All things considered, Julio Urias is having an extraordinary rookie year. In his age-19 season, Urias has struck out a quarter of all the batters he’s faced in 72 innings. He’s got a 3.50 ERA and a 3.25 FIP, and the list of starting pitchers, age 20 or younger, with better adjusted ERAs and FIPs over the last 50 years runs just six deep. ZiPS already sees Urias as being the near-equal of Cy Young candidate Masahiro Tanaka, and Steamer thinks even more highly of the Dodgers’ young phenom. Already, Urias has put himself on the map as one of baseball’s best young pitchers. And already, Urias is coming after one of teammate Clayton Kershaw’s crowns.

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In the eighth inning of Monday night’s game at Yankee Stadium, Yasiel Puig was asked to pinch-hit against a left-handed relief pitcher named James Pazos. With two outs, nobody on and the Dodgers already winning 6-2, the stakes weren’t terribly high. However, with Puig’s recent return from purgatory Triple-A, it was a good opportunity to give the right-hander an at-bat off the bench over the left-handed Joc Pederson. The result was the first pinch-hit home run of Puig’s career. However, beyond the actual outcome of this one at-bat, Puig’s pinch-hit performance served as a reminder of exactly how important he can be for the Dodgers in September and October.

The latest whispers and rumors indicate that, leading up to the August 31 waiver trade deadline, the Dodgers and Brewers were tantalizingly close to completing a deal that would have sent Puig to Milwaukee and Ryan Braun to Los Angeles. Reportedly, it’s a trade scenario that may be revisited this offseason. For now, however, Puig remains a Dodger. Whatever discord does or doesn’t exist between the player and team ought to be put on the back burner for now because the Dodgers have a role that needs to be filled and Puig is the one here to fill it.

There are a lot of different directions in which the Dodgers could go as they construct their postseason roster, but one of them includes taking the five pure outfielders currently with the team. Did you ever watch Sesame Street either growing up or with your own kids? You know that “One of these things is not like the other” song? Go ahead and sing it in your head while taking a look at the Dodgers five outfielders: Andre Ethier, Joc Pederson, Josh Reddick, Andrew Toles, and Yasiel Puig. (Yeah, that song will be in your head all day. Sorry.)

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Last week, we ran a series of posts laying out the case for the most compelling candidates for the American League’s Most Valuable Player Award (links to all of which are available here). Today, we continue with the National League MVP Award.

Note that, as with last week’s posts, these are designed to make an affirmative argument for their subject and are not intended to serve as comprehensive looks at every candidate on their own. The authors tasked with writing these posts may not even believe their subject actually deserves to win, but they were brave enough to make the case anyway. The goal of these posts is to lay out the potential reasons for voters to consider a variety of candidates and to allow the readers to decide which argument is most persuasive.

Let’s travel back to spring training, shall we? At that point, we projected the Dodgers to win 93 games and take the NL West crown, but we also thought Clayton Kershaw was going to stay healthy and pitch a full season. We thought the rotation behind him would consist of Alex Wood, Brett Anderson, and Scott Kazmir, with Brandon McCarthy and Hyun-Jin Ryu coming back in May or June to provide depth. We thought Andre Ethier and Yasiel Puig would man the corner-outfield spots, with Carl Crawford and Scott Van Slyke serving as the reserves. We thought Chris Hatcher and Yimi Garcia would be effective setup guys to get the ball to Kenley Jansen.

Almost nothing has gone the way the Dodgers expected. Their rotation was decimated by injuries, their outfield by injury and underperformance. The bullpen has been a tilt-o-wheel of guys coming up from the minors to throw some innings before heading back to the PCL. They spent the second half of the year without the best pitcher alive, and set the record for most players placed on the disabled list in a single season. And yet, here they are, two weeks from the end of the season, with a projected final record of 92-70. How on earth did they get here?

Well, it’s easy to credit the team with building admirable depth, since that has been the focus of their roster construction. Guys like Justin Turner and Joc Pederson deserve recognition for holding the offense together. Julio Urias has been terrific as a part-time starter. But, in reality, there’s one big reason the Dodgers are likely to win the NL West despite a historic rash of injuries, and that reason is Corey Seager.

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Near the end of the game between the Blue Jays and Rays yesterday, the camera panned to center field. Evan Longoria was at the plate, and the Jays broadcast team was talking about the third baseman’s power. “He’s got some power to right field, too, now, and I think that’s why you’ll see the outfielders, especially the center fielder and right fielder playing a couple steps back,” said Dan Shulman. “Look at how deep Kevin Pillar is in center field. That’s only a couple of steps, it seems like, for Pillar, from the warning track!” he continued. “We have not seen Kevin Pillar play that deep,” concurred Buck Martinez.

It was impressive. That little dot in center is Pillar. Looks like a wallflower at a middle-school dance.

He was 361 feet from the plate at that moment. It makes sense, given Longoria’s spray chart this year. You’ll notice that Pillar is shaded a little bit to right, which is where Longoria hits many of his deep outs.

Source: FanGraphs

But the Blue Jays were pushing the envelope a bit. Call it situational defense, maybe, because Pillar was playing more than 30 feet further back than the average center fielder against Longoria this year. Given that there were two outs in the eighth inning of a tie game and Brad Miller and Nick Franklin were scheduled to hit behind Evan Longoria, there’s a certain amount of making sure to stop the big hit doesn’t sink the team. In a league where it probably pays to play deep, this was playing just a bit deeper on a guy who hits them deep.

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On Saturday night, Rich Hill was perfect. The Marlins sent 21 batters to the plate against him, and all 21 walked back to the dugout. But when the 22nd batter came up to hit, he did not see Rich Hill; he saw Joe Blanton instead. Faced with a choice of letting Hill chase history or preserve his team’s #2 starter for the postseason, manager Dave Roberts chose the latter, removing Hill from after seven perfect innings and 89 pitches thrown. After the game, he explained his decision.

“I’m going to lose sleep tonight,” Roberts said. “And I probably should.”

His voice was gravelly and low, unable to find joy even as hip-hop blared in the clubhouse. He suspected he will never “have to make a tougher decision” than the choice he made in Saturday’s seventh inning.

…

“I’m very, very sensitive to his personal achievements,” Roberts said. “I really am. But nothing should get in the way, or compromise, our team goal.”

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His season is over and Kyle Garlick is headed home. Like most minor leaguers, the 24-year-old Los Angeles Dodgers outfield prospect will spend his offseason working. He has a pair of part-time jobs lined up, which will help him make ends meet until spring training rolls around. He’ll then resume his underdog quest to make it to the big leagues.

He’s already exceeded expectations. A 28th-round senior sign in 2015 out of Cal Poly Pomona, Garlick dominated A-ball last year, putting up a .987 OPS between multiple stops. This season he slashed .293/.348/.508, with 42 doubles and 19 home runs, between Rancho Cucamonga and Double-A Tulsa.

As recently as two years ago the one-time Oregon Duck was uncertain about his baseball future. An injury, followed by a family health issue, preceded a season in which he put up mediocre numbers and was subsequently bypassed in the 2014 amateur draft.

Garlick talked about the challenges he’s overcome — and the ones still in front of him — prior to suiting up for the final game of his 2016 season.

———

Garlick on what it’s like to have the minor-league season end: “A couple of weeks ago I would have told you I was really excited. This being my first full season, my body wasn’t feeling too great. I was drained, both physically and mentally. But now that the last game of the year is here, I’m actually feeling kind of sad. I don’t really want it to end. I love playing this game and I’m going to miss is it over the next five months or so.

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Jose De Leon made his debut over the weekend and he allowed four runs in six innings to a mediocre Padres lineup. Though he came away with the win, it would be easy to scan the box score and conclude that he probably didn’t deserve it. Just another amped-up rookie going through some major-league jitters. It’s not an uncommon course of events. The first time for everyone ought to be a freebie.

The Dodgers, though, would tell you that De Leon pitched better than that. And even the box score itself would tell you that De Leon pitched better than that. Along with the four runs, De Leon whiffed nine without issuing a walk. Of course, yeah, it was just the Padres. And you don’t ever want to allow four runs. No one’s quite sure when De Leon is going to start again. But the reality of his debut is that he looked exactly as advertised. There are reasons why De Leon has never been traded.

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Heading into the season, the Dodgers’ outfield looked remarkably deep, and the big question was how Dave Roberts was going to find enough playing time to keep everyone happy. The starting trio of Joc Pederson, Yasiel Puig, and Andre Ethier all looked like solid regulars, but because of the depth, the team was likely to run a bunch of platoons: Scott Van Slyke would share time with Ethier in left, Enrique Hernandez would give Pederson a break against lefties in center, and Carl Crawford would play some days as well, probably at the expense of Puig on days right-handers were on the mound, with Ethier shifting back to right field on those days.

It hasn’t worked out that way. Ethier broke his leg in spring training and has missed the whole season. Crawford played poorly enough to get released. Hernandez and Van Slyke have struggled with injuries and poor performance, and have seen their playing time reallocated to Howie Kendrick and Trayce Thompson, respectively. The team tired of having Puig around, so they traded for Josh Reddick in July.

But despite cycling through a half-dozen internal options and making a deadline acquisition for a former All-Star, the Dodgers are currently being carried by an outfielder that they could not have imagined would be playing a significant role for them this year. Last night, after getting down early in the second game of a double-header, they came from behind to beat the Rockies 10-8 on the strength of a grand slam from rookie Andrew Toles. It would have been more shocking if Toles hadn’t been torching big-league pitching since making his debut in July.

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As if Rich Hill needs another way to be unique. How many other pitchers experience their career breakout at 35 and become one of the best in the league? How many other pitchers throw their curveball half the time? How many other pitchers who typically throw overhand freeze batters by occasionally dropping to sidearm? How many other pitchers speak fluently about their pitch axis, perceptual velocity, vertical and horizontal planes, and name drop DRA in interviews? Hell, how many other pitchers develop blisters on their fingers which require more than a month to heal? Rich Hill doesn’t need another thing to make him unique, and yet here we are.

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Last night, the Dodgers and Phillies made a deal that, on the surface, is your typical minor August move of minor role players. The Dodgers landed Carlos Ruiz, a 37 year old catcher, in exchange for A.J. Ellis, a 35 year old catcher, and a prospect of dubious quality. The impetus for the trade seems pretty clear; Ruiz can still hit lefties a bit, and so he’s a better fit as Yasmani Grandal’s platoon partner in the postseason. Ellis isn’t much at the plate these days, so by adding Ruiz, the team has slightly upgraded their offense against left-handed pitching.

But the trade was a big deal because, as was immediately apparent given the reaction to the news of the deal, A.J. Ellis was beloved by his teammates, and especially, by the team’s ace.

Ellis described Kershaw as “shocked” by the trade. The two men wept together, he said.

— Andy McCullough (@McCulloughTimes) August 25, 2016

Ellis and Kershaw are obviously quite close, but other members of the team also showed their support for Ellis, and made it clear they will miss him.

It’s rare that a player can wholly embody a club’s energy and ideals. Dodgers inside and outside the clubhouse walls will miss @AJEllis17

— Brandon McCarthy (@BMcCarthy32) August 25, 2016

By trading away a beloved part of the clubhouse for a minor bench upgrade, the media has been handed a very simple narrative: nerd-run team doesn’t value chemistry, tears apart clubhouse in the process. The fact that the Dodgers were one out away from being no-hit on the night Ellis got traded didn’t do anything to slow that story down. But of course the Dodgers do care at least a little bit about chemistry, or Yasiel Puig wouldn’t be hanging out in Triple-A right now. So, six days away from roster expansion, when Ellis could have kept hanging around the team even after they acquired Ruiz, why did the Dodgers trade A.J. Ellis?

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