Not too long ago, Dave ran through his annual trade value series. Predictably, he ranked the most valuable player in baseball as being Mike Trout. Less predictably, but still predictably, he ranked the most anti-valuable player in baseball as being Albert Pujols. Mike Trout and Albert Pujols are teammates! A fun question, then, that showed up in a chat: does Pujols cancel Trout out? In other words, would it make sense for the Angels to package Trout and Pujols together for nothing? It’s totally hypothetical and unrealistic, but it’s an awesome thought experiment, and when Dave ran the numbers, he determined that, no, the package still has value because Trout is that amazing.

So, we’ll never see a trade involving Albert Pujols to offset Mike Trout. But perhaps we could see a deal with a similar design. Playing the part of Pujols: Matt Kemp. Playing the part of Trout: not a guy like Trout at all, but an interesting and talented young prospect. See, it would appear the Dodgers are motivated to move Kemp to another team, and given his salary commitment, there are a few ways the Dodgers could make Kemp more appealing.

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Over the last few weeks, the Dodgers have been one of the primary suitors linked to a potential David Price trade, along with the Mariners and Cardinals. However, the Rays hot streak has made Price’s availability an open question, and now, perhaps the more likely scenario is that the team could trade for Jon Lester instead. The Red Sox playoff odds are down to about 3%, and Lester has publicly said that he won’t hold it against the team if they trade when it comes to offseason negotiations for a new contract. Given those two variables, trading Lester makes a lot of sense, and the Dodgers are apparently quite interested in him as well.

I’d like to make a suggestion to Ned Coletti, however: you don’t need to do it. In fact, you probably shouldn’t.

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Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

The Dodgers’ outfield situation might be more complicated than ever. Yasiel Puig is one of the league’s better young players, you’re all familiar with the three expensive veterans, Scott Van Slyke is a better player than even the Dodgers might’ve recognized, and Joc Pederson is hanging out in Triple-A with a four-digit OPS. It’s pretty obvious that some bodies are going to have to be moved, and one trade possibility is Matt Kemp. Kemp was the subject of rumors over the offseason, and those rumors haven’t gone away now that Kemp’s on the field and getting kind of squeezed out. The idea is he isn’t yet 30, and he’s an athlete who can be a source of right-handed power. If the Dodgers were to cover some of Kemp’s remaining contract, they would be able to find a destination.

On paper, Kemp is a two-time winner of a Gold Glove. Yet one of the problems here is that Kemp doesn’t appear to be a good defender. He’s been moved away from center field by a team without a true center fielder, and Kemp’s reduced mobility reduces the value he can provide, to the Dodgers or to someone else. Worse, Kemp isn’t accepting the aging process. From a newsy article Wednesday, by Ken Rosenthal:

The outfielder’s agent, former major-league pitcher Dave Stewart, told FOX Sports on Wednesday that Kemp again wants to be an everyday center fielder, something that isn’t in his immediate future with the Dodgers.

“Whatever they want to do we’re favorable to, as long as it gives him an opportunity to play every day,” Stewart said. “He’d like to eventually go back to center field. He’s not opposed to right or left. But his hope at some point is to get back to center.”

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As a starting pitcher, you get to the All Star Game by dominating with a full array of pitches. You’re built to go deep into games and see lineups multiple times. You scout the opposing hitters and it’s all a lot of work. Then you get to the All Star Game, you break from your routine, you have to come in for a short stint, and you can air it out.

It’s a situation ripe for fastballs.

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The last time Clayton Kershaw allowed a run, his team was trailing the Giants in the National League West by seven and a half games. The Dodgers have since caught up, in part because of the whole thing where Clayton Kershaw hasn’t allowed any runs, and for as much as this is a particularly pitcher-friendly era for the game, Kershaw these days has achieved a basically impossible level, standing out from the group of pitchers standing out from the rest of the pitchers. If the best pitchers get strikeouts while limiting walks and homers, 2014 Kershaw has been just about perfect, improving from a Cy Young campaign that was his second in three years.

It is absolute silliness that Clayton Kershaw owns a 1.85 ERA. I’ll note also, for good measure, he hasn’t allowed a single unearned run. It is additional absolute silliness that Kershaw is one start away from possessing a 1.16 ERA. Through 13 starts, he’s allowed 18 runs, but in 12 of those starts, he’s allowed a combined 11 runs. On May 17, Kershaw allowed 39% of his runs in 8% of his appearances, getting yanked in the second inning. Kershaw entered that game with a 1.74 ERA. Since that game, he’s posted a 0.97 ERA. That was a start that didn’t at all fit the greater pattern, so it makes you wonder: how did it happen? How did Clayton Kershaw get bombed by the Diamondbacks in the middle of May?

Let’s take a look. If nothing else, this post reveals what an actually mortal Clayton Kershaw can look like. It is an increasingly unfamiliar image.

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Think if you will, for a moment, about Jose Fernandez. What’s impressed you most about the healthy Jose Fernandez? Probably, it’s all the strikeouts, many of them coming on his breaking ball. This year, Clayton Kershaw has Jose Fernandez’s strikeout rate. Now veer off and think instead about Koji Uehara. The most amazing thing, probably, about Uehara is his impeccable command. This year, Kershaw has Koji Uehara’s walk rate. Finally, think about Tim Hudson. Hudson is among the league’s premier groundball specialists. He’s always been armed with a devastating hard sinker. This year, Kershaw has Tim Hudson’s groundball rate. This year’s Kershaw basically had the first three picks in the pitcher ability fantasy draft, and that explains how he’s allowed just 18 runs in ten starts, with seven of them coming in one.

None of them came in yesterday’s. Technically, Clayton Kershaw finished with a no-hitter, and not a perfect game. Realistically, he threw 1.037 perfect games, going above and beyond in the way that Armando Galarraga previously went above and beyond. And unlike with Galarraga, this wasn’t a start that came out of nowhere — with Kershaw, there was a sense of inevitability. You analyze his Wednesday start and you realize he didn’t do anything differently. He pitched like Clayton Kershaw, and this version of Clayton Kershaw was going to end up with at least one start of this kind. It was more a matter of when and where.

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Because Hanley Ramirez sucks at playing defense, baseball will not officially recognize Clayton Kershaw’s effort tonight as a “perfect game”. But I would like to submit that if this doesn’t qualify as a perfect game, nothing should.

28 batters came to the plate; 15 of them struck out. Of the 13 who managed to put the ball in play, nine of them hit the ball on the ground. One of the four balls hit in the air didn’t leave the infield. His FIP for the game was -0.24, because the model isn’t designed to handle dominance at this level. His xFIP was 0.19.

Here is the full list of nine inning outings with a Game Score of 102 or better, since 1914.

Kerry Wood: 105 (9 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, 20 K)
Clayton Kershaw: 102 (9 IP, 0 H, 0 BB, 15 K)

That’s it. That’s the entire list.

Clayton Kershaw did not retire every single batter he faced tonight, so technically, he wasn’t perfect. Screw technicalities, though; what Clayton Kershaw just did was far more impressive than going 27-up, 27-down and relying on your defense in order to do it. Clayton Kershaw just threw one of the most dominant performances in the history of baseball.

It might not have been perfect. It was better.

Yasiel Puig, it should go without saying, is one of the most fascinating players in baseball. He was incredible in his debut last year, and somehow has been better this year, to a near-historic extent, as he’s notably improved his plate discipline and become one of the best overall hitters in the game. He’s almost certainly going to start in the All-Star Game, and, along with Andrew McCutchen, Troy Tulowitzki, Carlos Gomez and Giancarlo Stanton, he’s going to get some National League MVP consideration.

Really, it’s not hard to see why. If you think about a “five-tool player,” Puig seems to fit that description pretty well. Does he have the hit tool? Of course. Power? Obviously. Throwing arm? Even more obviously. Defense? Well, the defensive metrics don’t love him, but he can do this, which also took a fair amount of the fifth tool, speed. There’s seemingly nothing Puig can’t do on a baseball field; there’s seemingly several things he can do that no one else can.

Except… there’s one thing that Puig is still really, really bad at: For all his speed, he absolutely cannot steal bases, to the point that he really should give up trying to completely. For now, at least. Read the rest of this entry »

The Rays may be in a new position when it comes to this year’s trade deadline. Since their playoff odds have dropped more than any other team’s since the beginning of the season and are now close to 5%, it’s at least hard to see them as buyers. Then again, they haven’t made a ton of in-season acquisitions in their more competitive past, and their team is built for 2015 as much as it was built for this year — it’s likely that their transition from buyers to sellers may come without many big moves.

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