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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The price of relief pitching is on the rise. Baseball die hards are currently having a fierce debate about reliever valuation, but it’s relatively clear that teams are willing to pony up for quality back of the bullpen arms. The recent deals for Ken Giles, Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller, and Will Smith demonstrate as much. Clubs want good relievers (who can blame them!) and they are allocating more resources toward their acquisition.

I’m not an economist, but I imagine teams would rather acquire a high-quality reliever who isn’t expensive than one who is. Unfortunately, market forces tend to get in the way and you wind up trading lots of prospects for a couple seasons of reliever help. Unless you’re the Dodgers. If you’re the Dodgers, you take a gamble on Joe Blanton’s 2015 season and get a setup man at utility-infielder prices.

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The Reds are bad, and the Dodgers just clobbered them. As a part of that clobbering, Adrian Gonzalez socked three dingers. Here, you can watch them all! Each is impressive in its own way, I suppose. They’re most impressive as a group.

There was a time when Gonzalez’s power was absent. He hit three home runs in April. He hit three home runs, combined, in May and June. The fairly obvious culprit was a back injury, and it takes no imagination at all to figure out how an achy back could affect a swing. Gonzalez got some treatment. He insisted his back felt better. The numbers still didn’t quite show up.

Now they’re showing up. From the looks of things, Gonzalez is indeed healthy again, and it simply took him a short stretch to re-find what previously had made him successful. Adrian Gonzalez is looking like Adrian Gonzalez again. The most compelling evidence is probably what follows, as drawn from Baseball Savant. Here are nearly two years of Gonzalez’s batted balls, as tracked by Statcast. This plot shows rolling average launch angles.

That dip is impossible to miss, as an injured and compromised Gonzalez plummeted toward 0. He’s reversed that, again successfully putting batted balls in the air. And he’s once more hitting with authority. Here’s a rolling-average plot of hard-hit rate, and this doesn’t include Monday’s game, not that it would make a huge difference:

Gonzalez is getting his swing back, and he’s also showing a better ability to hit the ball hard to right. Of course, at his best, he’s been more of an all-fields threat — and Monday, he pulled two homers while sending another the other way. I know it was a day game in Cincinnati against the Reds, but big-league homers are big-league homers. Gonzalez can hit them again, and he can do other things, and suddenly he’s up to a 123 wRC+. That’s in line with where he’s been for a while.

The Dodgers are still playing without Clayton Kershaw. The Dodgers are still winning without Clayton Kershaw. The Dodgers, of course, would love Kershaw back, but since the All-Star break, Gonzalez has been a key part of what’s been the best offense in the National League. Kershaw’s important. He’s pretty far from being everything.

It feels like ages ago, but back when he was a high-level prospect, George Springer was absolutely fascinating. In Springer, the Astros had a phenomenal athlete with almost unparalleled bat speed. But Springer’s game also came with a lot of swinging and missing, whiffs to such a degree that there were real questions about how he’d be able to handle the bigs. You know how this has gone: Springer has established himself as a quality outfielder, after having dramatically improved his contact skills. Getting better at contact is not an easy thing to do, but Springer made himself an outlier, and now he’s a star.

Springer’s big gain came between 2014 and 2015, and this year he’s actually taken another step forward, in terms of getting the bat to the ball. As a rookie, Springer posted baseball’s very lowest contact rate. As a rookie himself, Joc Pederson posted baseball’s sixth-lowest contact rate. There’s long been concern about Pederson’s own ability to make consistent contact. His swings and misses could get exploited, but Springer demonstrated improvement could be possible. And now Pederson is following in Springer’s footsteps.

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If you’re searching for a compelling National League division race, the only place to turn is the west coast. With the Nationals currently 7-1/2 games up on the second place Marlins and the Cubs sporting an even wider 13-game lead on the Cardinals, the one game separating the Giants and Dodgers at the top of the western division makes it the only intriguing race going. Given that the Dodgers are arguably the favorites to win the division and inarguably a playoff contender, I have what should be an easy question: Which five pitchers are currently in the Dodgers rotation?

Don’t wrack your brain too hard; it’s a trick question. There are the two pitchers who have been healthy all season, Kenta Maeda and Scott Kazmir, and then there’s Brandon McCarthy who returned to the rotation in July from his Tommy John Surgery. Beyond that it gets increasingly murky.
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Some of the best numbers in the upper levels of professional baseball are presently working out of the Dodgers bullpen. I don’t mean Kenley Jansen. I mean, I guess I do mean Kenley Jansen, because that certainly applies well to him, but he’s not the focus here. You know about Jansen and you know that he’s dominant. There’s somebody else in there you probably don’t know. You wouldn’t have had a reason to know him, really. Not before this year, but this year, Grant Dayton has taken off.

Here’s the way this usually works: We spot someone with crazy statistics, and then we investigate to try to determine whether the player is for real. I’m not going to pretend like that isn’t what’s happening here, but we all have to start somewhere. We all need some initial reason to start to like a given player. What I hope will come across: Dayton’s numbers aren’t just ordinary-good. They’re unbelievable-good. And now that I’ve watched Dayton pitch in the majors, I’m an even bigger fan. I think you might become one as well.

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Padres reliever Ryan Buchter has been around — playing for five organizations since 2008 — which really only means that teams haven’t agreed on his value. For every team that’s passed on the left-hander, another onehas seen something. That’s the life of a reliever, sure, but this one is doing well right now, and took a while to find his way to San Diego.

The lefty is well aware of his strengths and weaknesses in the minds of those organizations, since he heard different directives from each development team. He’s a fastball guy who doesn’t feature great secondary pitches, those coaches have told him, if not in those exact words. But along the way, Buchter has developed his own view on what makes his style effective. And it’s not just his elite spin rate.

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A little while ago I asked Dave to guess off the top of his head what Yasiel Puig might get if he were a free agent this winter. Now, I didn’t tell Dave this was going to be public, so if you disagree with his estimate let’s all be nice, but he landed on one year and $6 million. What Yasiel Puig actually has left on his commitment after this year is two years and something like $14 million, plus some arbitration eligibility in 2019. So while Puig is anything but extraordinarily expensive — in baseball terms — there really is some chance he could be moved in a waiver deal. As unlikely as it is, it’s incredible we’ve gotten here at all.

The Dodgers have been trying to trade Puig. They’ve been trying for months, and now that they have Josh Reddick, Puig, who remains, is going to the minors. In part, this is about performance, and in part, this is apparently about discipline, which is hardly anything new as Puig is concerned. The discipline issues are bad enough that the Dodgers are overlooking Puig’s recently acceptable numbers. The marriage there is very clearly ending, just a few years after Puig was anointed one of the faces of the franchise.

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