain from wasting beer or souvenirs on players, they loudly spew their hatred with insults aimed at outfielders. And inning after inning, as the visiting team’s fans dare to move about the other team’s stadium, they endure insults unfit for juvenile ears.

“They definitely get a little meaner up there than in other cities,” Van Slyke said of patrolling the outfield at AT&T Park. “And I’m sure their guys hear it when they come here, too.”

The rivalry will evolve in the coming years. The Dodgers and Giants are both pulling in revenue at incredible levels, and while the Dodgers’ ownership has shown a complete willingness to spend it, the Giants’ ownership group has been more reluctant, although they still have a current payroll north of $170 million.

The Dodgers spent part of their last offseason acquiring front-office people to run their club. Andrew Friedman left the Tampa Bay Rays to become the Dodgers president of baseball operations. He then brought in a team of others to fall in line behind him, and together, they are seen as one of the brightest, most analytical front offices in the game today.

Meanwhile, the Giants, known to have a more traditionally run front office, recently reworked their configuration to make former GM Brian Sabean the team’s executive VP of baseball ops through 2019 and former assistant GM Bobby Evans the new GM. Assuming the Giants’ top brass gives the go-ahead to spend more money to keep up with their rivals in the near future, Sabean and Evans will remain the men who determine which players the team will invest in. 

The game’s economics make roster turnover a part of the sport as much as bat flips and beer, but that does not mean rivalries cannot remain heated. And when both teams are fighting for the same kind of success, it is bound to remain as such.

This week’s three-game series in San Francisco is the latest chapter in what has become one of the sport’s best rivalries, on and off the field.

 

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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3 Biggest Takeaways for the Los Angeles Dodgers Following MLB Opening Week

The Los Angeles Dodgers wrapped up Week 1 of the 2015 season with mixed results, splitting six games against fellow National League West opponents.

It was a roller-coaster ride of emotions, with several exciting moments peppered with the sobering reminders that some old wounds may still need tourniquets.

The sample size is undeniably small, but here are the three main takeaways from the first week of Dodger baseball.

 

Clayton Kershaw Hasn’t Found His Rhythm

Through his first two starts in 2015, the reigning National League MVP has looked like anything but the pitcher who took home his third Cy Young Award last season.

Kershaw got the Opening Day nod at Dodger Stadium against the San Diego Padres. He came away with a no-decision after making 99 pitches in just six innings and allowed three earned runs. It wasn’t a terrible start but certainly below the standard Kershaw has set for himself during the past several years.

Surely the offseason rust would have crumbled away by his second start?

Not quite.

The Arizona Diamondbacks torched the southpaw for 10 hits and five earned runs in less than seven innings at Chase Field. Kershaw couldn’t avoid a decision on Saturday night, suffering the loss to begin the season 0-1.

“Basically, I got blasted today,” Kershaw said, per Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times. “I don’t know what else to say.”

Kershaw has already allowed eight earned runs on the young season. He didn’t surrender his eighth earned run until May 17 last year—coincidentally against the same Diamondbacks team at Chase Field during what would end up being his worst start of the season.

Kershaw will take on the Colorado Rockies in a home start this Friday.

Adrian Gonzalez Is Locked In

The Dodgers are going to need Adrian Gonzalez to hold down the middle of the lineup more than ever now that Matt Kemp and Hanley Ramirez are gone.

So far, the veteran first baseman hasn’t disappointed.

He’s recorded a hit in every game this season, including five home runs during the season-opening series against San Diego—the team for which he belted 161 long balls from 2006-2010.

The highlight of the week was Gonzalez’s three-homer game last Wednesday. The Padres’ starting pitcher, Andrew Cashner, served up each dose of the trifecta—the first of Gonzalez’s career.

“I was able to run into three fastballs and I thank God they were able to go over the fence,” said Gonzalez, per ESPN Los Angeles’ Mark Saxon. “It’s definitely right up there as a personal feat.”

The three home runs piggy-backed another one he had hit late in the previous game, making it four consecutive plate appearances that ended with a long ball.

All five of Gonzalez’s home runs this year have landed beyond the right field fence, illustrating a recent trend of pulling his round-trippers rather than sending them to the opposite field.

Gonzalez’s performance wasn’t solely about the power surge, though. According to Ace of MLB Stats, he also became the first player in the last decade to open a season with at least three hits in his team’s first three games.

While none of Gonzalez’s four hits over the weekend left the yard, the 32-year-old still enters Tuesday night’s game against the Seattle Mariners with a robust .556 average (15-for-27), four doubles and seven RBI.

Bullpen Concerns Remain

A winter removed from ranking 22nd in bullpen ERA, 20th in FIP and 27th in walk rate, the Dodgers bullpen is once again struggling to begin the 2015 season.

Determined to solidify a shaky situation, new president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and general manager Farhan Zaidi decided to clean house over the winter. They severed ties with Brian Wilson and made trades to bring in right-handers Joel Peralta, Juan Nicasio and Chris Hatcher.

With closer Kenley Jansen out for at least a few more weeks as he recovers from foot surgery, the Dodgers have turned to a bullpen by committee.

Hatcher recorded the save on Opening Day but retired just one of the next nine batters he faced over two appearances—ballooning his ERA to 33.75 in the process. Peralta has since assumed closing duties and has yet to allow a run.

Although Peralta has turned in serviceable work so far, the 39-year-old has just 14 career saves in 561 innings pitched. Continued reliance on him in the ninth inning may eventually cost the Dodgers, who must patiently wait for Jansen to return.

Left-hander J.P. Howell, one of the few holdovers from last season, began the season by allowing a tiebreaking single in the eighth inning last Tuesday. After pitching a scoreless inning the next day, he then took a loss in Arizona by surrendering a walk-off single in the 10th inning on Friday.

Los Angeles relievers, whose combined 3.60 ERA ranks 21st in baseball, have been directly responsible for two of the team’s three losses.

“We’ll just play it out,” said Mattingly, per NBC Los Angeles’ Michael Duarte. “You’ll have to stay tuned. It’s a fluid situation.”

 

All stats courtesy of ESPN.com unless otherwise noted.

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Complete Los Angeles Dodgers 2015 Spring Training Preview

It’s been quite an offseason for the Los Angeles Dodgers, who are set to kick off spring training when pitchers and catchers report to Camelback Ranch on Feb. 19.

Not only was there a change of leadership at the top with a revamped front office, but the team itself will look noticeably different from the one that saw its season end in the first round of last year’s playoffs.

New president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and general manager Farhan Zaidi wasted little time configuring the roster to align with their belief in cost-effective, analytics-based baseball.

The duo promptly traded away fan favorites Dee Gordon and Matt Kemp during the winter meetings in December after allowing Hanley Ramirez to walk in free agency. Rather than absorb a sunk cost in reliever Brian Wilson, who exercised his pricey player option for 2015, the Dodgers simply cut him outright.

Half of the infield and about 40 percent of the starting rotation will feature new faces, ones the Dodgers entrusted to carry the team back to the postseason for a third consecutive season.

Los Angeles has essentially made a gamble with its flurry of moves this winter: improved defense and more contact at the plate will make up for the loss of power in the lineup. Questions still remain about the bullpen, however, and it’s not a lock that the team can reach the 94-win plateau from last season.

Fans have heard about the metrics all winter. But now it’s finally time to take these names off a sheet of paper and instead put them on an actual field. Here’s the complete spring training preview for the 2015 Dodgers.

 

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MLB’s Biggest Superstars Facing Immense Pressure in 2015

For a Major League Baseball superstar, the pressure is inherited with the title.

That much is a given. Whether it is a player’s past production or simply his price tag, the stars of the game are looked upon to be among the best. This becomes especially true when that player’s team is expected to win. There is little pressure on a player like Joe Mauer, whose season is not expected to dictate how his team fares.

However, for other players, the pressure is going to be turned way up this year. And the abundance of those players has grown now that there is an extra Wild Card playoff slot and since a team not believed to be a championship contender at the start of last season—the Kansas City Royals—came within one swing of winning the World Series. Now even star players on fringe teams are feeling the heat.

This season it is easy to go up and down rosters and find these players. The massive amount of turnover through trades and free agency this offseason makes this even more so since those superstars are now expected to live up to marquee billings for different franchises.

It was easy to pick out more than 10 players who fit this bill, but for round-numbers’ sake, here they are in no particular order (you can determine that at the barstool or water cooler):

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Bleacher Report’s Full 2014 MLB Awards Preview, Predictions

As the baseball industry awaits the first big transaction of the offseason—sorry, Adam Lind for Marco Estrada doesn’t exactly get the juices flowing—the focus shifts temporarily to another matter, the individual awards.

Until there’s a major move either in the free-agent market or on the trade front, the chases and races for MVP, Cy Young, Manager of the Year and Rookie of the Year hold our attention.

Starting Monday, Nov. 10, and continuing every evening through Thursday, Nov. 13, the winner of each honor in either league will be announced by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America at 6 p.m. ET on MLB Network.

With all of the finalists—three per for all four awards—having been determined earlier this week, here’s a preview of the choices and a rundown of the predicted winners.

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What If MLB Finally Counted the Postseason in Annual MVP Debates?

After a regular season to remember, Clayton Kershaw had a postseason to forget. The question now: When it comes to individual awards, should one impact the other?

As the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) prepares to hand out its shiny trophies, culminating with the league MVPs on Nov. 13, the answer for the moment is “no.”

Kershaw is a lock to win his third National League Cy Young in four seasons, and he’s a finalist for NL MVP. His disappointing finish will do nothing to change that.

That’s because BBWAA voters cast their ballots immediately after Game 162, meaning playoff performance (or lack thereof) doesn’t factor in. So Kershaw’s eye-popping regular-season line—198.1 IP, 1.77 ERA, 0.857 WHIP, 239 SO—matters, and the 11 earned runs he coughed up in 12.2 October innings don’t.

Many would say that’s fair; these are regular-season awards, after all. The postseason offers its own hardware.

Then again, shouldn’t a guy be judged, at least partially, on how he produces under the game’s brightest glare?

It would be an easy change. Writers could simply sit on their ballots for an extra few weeks and vote after the final out of the World Series. Maybe what they saw would influence their decision, maybe it wouldn’t.

At least they’d get to sift through all of the evidence.

This is purely hypothetical. Analyst and former player Billy Ripken floated the notion during the MLB Network’s awards finalists announcement show Nov. 4, but to our knowledge it’s not being discussed in official corners, let alone seriously considered. 

Still, let’s perpend the pros and cons and see if the idea has merit.

 

The Case for Change

Almost every year players are rewardedor penalizedin the major awards categories based on whether their teams made the playoffs. Why not also consider what they do once they get there?

Obviously it doesn’t make sense to weigh a handful of postseason games more heavily than an entire grind-it-out campaign. If a guy was a no-brainer for a particular honor before the playoffs, he should still be a no-brainer after.

In a close race, though, October output could tip the scale.

Take Kershaw: He’s your NL Cy Young winner, hands down. The St. Louis Cardinals’ Adam Wainwright is probably the closest competition, but Kershaw’s numbers blow his away (and Wainwright had a rocky postseason, too). 

The NL MVP race, on the other hand, is tighter. Kershaw is the favorite over his fellow finalists, Andrew McCutchen of the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Miami Marlins’ Giancarlo Stanton.

But add that unsightly 7.82 National League Division Series ERA—and recall Kershaw taking the loss in the game that killed the Dodgers’ seasonand maybe his MVP edge evaporates.

As Kershaw himself said after his unceremonious final outing, per Ken Gurnick of MLB.com, “The season ended and I’m a big part of the reason why.”

The point isn’t to pile on Kershaw, who is obviously among the best arms of his generation. But won’t it feel hollow when he stuffs his trophy case a tad tighter, as he’s almost sure to do?

 

The Case Against Change

Let’s stick with the NL MVP race. Look at Kershaw’s competition: McCutchen took an 0-for-3 in the Pirates’ NL Wild Card Game loss to the San Francisco Giants, while Stanton’s Marlins missed the dance altogether.

Sure, Kershaw had a couple of wobbly postseason starts, but his MVP competition didn’t even have a chance to be bad. They were sitting at home. 

And it’s not like another player on the fringe of the NL MVP race did enough to sprint to the head of the pack. The closest candidate is probably Buster Posey, who earned some MVP chatter with his strong second half and caught every inning of the Giants’ championship run.

But Posey posted a pedestrian .246 batting average in October and didn’t record an extra-base hit. Heck, a stronger case could be made for Giants ace Madison Bumgarner, who carried San Francisco on his back with a remarkable, historic postseason performance.

Bottom line: Neither Posey, Bumgarner nor anyone else deserves to dethrone Kershaw. The regular season is a marathon; the playoffs are a sprint. They’re two different animals and should be treated as such.

 

The Verdict

“Consider the playoffs” is an intriguing argument, but ultimately it falls flat. MLB.com columnist Anthony Castrovince, writing for Sports on Earth, sums it up succinctly:

Now more than ever, with the extra Wild Card round, the postseason is a season unto itself, and the extra off days make its style of playespecially in terms of bullpen usagevery different from the regular season. Besides, we already have League Championship Series and World Series MVP awards to go around. If anything, we ought to have one, overarching postseason MVP honor.

These BWAA Awards do well to honor those who fare best in the 162-game grind, rather than a small sample. 

Undoubtedly Kershawand every player before him who chased a stellar regular season with a disheartening Octoberwould happily trade his trophies for a ring.

For now, Kershaw can polish the inevitable consolation prizes—and wait till next year.

 

All statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com


Buckle Up, Dodgers-Cardinals NLDS Proving to Be Unpredictable as Ever

LOS ANGELES — To think you know baseball is to be a stupid, stupid fool. 

No one understands this game, or why things happen how they happen, particularly when everyone expects exactly the opposite. That is why you watch in October. That is why jaws can routinely be picked up off the floor with a snow shovel in the autumn.

It is why the sport is beautiful, because the seemingly impossible can always trump perfectly sound reason.

It is why the St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Dodgers left the baseball-watching world speechless and in disbelief Friday night at Dodger Stadium. This was an outcome nobody saw coming before Game 1 of the National League Division Series started, or even more than halfway through it.

In a game started by the two best pitchers in the league, the Cardinals won, 10-9. It wasn’t that the Cardinals won that was so stunning, but it was the way they got down and then came back, and the fact that Clayton Kershaw and Adam Wainwright combined to give up 14 runs, every single one of them as earned as earned can be.

Simply stated, this game was shocking, and if the rest of the series is anything close to this, predictions be damned. This is going to be wild.

“That’s baseball. Anything can happen,” Dodgers right fielder Matt Kemp said after the game, attempting to brush aside the fact that this game was ridiculously nuts.

Kemp then paused for a few seconds before offering some candidness.

“Maybe I was a little shocked.”

The part that was so crazy was that the starting pitchers came in as the best the NL has to offer at that position, with Kershaw being the most dominant pitcher in the world during the regular season. Yet Wainwright was smacked around by a surging Dodgers offense that took errant fastball after errant fastball and locked in on his breaking pitches.

When Wainwright did miss in the zone with hard stuff—fastball, sinker, cutter—the Dodgers tagged him for eight hits. And when the curveball found the hitting zone, three hits, not including a laser of a liner by Hanley Ramirez that was caught for an out.

“My fastball command was absolutely atrocious. Awful,” Wainwright said. “When they realized it, they sat on the slow stuff.”

By the end of all the contact, Wainwright had allowed six runs on 11 hits and Dodger Stadium transformed from sporting venue to all-out house party. A five-run lead with Kershaw on the mound—he started the game 67-0 when the Dodgers gave him at least four runs—was plenty reason to start the celebration while the Southern California sun still beamed.

Tsk, tsk. As Kemp so plainly noted, this is baseball. More specifically, postseason baseball. Very little goes as plotted.

After Kershaw allowed a first-inning home run on a curveball—the third-ever home run he’s allowed on that pitch in 1,423.1 innings—he put away 16 consecutive Cardinals hitters and seemed to be cruising. Everything was working. The fastball, the curveball, the swing-and-miss slider and the changeup, all of them working seamlessly together to create Kershaw’s latest masterpiece.

But…

For as lights-out as Kershaw has been over the last four seasons, not even he could duck the total wackiness of this game. Going into the seventh inning, Kershaw had allowed two baserunners, both of which hit solo home runs, and gave the Dodgers zero indication he was about to implode.

It started innocently: Matt Holliday lacing a single up the middle to start the inning, putting Kershaw into the stretch for the first time. Then Jhonny Peralta the same thing. Then Yadier Molina the same thing to load the bases, nobody out. Two more singles wrapped around a strikeout and suddenly it was a two-run Dodger lead.

Then a three-pitch strikeout and it seemed Kershaw was back. Furthering the assumption, he got ahead of Matt Carpenter 0-2, but the at-bat turned dim for Kershaw. He could not put away Carpenter, who worked to see six more pitches before thrashing a middle-middle fastball for a bases-clearing double.

Just like that, an entire country, an entire Twitter universe and entire baseball world was turned on its throbbing head. Stunned euphoria in certain parts of that world, stunned silence in others.

“If I don’t get in the way tonight,” Kershaw said, “we have a pretty good chance to win this.”

Just the thought of two of the best pitchers in this galaxy saying they got in the way of their teams’ chances to win a playoff game is absurd. But that’s how this night went.

What wasn’t so unexpected is that the bad blood between these two clubs started to boil in this first game. It also signaled the start of Wainwright’s meltdown when he hit Yasiel Puig with one of those catch-me-if-you-can fastballs.

Puig calmly strutted to first base, but Adrian Gonzalez, usually the calmest of the men in uniform, confronted hot-tempered St. Louis catcher Molina.

“We’re not going to start this again,” Gonzalez claimed to have told Molina.

“You have to respect me,” Gonzalez claimed was Molina’s response.

For Molina’s part, he said he couldn’t hear Gonzalez, but that he was screaming.

“I told him, ‘If you’re going to scream at me, get ready to fight,’ ” Molina claims was his actual response.

The dugouts emptied, the bullpen gates opened, but officials quickly restored order. Molina and Gonzalez seemed to be the only two fired up enough to raise their voices.

Wainwright and Puig found each other, spoke a few words and called it a day, the latter finishing the exchange with a friendly pat on Waino’s backside.

“It kinda woke a sleeping dog,” Carpenter said, acknowledging the Dodgers went bonkers after that, scoring six runs in the next three innings off Wainwright.

This beef between the Cardinals and Dodgers started last postseason, when the ninth pitch of Game 1 of the NL Championship Series stuck in Hanley Ramirez’s side, snapping one of his ribs and taking him out of the series. Two games later, Gonzalez doubled in a run off Wainwright and gestured toward the Dodger dugout to fire up his team. Postgame, Wainwright described Gonzalez’s behavior as “Mickey Mouse.”

In July of this season, the fireworks went off again when Cardinals flamethrower Carlos Martinez hit Ramirez with a fastball high on his shoulder. In the bottom of that inning, Kershaw plunked Matt Holliday. In the ninth inning, St. Louis closer Trevor Rosenthal hit Ramirez again, this time on the hand, knocking him out of the lineup for a few games. 

“It happened during the season, and it’s a trend,” Gonzalez said of the Cardinals hitting Dodgers players. “They can deny it as much as they want. They are going to say it’s not on purpose, but we all know (it is).

“If that’s the way they want to go at it, we’ll make adjustments.”

So that’s where we stand, in a completely unpredictable series that could erupt into punches at any moment. Or not.

This is baseball, though, and none of us knows what will happen next. So let’s just enjoy the drama as it unfolds.

 

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News, and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com


Highlighting the 12 Biggest Heroes of the 2014 MLB Pennant Races

When things get tight at the end of the MLB season, some players show up and guide their teams into the playoffs.

Last season, it was right-hander Michael Wacha, who joined the St. Louis Cardinals starting rotation in early September and subsequently became one of the biggest stories of the postseason, as the rookie took home NLCS MVP honors and pitched his team into the World Series.

Meanwhile, right-hander Gerrit Cole was just as dominant for the Pittsburgh Pirates last season, as the flame-throwing rookie solidified the starting rotation down the stretch and played a major role in his club’s long-overdue postseason berth.

But those are just a couple of unique examples. The reality is that every team fighting for a playoff spot likely has its share of heroes.

As we head into the final weekend of the regular season, here’s a look at the 12 biggest heroes of the 2014 MLB pennant races.

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2014 National League MVP Race: Breaking Down the Candidates

As the MLB regular season wraps up its final week, there are a few players who are making last pushes to solidify their cases the for individual awards, and one of the most heated races is the competition for the NL MVP crown.

Did Giancarlo Stanton do enough before his injury? Does a pitcher really deserve to win an MVP? Or are there a few dark horses running around and ready to steal the show?

These are some of the questions that need to be asked and answered when selecting the winner, so here is a look at which player should be crowned the most valuable in the NL. 

 

Dark Horse: Andrew McCutchen—Pittsburgh Pirates

The reigning NL MVP has put together yet another impressive campaign. McCutchen’s .404 on-base percentage is currently top of the NL, his slugging percentage of .537 is second-best and his .310 batting average ranks third among the qualified leaders. 

In the sabermetric stat of “runs created per 27 outs,” McCutchen also leads all players in the league with 8.17 runs, which isn’t shocking when he’s capable of doing things like this.

Perhaps what makes all this that much more impressive is the fact that he has battled with a rib injury for the past month.

Pirates manager Clint Hurdle praised McCutchen’s toughness in an interview with Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Ron Cook, “He’s the model of a leader that you want on your club. He got through some tough spots early. The good news is he’s in a pretty good place right now. He’s in a competitive place. Everything he’s done has been aggressive.”

As a result of McCutchen’s efforts, the Pirates currently sit comfortably atop the wild-card race with a five-game lead.

 

Dark Horse: Buster Posey—San Francisco Giants

Just a few months ago, Posey would be nowhere near the discussion for this award. But with a second-half surge like no other, the man they call M-V-Posey in San Francisco will sure be getting some votes now.

At the time of the All-Star break, Posey had a batting average of just .277. Since then, he has batted .351 to lead all NL players with at least 200 at-bats. His 3.4 WAR during that stretch is also the best in the majors, according to FanGraphs.  

More importantly, Posey stepped up for the Giants when it mattered the most.

During the month of September, Posey is slashing a line of .389/.432/.583, and helped the Giants draw within three-and-a-half back in the NL West and go five games up in the wild card.

 

Favorite: Clayton Kershaw—Los Angeles Dodgers

To say Kershaw had a “nice” season would be an understatement for the ages. The numbers that the 26-year-old southpaw has put up this year are of historic proportions, and they begin with his career-bests of 1.80 ERA, 0.86 WHIP and .870 win percentage.

Kershaw is slated for one more start later this week, but for the moment he has given up the least amount of hits (132), earned runs (38), home runs (nine) and walks (31) he has ever had in a full season.

Kershaw also reached the 20-win mark in a remarkably short span, 26 starts to be exact. Since the expansion of the league, there have been only five other pitchers who accomplished such feat in so few starts, according to Elias Sports Bureau.

Throw in a no-hitter and a majors-best six shutouts along the season, and it becomes that much tougher to argue against Kershaw’s case.

 

Favorite: Giancarlo Stanton—Miami Marlins

Truth to be told, Stanton’s chances of capturing the NL MVP crown dwindled the moment he was struck in the face by Mike Fiers’ pitch two weeks ago, but that is not to say he should be out of the consideration completely.

Despite missing action since his injury on Sept. 11, many of Stanton’s numbers are still among the NL leaders.

The 37 homers he smashed are still a distant No. 1, and so are his 6.4 WAR, .555 slugging percentage and .950 on-base plus slugging percentage, according to ESPN.

Stanton’s RBI total of 105 has fallen to only second place behind the 112 from Dodgers’ Adrian Gonzalez, and the 115.6 runs he created for the Marlins this season are tied with Pirates’ McCutchen.

One argument against Stanton would be the injury that has cost him the final three weeks of his season, but it should be mentioned that Kershaw missed the first five weeks of his season. Both players should be treated equally for the numbers they put up during the time they were active.

Another argument against Stanton would be Miami’s lack of success, as the team currently stands at 74-81. But without Stanton’s help, just exactly where would the Marlins be this season?

CBSSports’ Jon Heyman put that into perspective:

His performance gave the Marlins hope into September, but that dream died the moment Stanton was struck in the kisser.

But Stanton still was the main reason the Marlins overcame a startlingly low $47 million payroll and disheartening injury to ace pitcher Jose Fernandez to remain in the race…No one could have foreseen a .500 season without Fernandez, but the Marlins came close.

 

Prediction: Giancarlo Stanton

The choice is not made based on whether a pitcher deserves to win the MVP award or not. If a player of any position puts up deserving numbers, they should be in the running.

The case made for Stanton is based on the fact that out of all the previous times a pitcher has won the MVP—be it Justin Verlander in 2011 or Bob Gibson and Denny McLain in 1968—those pitchers took home the award when no other position players came close to being worthy of the honor.

This time around, there is one.

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Giancarlo Stanton’s Freak Injury Has Made the NL MVP Race Wide Open

Sympathy is a powerful thing.

Giancarlo Stanton, the Miami Marlins poster boy with the movie-star looks, glittery smile and enough thunder in his bat to make Mighty Casey look like a slap-hitting second baseman, has that on his side in this year’s National League MVP race.

Sympathy. It yanks on heartstrings and makes people do things they probably should not. In this case, that could mean casting votes for Stanton after his career-best season ended last Thursday when he was drilled in the face by a fastball in Milwaukee.

The aftermath is still gruesome nearly a week later even though the progress is promising, and the Marlins await word on if Stanton can actually return this season.

Stanton’s recovery is good news for him and the Marlins, but the injury itself, which will likely keep him off the field for the rest of the season, should pretty much end his MVP campaign. 

It might be difficult for some to separate sympathy from an open mind, and that could lean some of the undecided voters toward Stanton’s case. What makes that ridiculous, besides the fact that sympathy has nothing to do with this race, is Stanton probably was not the league’s MVP before injury, based on the Bovada odds.

Despite Stanton’s incredible year—he still leads the league in home runs (37), walks (94), slugging percentage (.555) and OPS (.950)—Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw is having a historic season, which we have chronicled in this space before. Since Stanton’s injury, Kershaw has extended his lead in the Wins Above Replacement category at Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs.com.

Whether one believes a pitcher can or cannot ever be as valuable as a position player—a crazy (wrong) debate in itself—what Stanton’s injury has done is left the vote wide open. If you don’t think Kershaw should win the award because he plays only every fifth game, and if Stanton was your pick before his injury, it is time to rethink things.

Pittsburgh Pirates superstar center fielder Andrew McCutchen is now the man to give Kershaw a real run for the MVP Award. McCutchen won the award last season, and it is arguable he is having a better year in 2014, as he leads the league with a .399 on-base percentage, 161 OPS-plus and 162 weighted runs created plus.

Helping McCutchen’s case is a strong stretch run after returning from a rib injury last month. Since Aug. 22, he has hit .333/.371/.567 with a .938 OPS and six homers. The Pirates are 14-8 in that time and have gone from 2.5 games out in the race for the second wild-card spot to 1.5 games up in it entering Tuesday. 

This run, along with Stanton’s injury and the belief by some that a pitcher cannot be a team’s most valuable player, makes McCutchen a serious threat to repeat the NL honor for the first time since Albert Pujols did it in 2008 and 2009. 

One of Stanton’s great advantages in this argument was that he had not missed time this season because of an injury, as Kershaw did in April and McCutchen in August. That argument disappeared as Stanton lay on the ground near Miller Park’s home plate, blood spilling from his face and the baseball world watching in shock and fear of how badly it might end. 

Stanton, in order to make his candidacy the top one, needed a strong finish. Even though he had four home runs and three doubles in 10 September games, he was hitting .231 with a .318 OBP in the final month.

Maybe it is possible Stanton could return this season, and if he does, that is great. It is good for a fanbase that has struggled to marry itself to one of the franchise’s recent superstars, and it will be good for Stanton to prove to himself he can still dig into the box against an inside fastball in a major league game before going away for the winter. 

What Stanton’s possible return should not do is cement his case as the league MVP. He was not the best player before the injury, and the gap has since increased while McCutchen has strengthened his resume.

In order to upend a historic season by Kershaw, Stanton needed to stay healthy and productive in the final month. It would have given those unwilling to vote for a pitcher for MVP a sturdier leg to lean on and Stanton a good final whack to change any minds not leaning his way.

That hasn’t happened, and the race is looking like it should have a clear winner by now. Then again, right or wrong, sympathy could be as powerful as any dominant performance.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News, and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.

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