Kuzul

NEW YORK — Troy Tulowitzki looks just fine in blue.

He looks comfortable. He looks happy. He looks like he really was just what the Toronto Blue Jays needed.

Two weeks on, the trade that rocked this baseball summer looks like the best thing that could have happened to him, the best thing that could have happened to the Blue Jays—maybe even the best thing that could have happened to the Colorado Rockies.

“The positive about him being traded is we don’t have to answer questions every day about whether he’ll be traded,” Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado said Tuesday.

Two weeks on, the Tulowitzki deal makes so much sense that you wonder why it didn’t happen earlier, so much sense that you wonder why it was such a big shock in the first place.

“I think at the end of the day, the switch was good,” Tulowitzki said the other day.

Two weeks on, Tulowitzki seems fine with the idea that the trade happened. But two weeks on, he’s still not at all fine with how it happened.

“It bothered me at first,” he said. “And it still bothers me.”

With the help of many who were involved on both sides, Bleacher Report set out to find out how the deal came together, learning it almost never happened at all.

In fact, on what turned out to be Tulowitzki‘s final day with the Rockies, Colorado general manager Jeff Bridich called manager Walt Weiss and told him he wasn’t close to any deals. That same day, on a conference call with his top advisors, Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos listened to a lively debate on whether the Jays should pass on Tulowitzki and focus all their resources on adding pitching instead.

“When I got off the conference call, I thought we weren’t going to do the deal,” Anthopoulos said.

Within hours, the deal was done.

Anthopoulos loved Tulowitzki since watching him at Long Beach State. He asked Bridich about him last winter and again in dozens of phone calls and text messages since then. He agreed that pitching was a bigger immediate need, but trading for Tulowitzki would make the Blue Jays better now and in the future.

He just had to convince Bridich to get a deal done. And that meant he had to agree to part with Jeff Hoffman.

Hoffman was Toronto’s first-round draft pick in 2014, a hard-throwing right-hander from East Carolina who has come back strong from Tommy John surgery. The Blue Jays didn’t want to give him up.

“We’d gone back and forth with proposals a million times,” Anthopoulos said. “Every proposal they made had [Hoffman] in it. Every proposal that we made didn’t include him.”

Other teams wanted Hoffman, too. The Blue Jays needed at least one starting pitcher and maybe two, and some of Anthopoulos‘ advisors worried that giving up Hoffman could cost them a chance at David Price or Johnny Cueto or any number of other pitchers Anthopoulos was pursuing.

Anthopoulos understood the concern, but in the end, he felt the risk was worth it. Because Tulowitzki was signed through 2020, this was a deal that could make the Blue Jays winners for years to come, not just in 2015.

Around the time Tulowitzki and the Rockies were taking the field that night at Wrigley, Anthopoulos called Bridich and made a proposal with Hoffman in it.

“Then things started to move,” he said.

Tulowitzki, who went 0-for-5 in a 9-8 Rockies loss to the Cubs, had no idea the movement had even begun.

By the letter of his contract, the Rockies had no obligation to tell him or to ask for his permission. When he signed his 10-year, $157.75 million contract in November 2010, the organization was determined not to give out any more no-trade clauses, still feeling stung (and hamstrung) by no-trade deals given to Larry Walker and Todd Helton.

For four years, it hardly mattered whether the clause existed or not. Tulowitzki and Dick Monfort had a close relationship, and the owner had no interest in trading a player who had become the face of his franchise.

Tulowitzki would come to believe that he had an understanding with Monfort, a gentlemen’s agreement of sorts, that the Rockies would keep him informed and even give him input into any possible trade.

While Tulowitzki would talk with teammates about the possibility he would get traded, he never worried about being surprised by a trade—because of that understanding.

Then, on that night at Wrigley, he was more than surprised. He was stunned, “blindsided,” as he put it in a conversation with Denver reporters the day after the trade.

Bridich maintains that he had several conversations with Paul Cohen, Tulowitzki‘s agent, and that he “kept him in the loop.” But the general manager also maintains that the way things went down on July 27, the day of the trade, made full disclosure impossible.

Everything just happened too fast.

Anthopoulos and Bridich had long agreed that any Tulowitzki deal would include Jose Reyes, a shortstop who had about $50 million remaining on a contract that runs through 2017. They discussed multiple combinations around those two, eventually agreeing that the Blue Jays would get LaTroy Hawkins to help their bullpen, and the Rockies would get minor league pitchers Miguel Castro and Jesus Tinoco, along with Hoffman.

All this time, no details of the talks had leaked out. None would, until Bridich made another call to Wrigley Field and sent word to Weiss to pull Tulowitzki from the game.

Anthopoulos had his own concerns. The Blue Jays had come to view Reyes as a huge liability on defense, but they loved him as a person. They wanted him to hear about the trade from them, face to face.

One problem: The Blue Jays were off that night, and Reyes was asleep in his apartment not far from the Rogers Centre. Worse yet, he didn’t have his phone with him.

They finally got in touch with him around midnight, by calling his wife. He walked over to the ballpark, saw Anthopoulos and manager John Gibbons waiting for him and had an idea of what was happening.

“They showed me a lot of respect,” Reyes said. “They treated me right.”

In the manager’s office at Wrigley, Tulowitzki wasn’t thinking the same thing.

“It was kind of surreal,” he said. “It was not how I imagined it would go down.”

He spent 45 minutes talking with Weiss, whom he had known since he was drafted by the Rockies in 2005. He spoke by phone with Bridich, Monfort and Anthopoulos, but he later left the ballpark without speaking with reporters.

The next day, before leaving to join his new team in Toronto, Tulowitzki told reporters that the trade had “blindsided” him.

Bridich and Monfort spoke to reporters in Denver, with the owner getting emotional and the GM calmly explaining that any slight toward Tulowitzki was unintended but unavoidable.

“It wasn’t an ideal situation,” Bridich said this week. “If it could have happened at home, where we could have honored him and he could have said goodbye to the fans, yeah, but that’s not how it worked. You get back to the reality of the business.

“Timelines aren’t always perfect.”

Bridich said there was never any consideration that he and/or Monfort would fly to Chicago to deliver the news in person, and there was no chance of holding up the deal so that Tulowitzki could be brought into the process before it was done. Things moved fast, and once an agreement was reached, Tulowitzki had to be pulled from the game because no one wanted to risk him getting hurt.

The next day, with Reyes traded and Tulowitzki still on the way to Toronto, the Blue Jays lost 3-2 to the Philadelphia Phillies with Ryan Goins playing shortstop.

“We looked flat,” Anthopoulos said. “We looked dead. It was like the hangover from having lost Reyes.”

If there were any regrets, they went away quickly. The Blue Jays won Tulowitzki‘s Toronto debut 8-2, with the new shortstop contributing two doubles, a home run and a big play on defense.

They would win again the next day, and the day after. Even after giving up Hoffman in the Tulowitzki deal, Anthopoulos had enough prospects remaining to make deals for Price, outfielder Ben Revere and reliever Mark Lowe.

After a three-game sweep at Yankee Stadium last weekend, the Blue Jays were 11-0 with Tulowitzki in the lineup (a record they ran to 12-0 with a win over the Oakland Athletics on Tuesday night). Gibbons made Tulowitzki the leadoff hitter, bunching Tulo, Josh Donaldson, Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion atop a power-packed lineup. Tulowitzki had scored 12 runs in his 11 starts.

Those who knew him from his Rockies days were not surprised.

“There’s a competitive fire in Troy that will be reignited by playing on the East Coast,” said Dan O’Dowd, the former Rockies GM.

“I know how he’s wired,” Weiss agreed. “I know how much he’s loving being in a pennant race now. I think he’ll rise to the occasion.”

His friends in Colorado are pulling for him to do well. They suddenly find themselves paying attention to the Blue Jays. Tulowitzki keeps track of them, too. Whatever his feelings about the way the trade went down, he left a lot of friends behind in the Rockies clubhouse.

In time, there’s a chance that any hard feelings will fade, especially if Tulowitzki‘s initial success in Toronto holds up.

Someday, he’ll go back to Colorado for an interleague game or a Rockies reunion.

“Everybody knows Troy has been a great ambassador for the game,” Bridich said. “And a great ambassador for the Rockies.”

He was there for 10 years, from his debut at age 21 through a World Series at age 23 and five All-Star appearances.

Then, on one memorable night at Wrigley Field, it all ended so abruptly.

“Change is uncomfortable,” Bridich said.

But sometimes, change is for the best.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a National Columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball. 

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San Francisco Giants center fielder Angel Pagan has right patella tendinitis. 

Continue for updates.

Pagan To Miss Time Again

Tuesday, August 11

The Giants reported on Tuesday that Pagan has been placed on the 15-day disabled list with right patella tendinitis.    

It is the third consecutive season that Pagan will be missing a significant amount of time because of injury. He played in 71 games in 2013 as he battled hamstring problems and 96 in 2014 with a bad back. 

This has been a nagging injury for Pagan, though, as CSN Bay Area’s Alex Pavlovic reported:

Pagan has been unable to recapture the kind of play that made him such a dynamic piece of the Giants’ roster in the past few years. Usually a speedster who does well to find his way on base, the 34-year-old is batting just .258 with 26 RBI and six stolen bases in 102 games. 

San Francisco has recalled outfielder Juan Perez from Triple-A, who will most likely back up Gregor Blanco while Pagan makes his way back. Blanco has appeared in 86 games in 2015 and is enjoying one of his best seasons in the majors. 

Batting .286 with a .364 on-base percentage, Blanco is a solid replacement for a leadoff man to use while in a bind. 

The Giants can’t afford to let this Pagan injury affect them as they sit 2.5 games behind the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West and 3.5 games back of the Chicago Cubs for the last wild-card spot. 

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com.

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The shortstop originally signed for $375,000, and now he might be the best in the league. The third baseman signed for $50,000, and now he might be the Rookie of the Year.

These are the kinds of stories baseball people love, and the San Francisco Giants have an infield full of them. They have four homegrown starters that cost them not even $2 million in combined bonuses, and they may well have the best four-man unit in the game.

From first baseman Brandon Belt to second baseman Joe Panik to shortstop Brandon Crawford to third baseman Matt Duffy, they’re all good and getting better. They’re all young and under control. And if you add in catcher Buster Posey, also homegrown (although not signed on the cheap), they give the Giants reason to believe that this run of championships could last.

They’re not done this year, even after a lost weekend at Wrigley Field. They need to get Panik back healthy (he’s on the disabled list with a lower back strain and could return next week), and they need to get Mike Leake healthy (on the DL with a hamstring strain).

But it’s not at all crazy to suggest, as Giants pitcher Jake Peavy did Sunday (via John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle), that “this is a better ballclub than [the Giants] had last year.”

Last year’s Giants, as you may remember, won the World Series.

The Giants have won three times in five years, and it’s no longer newsworthy to say that they know what they’re doing. What is interesting is that after first winning because they did a better job than anyone at drafting and developing pitching, the Giants now have a chance to keep winning because they’ve been better than anyone at finding quality infielders.

Belt and Crawford have already been part of two championships, but Belt is 27 and Crawford is 28. Panik and Duffy, who contributed last October, are both just 24.

This season, all four have an OPS above .800 and an OPS+ of 128 or better, per Baseball-Reference.com, meaning that each has been about 30 percent better than average.

“And defensively, they’re like a bunch of Hoover vacuum cleaners on the infield,” said one rival scout who sees the Giants regularly.

It’s fun to hear scouts rave about the Giant infielders now because so many scouts missed on them in the past. Duffy was an 18th-round draft pick, Crawford a fourth-rounder and Belt a fifth-rounder. The Giants took Panik with the 29th pick overall in 2011, but at the time, many outside observers considered the pick something of a reach.

“Our scouts followed these guys for a number of years,” Giants scouting director John Barr said Monday. “They believed in them.”

But even the Giants themselves could be surprised.

Panik didn’t get a chance last season until Marco Scutaro got hurt and the Giants were desperate for help at second base. This year, the Giants signed Casey McGehee to replace Pablo Sandoval at third base and only turned to Duffy when McGehee flopped.

Soon enough, manager Bruce Bochy began batting Duffy third, just in front of Posey. And in a season where the National League is full of talented and touted rookies, Duffy’s Giants teammates have begun making the case that he could be the best of all.

“Duffy has been a ridiculous addition to this club,” outfielder Hunter Pence told Andrew Baggarly of the San Jose Mercury News. “I don’t know how [others are] missing it, because we’re in the middle of the race and he’s doing so much for us. … You’re watching an incredible talent step into the league with Matt Duffy.”

The numbers show it. Baseball-Reference.com credits Duffy with a 3.8 WAR, tied with Pittsburgh‘s Jung Ho Kang for tops among major league rookies. Duffy’s 2015 WAR ranks third on the Giants, behind Posey (5.7) and Crawford (5.4), and just ahead of Panik (3.3) and Belt (3.0).

Not bad for a guy that Baseball America said last winter has left scouts around baseball shaking their heads.

On its list of top Giants prospects, Baseball America had Duffy ranked ninth. That’s right where Panik had been the year before. Neither ever came close to making the newspaper’s list of the top 100 prospects in the game.

In fact, of the four Giants infielders, only Belt made a Baseball America Top 100 list. He ranked 23rd in 2011, the only time he was ranked.

Prospect rankings are nice. Major league performance is better.

With their cheap, productive, young infield, the Giants will take what they have.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball. 

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The sport of baseball has three true outcomes, a concept that’s unfolded as the era of advanced metrics has gained mainstream popularity within the game and amongst its fans.

These outcomes, based on the fact that defense has zero effect on them, are the home run, the walk and the strikeout. These are the only results determined by the batter and pitcher alone, not counting for things like pitch framing or floating strike zones, of course.

In 2015, the three true outcomes found their poster boy in Joc Pederson. The Los Angeles Dodgers rookie center fielder burst into his first full season as a power-hitting strikeout machine with a keen eye and awareness of the zone. This led to plenty of home runs, even more strikeouts, a high on-base percentage, a starting spot in last month’s All-Star Game (because of injuries to other outfielders) and front-running the National League’s Rookie of the Year race.

Then July happened, and the first part of August followed. And two of the three true outcomes virtually disappeared from Pederson’s arsenal, as did nearly all of his value.

His fourth outcome became a drop from the top to the bottom of the batting order, and the fifth was a benching. The sixth, a stint back in the minors, has yet to be discussed by the Dodgers brass, but if Pederson’s trends don’t shift soon, his electric start will give way to a debilitating liability for a team with World Series aspirations.

Don Mattingly said he has heard no internal talk about sending Joc Pederson down until he irons out his swing. Defense too important.

— Mark Saxon (@markasaxon) August 4, 2015

“At some point, if you hit .220 and you don’t hit homers then there’s other things that you try to do,” manager Don Mattingly told reporters last week. “You have to make organizational decisions.

“I don’t think there’s anybody trying to make those right now. And there’s nobody thinking Joc won’t hit. We all believe in Joc still and what he’s going to be able to do. It’s going to be a little bit of a learning process for him this year too.”

The first part of that process was euphoric. Pederson had a 1.057 OPS, .461 OBP, four home runs, 17 walks and 22 strikeouts in 77 April plate appearances. In May, he hit nine homers and drew 16 more walks.

Overall, from April through June, the 23-year-old had a .911 OPS, hit 20 home runs, had a .384 OPB and a 94/55 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He also had a 155 wRC+, a .390 wOBA and a .282 ISO. All three of those marks put him among the game’s elite hitters and MVP candidates.

In July, his OPS was .488. He struck out 31 times and walked four. His OBP plummeted to .229. His wRC+ sank to 38, his wOBA to .211 and his ISO to .090. Him being in the lineup actually cost the Dodgers a half a win, according to FanGraphs.

Pederson also stopped hitting the ball hard in July. His percentage of hard-hit balls dropped 17 percent, and his soft contact rose 13. His line-drive rate dropped three percent, his fly-ball rate dropped seven and his ground-ball rate rose by 10 (h/t Beyond The Box Score for those comparisons).

Those numbers led to Mattingly dropping Pederson from the leadoff spot, where he hit for most of the first half, to the bottom half of the order near the end of the month. Then he benched Pederson for a couple of games two weekends ago. However, Pederson went hitless and struck out three times without a walk in his return. It was his third consecutive game of that ilk as he faded from Rookie of the Year discussions.

Pederson currently has one home run in his last 128 plate appearances after going 0-for-3 Sunday. The only power he’s shown in that time was the energizing show he put on during the Home Run Derby to finish runner-up.

“A lot of times you don’t realize that you’re [pressing],” Mattingly said of Pederson‘s benching. “You see so much more when you don’t have to try to perform that day. Young guys get caught up and their mind starts going over all kinds of stuff.

“Sometimes you can’t see the forest from in the trees. You get too close to it and you don’t see the big picture. I want him to see the big picture.”

The smaller, immediate picture is that Pederson is getting back one of the true outcomes. In his last 23 plate appearances, he has walked nine times, once intentionally, and struck out three times. He still is not showing much power, though.

Pederson does not rate as an outstanding defensive center fielder by the metrics, but the Dodgers still value him as a critical piece of their up-the-middle defense. And considering they don’t have great replacement options at that position and that it is nearly mid-August, optioning him to the minors seems like a long shot.

“You don’t do anything. Keep going,” Mattingly told reporters over the weekend. “Now is not the time to start messing with our club and what we’ve been doing all year. We’ve been a club that plays good defense up the middle.

“We’re trying to win games at this point. He’s been our center fielder all year long. We know who he is. We know what he’s going to be.”

For now, the Dodgers are surviving with Pederson being almost exactly what he wasn’t in the season’s first three months. Going forward and into the postseason, assuming their season lasts that long, their offense desperately needs Pederson to return to being the showcase player for the three true outcomes.

The Dodgers can live with the negative outcome if the other two positive ones are present. If only the negative is there, as has been the case for most of the second half, Pederson will be more of a liability than a help to the ultimate goal.

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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Hall of Famer Randy Johnson played in the league for 22 years, eight of which were for the Arizona Diamondbacks. He won a World Series with the club in 2001.

On Saturday, the Diamondbacks retired his No. 51, and they made the Big Unit a 51-inch corndog. That’s a lot of calories, but he deserves it after an epic career. Eat up, Randy!

[Arizona Diamondbacks]

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Two of the National League’s best teams will duke it out Friday in the first of three games at PNC Park as the Pittsburgh Pirates host the Los Angeles Dodgers, who are road favorites for the contest at sportsbooks monitored by Odds Shark.

The NL West-leading Dodgers wrap up a six-game eastern road trip in Pittsburgh after taking two of three from the Philadelphia Phillies to improve to 6-1 in their past seven games overall.

Los Angeles got an outstanding hitting performance Thursday at Philadelphia from pitcher Zack Greinke, who went 3-for-3 from the plate with a home run to help overcome his worst start in three years during a 10-8 victory.

The Dodgers have now hit double digits in runs twice in seven games with the over going 4-3 for totals bettors during that stretch. However, the under had cashed in three of Los Angeles’ previous four games before Thursday.

The Pirates still hold the lead for the top wild-card spot in the National League, and they are 7-1 to win the NL pennant and 14-1 on the odds to win the World Series compared to 7-1 for the Dodgers on the World Series odds.

Pittsburgh has alternated wins and losses in seven straight games and will send ace Gerrit Cole (14-5, 2.29 ERA) to the mound in the series opener. Cole and the Pirates will take on Los Angeles’ Clayton Kershaw (9-6, 2.37), who currently has a 37-inning scoreless streak.

Pittsburgh has seen the under cash in three of four, and Friday’s pitching matchup makes it a good candidate to become four of five. The Pirates have lost three of Cole’s last four starts following a run of nine wins in 10 outings, and the under has cashed in each of his past three following a run of four consecutive over results.

The other two games of the Pirates vs. Dodgers betting matchup on Saturday and Sunday set up well for Pittsburgh from a starting pitching perspective and could mean favorite status in both. On Saturday, lefty Francisco Liriano (7-6, 2.92) will toe the rubber for the Pirates against Mat Latos (4-7, 4.29) of the Dodgers.

Then the Sunday Night Baseball matchup will feature Pittsburgh’s Charlie Morton (7-4, 4.19) versus Los Angeles’ Alex Wood (7-7, 3.65). Bettors should keep in mind that the Pirates still own one of the best home records in baseball (36-18), while the Dodgers have a losing mark on the road (25-28).

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Two teams that haven’t won the World Series in more than two decades went all in at the July 31 trade deadline.

One team with a $230 million payroll and a 27-year drought did not.

The Kansas City Royals and Toronto Blue Jays acted as if they were desperate to win this year. The Los Angeles Dodgers did not.

The Dodgers still have a team good enough to win a first World Series since 1988. For all that money—and it’s actually more than $300 million, if you count the cash the Dodgers have included in trades—they ought to have a chance.

But for all that money, shouldn’t they have more than just a chance? If they were desperate to win this year, shouldn’t they have ended up with David Price or Cole Hamels as their big pitching addition, not Mat Latos?

Latos has talent, and scouts who saw him over the last month will tell you that he looked as good as his July numbers (a 1.80 ERA in three starts after coming off the disabled list) would indicate. Also, as a free agent at the end of the season, there’s more chance that he’ll be motivated and less chance that he’ll disrupt an already volatile clubhouse.

But he’s not Price, the left-hander who went to the Blue Jays and showed again in his Monday debut why he was considered the top talent on the market.

Many people in baseball expected the Dodgers to get Price, especially after Hamels went from the Philadelphia Phillies to the Texas Rangers. But when the Dodgers made it clear to the Detroit Tigers that all of their top prospects would be off-limits in trade talks (not just Corey Seager and Julio Urias, but lesser names like Jose De Leon, as well), the talks never got serious.

The Tigers quickly understood that they could do better by sending Price elsewhere, and in the deal with Toronto, they got three quality left-handed pitchers. The Dodgers got Latos, Alex Wood, Luis Avilan and Jim Johnson without parting with any top young prospects because they were willing to take on so much salary in what became a three-way deal with the Miami Marlins and Atlanta Braves.

It’s a fair argument that the Dodgers still got what they needed, a solid big league starter to put behind Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke, another good young arm in Wood and a pair of arms to add to their shaky bullpen. They didn’t do badly at the deadline, not at all.

But with all that money spent and no World Series titles since the Kirk Gibson-inspired 1988 championship, the lingering question will always be whether they should have done better.

With Kershaw, Greinke and Price (or Hamels), the Dodgers would have looked like overwhelming favorites. With Kershaw, Greinke and Latos, they look like a team that could win, if things break their way.

The first weekend with the new rotation went just fine, with Greinke, Kershaw and Latos combining for 22 innings with just three runs allowed to the Los Angeles Angels, as the Dodgers swept the Freeway Series.

Nice start, but the Freeway Series isn’t the World Series.

To get to the real thing, the Dodgers may well need to get past the St. Louis Cardinals, the team that has eliminated them the last two seasons (and the team Kershaw has a 7.14 ERA against in four starts in those two series). The Dodgers had their Kershaw-Greinke combination in those two series too. They had Hyun-jin Ryu as their third starter.

And it wasn’t enough.

The Dodgers still aren’t an offensive powerhouse (they’re 15th in MLB in runs scored), and their bullpen still doesn’t dominate (their 3.91 relief ERA is 23rd in the majors). They have questions at the top of their batting order, where Jimmy Rollins (.272 on-base percentage) has replaced rookie Joc Pederson (.488 OPS with four walks and 31 strikeouts in 96 July plate appearances).

They’ve been good enough to stay atop the National League West, good enough to play at a pace that projects to 93 wins, right about what they had last year and the year before.

They should get to the playoffs, and they should get there with some chance to win it all. They’ll get there having preserved the prospect base that gives them a solid future.

All that is fine, and in an analytical sense, I’m sure it all fits. But baseball is an emotional game, too, and Dodger fans’ emotions tell them it’s been an awful long time since they celebrated a championship.

Perhaps this could have been the year. Perhaps it still could be.

For a third of a billion dollars, or whatever it is the Dodgers are spending, you’d think they could do better than perhaps.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball. 

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You could call it a comeback.

Except Clayton Kershaw never went anywhere. 

The best pitcher on the planet still is and has been for most of this season. It’s fair to say he hasn’t been as good as he was a year ago, but you would just barely be correct in that assessment.

The wins and the ERA are not where they were in 2014, but we should all be able to agree that advanced metrics have produced far better barometers to judge a pitcher. And when you look at those things, you realize Kershaw has been every bit the ace the Los Angeles Dodgers need him to be as they attempt to win a third consecutive National League West Championship this season.

He continued to prove so Saturday afternoon as he dominated the Washington Nationals in a 4-2 victory. Kershaw was a victim of the Dodgers’ new hesitation to let pitchers throw complete games—they have just three despite the rotation having the fourth-lowest ERA in the majors—so he reached eight shutout innings, striking out 14 and allowing three hits. He generated 30 swings and misses, tied for the most in a game in the last seven years, according to ESPN Stats & Info.

He used just 101 pitches to do so and lowered his ERA to 2.68, putting him in the league’s top 10.

Kershaw also struck out Bryce Harper, the likely National League MVP, three times as he posted a 90 Game Score, tied for the eighth-highest in the majors this season. For reference, Max Scherzer’s 16-strikeout, one-hit performance in Milwaukee last month was a 100, and his no-hitter was 97.

“He went out there like the MVP that he is,” Harper said after the game, per Jacob Emert of MLB.com. “He was pretty devastating. We tried to go in there and did what we could. I think he is the best pitcher in baseball.”

The prevailing belief when looking at Kershaw’s record and ERA over his first nine starts this year was that he was experiencing a big letdown from 2014, when he swept the league’s Cy Young and MVP Awards. His ERA had hit 4.32, he was 2-3 and the Dodgers were 4-5 in those games.

While Kershaw wasn’t as sharp early in the year, his results were just as much a product of some bad luck and bad breaks, which all pitchers experience. But at times, his frustration was palpable.

“I don’t feel like answering questions right now,” the normally media-friendly Kershaw told MLB.com’s Ken Gurnick after his May 4 start against Milwaukee, when he let a three-run lead in the sixth inning slip away. “I don’t want to analyze it right now. Thanks.”

Plenty of people analyzed those first nine starts for him, though. The conclusion was he was experiencing some bad luck—his .349 BABIP at the time would have been the worst of his career, as would his 65 percent strand rate—that could easily be amended.

Kershaw was still dominating. He was striking out hitters at a blistering rate, placing in the game’s top five in strikeouts per nine innings, strikeout rate and strikeout-to-walk ratio. His xFIP was a major league-best 2.15 going into that ninth start. 

In start No. 10, Kershaw turned the corner and hit the turbo booster. He went seven shutout innings and struck out 10 Atlanta Braves that night. From that start going into the All-Star break, Kershaw had a 1.53 ERA and his BABIP dropped to a more realistic (for him) .270.

Coming out of the break against the Nationals was more of the same, and Kershaw has been as good, even better, than he was in his marvelous 2014. Dodge Insider provided Kershaw’s stats:

Clayton Kershaw, 2014: 1.77 ERA, 0.86 WHIP, 10.9 K/9 Clayton Kershaw, past 10 starts: 1.36 ERA, 0.78 WHIP, 12.5 K/9 http://t.co/NK5pIGBANN

— Dodger Insider (@DodgerInsider) July 18, 2015

Also, with what he did Saturday in D.C., Kershaw became the first pitcher in 100 years with 10-plus strikeouts, no runs allowed and no walks in back-to-back starts, according to ESPN Stats & Info.

“It’s probably as close as I can remember his stuff being to his no-hitter day back last June,” catcher A.J. Ellis told Emert after the game, referencing Kershaw’s nearly perfect game last year.

In a season many thought to be a down one for Kershaw, he is proving that to be absolutely false while continuing to make history.

His FIP was 2.38 entering the game Saturday, third-lowest in the majors. His xFIP was 2.06, best in the majors. And his FanGraphs WAR was 3.7, fourth-best in the majors.

Kershaw might not have put up the prominent numbers early on, the kinds that please fans late to the party thrown by advanced metrics. But he was still quite good and one of the best in the business of throwing baseballs. A correction was bound to happen.

We are seeing that now, and it has made things painfully obvious to the rest of the sport and some of its best hitters, like Harper.

Clayton Kershaw is still the best pitcher in Major League Baseball.

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

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First, let’s get this out of the way: The San Diego Padres aren’t sunk.

Yes, they enter the second half of the season at 41-49, 10 games back in the National League West and 7.5 games off the wild-card pace.

But if this parity-filled 2015 campaign has taught us anything, it’s that every club is a decent hot streak away from contention.

Still, this isn’t how the script was supposed to play out in San Diego.

Led by bold, new general manager A.J. Preller, the Friars had one of the most active offseasons in franchise history. They remade the outfield with trades for Justin Upton, Wil Myers and Matt Kemp. They acquired catcher Derek Norris from the Oakland A’s and third baseman Will Middlebrooks from the Boston Red Sox.

They signed James Shields, one of the premier starting pitchers on the market. And, on the eve of their regular season, they engineered a swap with the Atlanta Braves that netted closer Craig Kimbrel.

After the Kimbrel trade, ESPN.com’s David Schoenfield dubbed Preller “a guy who wants to win” and praised his willingness to jettison tomorrow’s potential talent for a shot at postseason glory today:

Prospects? Who needs prospects? Preller has now dealt away [Matt] Wisler, Trea Turner, Joe Ross, Max Fried, Zach Eflin, Jace Peterson and R.J. Alvarez, seven of the team’s top 11 prospects entering the offseason, according to Baseball America. … The question is whether Preller has built a baseball team or a collection of talent. 

The answer, so far, seems to be the latter. And, in some cases, “talent” is a generous term.

Yes, Upton—the Padres’ lone All-Star—is having a nice all-around season with 14 home runs, 48 RBI and 17 stolen bases.

Shields leads the team with 131 strikeouts and 116.2 innings pitched, and Kimbrel has converted 23 of 24 save opportunities while punching out 48 in 33.1 innings.

Others, however, have fallen far short of expectations. Middlebrooks, who came to San Diego seeking a career resurrection, owns an anemic .215/.242/.367 slash line. And Kemp has defined punchless with a scant eight big flies and a pedestrian .674 OPS.

The glass-half-full perspective is that some of the underachievers may yet achieve.

Kemp has been a late-surging player over the course of his career, posting a higher batting average, slugging percentage and OPS after the break. A mini-power binge during which he hit two home runs in the Pads’ most recent four games offers a glimmer of hope.

Realistically, though, Preller’s grand experiment reeks of failure. He shot for the moon, and the bullet landed on his loafer.

What to do? One option is to stand pat, to keep the club intact and see how the summer unfolds. Another is to double down, to cash in what chips remain in San Diego’s system for a marquee trade target or two and angle for a miracle finish.

The smartest course, though—and the one most likely to set up the Padres for future success—is to shift into sell mode and start dangling pieces.

It’ll mean Preller swallowing his pride and admitting his grand offseason push sent the franchise careening into a ditch, sure.

But it’s the prudent course. And there’s evidence Preller and the Pads are considering it.

On July 11, Peter Gammons reported that San Diego has “asked other teams about possible interest in Shields.”

Upton has also been the subject of persistent trade rumors. But as he told ESPN.com’s Jerry Crasnick during the All-Star festivities in Cincinnati, he still has faith in his current club.

“At this point, I haven’t given up on the team,” Upton said. “I really like the guys, and I like the clubhouse. We still have some time to change the minds of the front office. In a perfect world, we play well over the next two or three weeks and A.J. pumps the brakes on dismantling the team.”

That’s exactly what you’d hope to hear from your star player, and maybe Preller is listening.

He’d be better served listening to the members of the Pads organization who, according to ESPN.com’s Buster Olney, think “it is time to reload and restructure for next season, and the best way to do that is to add players who can help in the future and create more financial flexibility.”

Now, a cynic might argue, for the Padres to trade their way out of this, they’ll have to rely on the same guy who traded them into it. That’s a fair point.

But Preller deserves credit, at least, for thinking big. And he should have the opportunity to clean up his own mess. 

If he fails at that, too? Well, then it might be time to go shopping for a new GM.

All statistics current as of July 15 and courtesy of MLB.com unless otherwise noted.

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From ditching a cell phone and beer to almost sacrificing two drinks, we’ve seen people do crazy things to get a baseball at a game, but this one might take the cake. Actually, this one definitely tops everything. 

A dedicated fan jumped into McCovey Cove to grab a home run ball at the Philadelphia Phillies and San Francisco Giants game on Friday night. 

During the bottom of the seventh inning, the Giants’ Joe Panik launched a two-run shot to right field off Phillies pitcher Jeanmar Gomez. The ball bounced over the soon-to-be wet fan, and without hesitation, he jumped into the water. 

He didn’t even think twice and fist-pumped the souvenir while trying to stay afloat. Understandably, getting a home run ball at a baseball game is awesome, but what about his wallet? Cell phone? Keys? Gum? 

It didn’t matter to this guy. He eventually got out of the water with help from stadium officials and a ring buoy. He was smiling cheek-to-cheek, so to him, it was all worth it. 

The fan’s smile probably lived on after the game, as the Giants destroyed the Phillies 15-2. 

Follow @ArmanWalia on Twitter. 

[MLB, h/t SB Nation]

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