One of my favorite things about baseball is how Clayton Kershaw has never been able to master a changeup. There’s absolutely no one in baseball who needs a changeup less than Clayton Kershaw, but, drive is drive. He’s been frustrated by his own lack of progress, because as far as he’s concerned, he’ll forever see room for improvement. He still has an ERA. Runs are mistakes.

Kershaw wants to be better. It doesn’t matter to him how silly that sounds. He’s willing to try different things, and that brings us to this past weekend, when Kershaw and the Dodgers blew out the Rockies. We’re going to fast-forward to the seventh inning, when the Dodgers were up by eight runs. Actually, no, before we do that, here’s an image from Texas Leaguers. Kershaw’s estimated 2016 release points:

Three pitches stand out. Here’s the high one, from April:

You might’ve forgotten about that. The baseball season is long. Anyway, now, seventh inning, facing the Rockies. Here’s Kershaw throwing a pretty ordinary Kershaw-y pitch to Nolan Arenado:

Real good pitch. Here’s the following delivery:

You see that? So, Arenado singled. He was shortly eliminated. With two outs, up came Gerardo Parra. A typical Kershaw pitch:

And, the very next pitch:

You see Parra look out at the mound. Arenado did the same thing. That’s presumably because Kershaw gave them both a sudden, weird, different look. I’ll use screenshots now. The first of the two shown Parra pitches:

The second of the two shown Parra pitches:

Look at the arm. Look at the release point. Two times in the seventh inning, with the leverage about as low as it can get, Clayton Kershaw dropped down. He threw one ball, and he threw one strike, which earned a strikeout. Here’s a one-image comparison, with the ordinary release point shown by the yellow dot:

Just as Clayton Kershaw doesn’t need a changeup, he doesn’t need a second slot. He’s already the best at what he does in the game. But, I mean, what’s the harm? Especially at 8-0? I’m going to guess he’s tried this a few times in the bullpen. Might as well see if it plays in a game, with the playoffs coming up. Anything for an edge. I suppose even the best players have to work hard to remain the best.

I will say, Kershaw’s low-slot delivery doesn’t look so smooth. It doesn’t quite seem comfortable, and maybe you shouldn’t expect it to. That’s not how he’s thrown, but that second fastball was perfectly located, and you don’t need to be flawless if you’re offering a second look, for the surprise of it. The ball gets to the catcher in less than half a second. That doesn’t give hitters much time to process. I wonder if this was Kershaw’s idea, or if he’s been having conversations with Rich Hill. Hill loves his unpredictability. Imagine Hill’s deception with Kershaw’s stuff.

Or, don’t. The result would be terrifying. And besides, there’s not yet any indication this is going to keep up. For the time being, all we know is that Clayton Kershaw tried an experiment two times in a low-leverage inning. Maybe that’s all we’ll ever see. Or maybe, you know, it’s not. What am I, God?

Update

As shown in the comments, Kershaw was indeed inspired by Hill. And it turns out the strikeout pitch to Parra was the fastest pitch Kershaw has thrown in 2016, by a few tenths of a point. So.

Rewinding the clock roughly 11 months, we’d find Chase Utley in a very different place. He had just completed a .212/.286/.343 season that led to 423 plate appearances of replacement-level value. He was the subject of significant (justified) criticism for tackling Ruben Tejada and breaking his leg during the NLDS. Then 36, Utley was staring into the twilight of his career and it didn’t look like there were a lot of great days left.

Utley is a borderline Hall of Famer, delivering five Cooperstown-level peak seasons from 2005 to -09 and then five more well above-average seasons from 2010 to -14. His problem has always been that a good portion of his value has been tied up in defense and base-running. Given his slightly late debut, accumulating the sort of counting stats one often requires to earn 75% of the vote is probably out of reach. He’s not a slam-dunk case, but from an objective statistical sense, he’s worthy of consideration.

Players of Utley’s caliber often need a narrative to lift them over the last hurdles of a Hall of Fame candidacy. Unfortunately for Utley, it looks like his final notable act is might be having injured another player and ushering in a rule named for his transgression. Perhaps he’ll carry the Dodgers to a World Series this October, but if he doesn’t, might I suggest one final argument in favor of Mr. Utley’s election. Chase Utley is a week away from joining one of baseball’s most exclusive clubs.

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In light of Oakland right-hander Jharel Cotton’s minor-league success, his major-league success (which includes a 1.50 ERA over three starts) isn’t an entirely surprising development. More surprising, perhaps, is how he’s achieved that success — less by means of his celebrated changeup and more by means of his barely-ever-mentioned-once cut fastball.

Curious as to what might explain this development — and curious, generally, about what constitutes a successful cutter — I contacted pitch-type enthusiast and mostly tolerable colleague Eno Sarris. What follows is the product of our correspondence. The author’s questions appear in bold, Sarris’s in normally weighted typeface.

*****

Because I’m not the foremost expert on anything, Eno — except perhaps the length and breadth of my own personal weakness — I’m also not an expert on Jharel Cotton. That said, it’s probably also fair to say that I’ve followed him with some interest. He finished atop the Fringe Five leaderboard last year (tied with Matt Boyd and Sherman Johnson). He finished among the top 10 on that same arbitrarily calculated scoreboard this year, too.

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In 2012, Kenta Maeda threw a curveball or two a game. He threw three or four four-seam fastballs for every sinker. He was a four-seam/slider guy with the occasional changeup, is what he was. And that’s what I had to work with when I tried to find a comp for him and settled on pitchers like Aaron Nola and a young Kenshin Kawakami.

I was probably wrong, but it’s also possible that what we’re seeing now is a different Maeda. He allows that it’s possible, too.

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The National League Cy Young race is an incredibly competitive one, and as Dave Cameron (who has a vote this year) broke down a few weeks ago, much of the differences between the candidates deals with run prevention in a team sense (RA/9-WAR and ERA) versus run prevention in a component sense (FIP, WAR). As a result, there has been considerable discussion on the concept of weak contact, and last week I looked at the role of the Cubs defense in the Chicago pitchers’ low BABIPs. Taking a small step further, let’s use the Statcast to look at weak and strong contact to determine if the Cy Young candidates in the National League have been helping out their defenses.

To whittle down the candidates, I found the pitchers who are among the National League’s top 10 both by WAR and RA/9-WAR — and then added Jose Fernandez, who just missed the second list. This is a list of those pitchers and their respective ERA, FIP and WAR marks.

As you can see, the NL pitchers ranked first and second in ERA only rank sixth and seventh in FIP, which has led to discussions, particularly with regard to Kyle Hendricks, about how to evaluate such discrepancies when discussing a pitcher’s Cy Young candidacy. To examine the type of contact a pitcher is generating, ee can start with a simple look at average exit velocity. Here are the pitchers’ average exit-velocity numbers and MLB ranks, per Baseball Savant.

While the evidence isn’t overwhelming, there is some reason to think that a pitcher has some, if not a lot, of influence over exit velocity, with the bulk of the influence coming from the batter. Those arguing for Kyle Hendricks for the Cy Young would likely say there is a considerable effect and point to the very good exit-velocity numbers and very low BABIP he’s conceded as evidence. That said, Clayton Kershaw has an even better average exit velocity and his BABIP isn’t quite as low as Hendricks’. Which pitcher gets more credit?

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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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