The knock on Clayton Kershaw was always his control. He couldn’t throw some of his pitches for strikes and was prone to wild spells. He has pitched so spectacularly this season that some may not remember that critique.

In 198 2/3 innings, Kershaw is still striking over a batter per inning, but his walk rate has dropped to slightly over six percent of opposing hitters. While that rate isn’t in the top ten of the National League right now, it represents a marked improvement. From 2008-10, Kershaw walked 11.1 percent of the opposition, ranging from 11-13 percent over the three year span. Among senior circuit pitchers with 400 innings pitched in the span, only Jonathan Sanchez issued free passes with a greater frequency.

Missing bats was never a problem, as his career 9.4 K/9 will attest, but his filthiness proved detrimental to his command. He had the stuff to succeed but had not yet harnessed it. Thus the walks. Now those walks are a thing of the past and is he surpassing what many believed to be his potential at the ripe age of 23 years old.

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I can’t decide whether the Dodger’s situation this season is depressing, funny, or so depressing that it is funny. James Loney’s continued presence and playing time is sad/ridiculous in itself — maybe manager Don Mattingly thinks his own 1995 season with the Yankees wasn’t so bad (he was Donnie Freaking Baseball, after all!), and Loney has been almost that “good.” But today’s Donnie Baseball-related news (and we know that’s what brings you here to FanGraphs) isn’t about Loney, but about right fielder Andre Ethier.

Ethier has been playing on a bad knee that will require surgery in the off-season, and reportedly feels like the Dodgers don’t care. Unsurprisingly, neither Mattingly nor Ned ‘Snakeskin Boots‘ Colletti weren’t all that pleased about Ethier’s public comments. You can follow the links for the he said-he said. It does seem, given the situation between Ethier and management, the organization’s financial and (non-)competitive situation, and Ethier’s coming jump in salary, that he is probably on his way out as a Dodger. Unfortunately, assuming they plan on trading Ethier in the off-season, he doesn’t have all that much value.

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Earlier this season, I re-introduced the two statistics Shutdowns and Meltdowns. In short, these two stats are an alternative way of evaluating relief pitchers, providing an alternative from the age-old standbys Saves and Blown Saves. If a pitcher enters a game and makes their team more likely to win, they get credit for a Shutdown; if they make their team more likely to lose, they get a Meltdown. It’s a simple enough concept, no?

Shutdowns and Meltdowns are a great way to look at which relievers are under- or overvalued based on their Saves total, and it can also be a useful tool for evaluating middle relievers. So which relievers have are being sneakily good or bad this year? Let’s take a look.

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From Clayton Kershaw to Chad Billingsley to Rubby de la Rosa (a recent victim of Tommy John surgery), the Los Angeles Dodgers have displayed a knack for developing top-flight pitching talent. The newest hurler to emerge is Nate Eovaldi, but he’s just the tip of the iceberg in what should be LA’s strong wave of young, cost-controllable talent. Other names to tuck away for future reference include Allen Webster, Zach Lee, Garrett Gould — and recent first-round pick, Chris Reed.

Eovaldi is probably the least-heralded prospect of the group. A former 11th-round selection in 2008 out of high school in Texas, he would have gone much higher if he hadn’t been slowed by Tommy John surgery in his junior year. He received an over-slot deal and has not had any major issues with his elbow in pro ball. Breaking out in 2011 at double-A, Eovaldi did a nice job of keeping runners off base (6.64 H/9) and struck out his fair share of batters (8.65 K/9). On the downside, the 21-year-old is a fly-ball pitcher and has struggled with his control (4.02 BB/9). Eovaldi is probably in the majors a little early, but his mid-90s fastball has a lot of promise; he just needs to learn to better-control his secondary pitches and learn the value of changing speeds.

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Ron Fairly was a better player than you probably realize. In 21 major-league seasons he hit .266/.360/.408, with 215 home runs, while spending the prime of his career in an extreme pitcher’s park, in an extreme pitcher’s era. Overshadowed by big-name teammates, he quietly helped the Dodgers to World Series titles in 1959, 1963 and 1965.

Fairly is also a good storyteller  — especially when the stories pertain to the Dodger-Giants rivalry. When Juan Marichal attacked John Roseboro with a bat, Fairly was there. Ditto when Sandy Koufax was dominating hitters, and Don Drysdale was knocking them down. What did it feel like to get drilled in the back by Bob Gibson? What hitting advice did he get from Ted Williams? What did Duke Snider say about Roy Campanella? Well, now you’ll know.

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David Laurila: You had a productive a career that looks even better after accounting for era and park factors. Were you underrated?

Ron Fairly: “I think everybody feels that maybe they weren’t appreciated as much as they should have been for the contributions they made to ball clubs. I think it goes without saying. A lot of players feel that way.

“I think my numbers would certainly be better today. I played in an era — the 1960s — that might have been the most difficult in which to make your living, as a hitter, of any in the history of the game of baseball. I played in Dodger Stadium, which was a big ballpark where the ball didn’t carry very well. It doesn’t take many [lost] hits during the course of a season for your average to drop a little bit, and you weren’t going to have as many home runs or RBIs there.”

Laurila: Sandy Koufax put up his numbers in that same environment. While he was obviously a great pitcher, was he maybe a little overrated? Read the rest of this entry »

In an effort to sure up their interior defense, the St. Louis Cardinals agreed to a trade with the Los Angeles Dodgers, bringing Rafael Furcal back east in exchange for Double-A outfielder Alex Castellanos. The trade was first reported last night, but could not be made official until Furcal – a 10/5 player – waived his no-trade clause to complete the transaction.

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I’m sure I’m accidentally quoting dozens of able writers and analysts when I state that at the heart of a baseball game lies the pitcher-batter confrontation — and that, at the heart of that confrontation, is a power struggle over rights to the strike zone.

If, in some kind of alternate reality, a batter (for whatever reason) weren’t permitted to swing, it’s very possible that Josh Tomlin or Doug Fister or some other control artist would dominate the game. If, in a different reality from that, there were no such thing as a base on balls — that a pitcher just needed, say, to get three strikes — then Aroldis Chapman and his 13.9% swinging-strike percentage would be incredibly valuable (until such a time as his arm fell off, that is).

As it turns out, batters are allowed to swing and there are such things as four-ball walks — and it’s for these twin reasons that pitchers must employ all manner of spins and changes of speed and menacing scowls to defeat their opponents within the strike zone (or, if possible, tempt them out of it).

Currently — and somewhat unexpectedly, I’d suggest — the pitcher most frequently winning this battle for strike-zone supremacy is Dodger lefty Clayton Kershaw.

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…since 1974, when our play-by-play database begins.

On Monday, I posted about the three worst double plays ever according to Win Probability Added (WPA). From 1974 through yesterday’s games, there have been 89072 double plays caused by groundouts (I’m leaving out other sorts of double plays as, from the hitter’s perspective at least, they have more to do with dumb luck). Of those, only 51 have a positive WPA. However, it does happen from time to time, and while the shifts aren’t as dramatic in terms of WPA, the circumstances make them more interesting (at least to me) than the negative WPA occasions.

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Whence we last examined yonder batting orders, we came away with several expected observations (Jose Bautista plays baseball like a video game, the Oakland Athletics do not care much for scoring runs, Rick Ankiel and Ian Desmond are not feared hitters, and so forth) as well as a number of curious findings (the Cubs lead-off combo was tops in the majors, the 7th hitters on AL teams were worse than the 9th hitters, NL managers effectively managed the bottoms of their lineups, and such).

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In 2007, Daisuke Matsuzaka became the talk of baseball with his Gyroball and the over $51M paid by the Red Sox to negotiate for him. The next season, Hiroki Kuroda quietly signed with the Dodgers. Since coming over from Japan, Matsuzaka has gotten more media coverage while the less publicized Kuroda has been the better pitcher on the field.

Matsuzaka came to the U.S. under a media storm which can be seen in the number of news articles written about him. Doing a Google search for news stories shows that he has had about 25K news articles written about him. On the other hand, Kuroda has had only about 1/4 the number of online articles. The 36-year-old Kuroda has definitely flown under the radar compared to his fellow countryman.

Since joining the league, their only similarity seems to be that they were from Japan. After signing with the Red Sox, Dice-K had 15 wins and over 200 Ks, helping the Red Sox to a 2007 World Series title. He had similar production in 2008 with an 18-3 record. In 2009 is when injuries began to creep up on him. In 2009 and 2010 he went on the DL five times and missed 164 games. In 2011, the story hasn’t been much different. He managed only seven starts and has been on the DL since May 17th.

His WAR totals definitely mirror his ability to stay healthy. In 2007 and 2008, he generated 7.2 WAR. From 2009 on he has totaled only 3.2 WAR. The 30-year-old still has a chance to rebound to his previous levels, but after each injury he deals with, the chances get slimmer and slimmer.

On the other hand, Kuroda has been fairly steady with his production while with the Dodgers. He has averaged 3.3 WAR and 28 starts from 2008 to 2010. So far in 2011 he has generated 1.2 WAR for career total of 11.1 WAR in 3.5 seasons, or 0.7 WAR more than Matsuzaka has created in his 4.5 seasons with the Red Sox.

Besides the fanfare of the signing and helping lead the Red Sox to a World Series Championship, it can be easy to tell why Matsuzaka gets more media attention. His 49-30 record looks prettier than Kuroda’s 33-39 record. Also he has been able to strike out more batters (8.2 K/9) than Kuroda (6.6 K/9).

Kuroda, on the other hand walks, less than half the batters (2.1 BB/9) than Matsuzaka (4.4 BB/9). Even though Kuroda has started seven fewer games, has has generated a bit more WAR due to his better walk rate. Kuroda’s career ERA/FIP/xFIP values (3.52/3.52/3.63) are about 0.75 points lower than Matsuzaka’s (4.25/4.25/4.52) values.

Matsuzaka came over from Japan with a media blitz and once he is done pitching, there will probably be another one. Kuroda has had less hype surrounding him, but has been the better of the two pitchers.