The Dodgers, of course, announced that they’re going with Kershaw today. But I’d still have gone the other way.

It’s becoming an October tradition; as the Dodgers head into game four of the NLDS, they are considering whether to bring back Clayton Kershaw on three days rest. As I sat down to talk about their decision on who to pitch today, I realized this is the third time in four years we’ve written this same post.

Back in 2013, Jeff Sullivan wrote about the decision between starting Kershaw or Ricky Nolasco. In 2014, Jeff again wrote about the call to pick Kershaw over Dan Haren. Last year, apparently we got distracted by Chase Utley’s slide or something, because we didn’t appear to write about the Dodgers using Kershaw in game four of the series against the Mets, but that happened too; the Dodgers have thrown Kershaw in games one and four of the division series three straight years, bringing him back on three days rest each time.

This year, though, I think they should do it differently. I think they should start Julio Urias today.

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I know that the game has moved on — as I write this right now, the Nationals are beating the Dodgers 4-3 in the sixth inning of Game 3. This game will turn on so many things, a handful of them yet to happen. But I still want to take you back quickly to the bottom of the first. The Dodgers jumped out to a 1-0 lead, and Yasiel Puig came up with one out and a runner on second. He took three balls, then the count ran full, then Gio Gonzalez attacked Puig inside with a heater.

Let’s slow that down, with a ball-tracker that I will choose to believe in this instance is reliable:

That’s a good general pitch location, and that’s also a good job of receiving by Jose Lobaton. I’ve seen far, far worse pitches thrown in full counts. But that pitch isn’t a strike. That pitch isn’t even a borderline strike. That pitch is a ball, full stop. Gameday provides its own evidence:

From Baseball Savant, here are the 2016 full-count pitches called strikes against right-handed hitters. I’ve highlighted the pitch to Puig in blue.

I’m not writing this because I have a rooting interest — I don’t. And I’m not writing this because I think it’ll cost the Dodgers the game. I’m writing this only because it was an important pitch in an important game, and this was a pretty extremely bad strike call. Not the worst of all time or anything, but bad nevertheless, and this was the whole difference between a walk and a strikeout. Puig didn’t do anything wrong. He did what he was supposed to do exactly right — he took a pitch even in a situation in which he might’ve been feeling aggressive. Puig should’ve been rewarded for his patience, but instead Gonzalez was rewarded for, I don’t know, throwing a ball with precision?

I don’t want to dwell. Again, the game has moved past this, and the first inning has long since been forgotten. But had this pitch been called properly, it would’ve made a win-expectancy difference for the Dodgers of about five percentage points. Another way of thinking about it: the run value of calling this a strike instead of a ball was 0.6. More than half of a run, which is substantial, as individual pitch-calls go. We don’t get a whole lot of opportunities to come to the defense of Yasiel Puig’s plate discipline. Yasiel Puig should’ve drawn a walk. I don’t know what the hell this must do to a player psychologically.

Coming into the NLDS, Dusty Baker took a good number of questions about the shortstop position. Danny Espinosa finished the year in a hell of a slump, but as Baker said to the media, he didn’t really have any other options. Espinosa was and is the best shortstop on the roster, and you have to give him one thing: for all of his flaws, there might be no one better at getting hit by a pitch.

So, actually, nevermind, there is still a Brandon Guyer floating around out there. But Espinosa is a hit-by-pitch machine, and he’s already been struck three times in the series, which is incredible. Even more incredible is the most recent HBP, because, see, Espinosa was granted first base, even though he got hit by a strike.

A strike!

Danny Espinosa got hit by a strike.

A strike, is what Danny Espinosa got hit by.

A borderline strike — sure, I’ll grant that. Espinosa didn’t get hit by a pitch that was literally down the middle, because that would be a physical impossibility. But what we’re dealing with here is insane. I went to Baseball Savant and pulled all the 2016 hit-by-pitches. You can basically see the bodies of righties and lefties in the plot below, and the overwhelming majority of these pitches make total sense. With a few, you see the profiles of elbows. The pitch to Espinosa is the only one that would’ve otherwise counted as a strike for the pitcher.

There’s a rule about this.

(6.08) The batter becomes a runner and is entitled to first base without liability to be put out (provided he advances to and touches first base) when:
[…]
He is touched by a pitched ball which he is not attempting to hit unless (A) The ball is in the strike zone when it touches the batter, or (B) The batter makes no attempt to avoid being touched by the ball;

If the ball is in the strike zone when it touches the batter, it shall be called a strike, whether or not the batter tries to avoid the ball. If the ball is outside the strike zone when it touches the batter, it shall be called a ball if he makes no attempt to avoid being touched.

Usually, when people complain about HBPs, they complain that umpires don’t enforce the make-an-effort part of this rule. That whole thing about making an attempt to avoid being touched by the ball — umpires almost literally never use that. So, the precedent has essentially been established. The rule is a non-rule. But here people can complain twice over. Espinosa made no attempt to move, and the pitch was a strike. So that’s two reasons why he shouldn’t have been granted first base, two reasons right there in the rule book. Dave Roberts, though, came out to make his case, and Espinosa still remained at first. He was never called back, and he was never going to be. The rules take care to detail what ought to count as a hit-by-pitch, but it seems that that part of the book was never assigned in umpiring school.

Come playoff time, you tend to see a lot of team-to-team comparisons. And when you see team-to-team comparisons, the people doing the comparing frequently lean on regular-season statistics. And, you know, in theory that makes plenty of sense. Those numbers are readily available all over the place, and, isn’t the regular season a hell of a sample? Doesn’t the regular season pretty adequately reflect the level of talent on a given roster?

I’m not going to argue that regular-season numbers are or aren’t more important than, say, postseason numbers. The regular season obviously has the biggest and therefore the most meaningful sample. But as should go without saying, things change come October. Rosters are optimized, and usage patterns shift. For example, during the year, Rangers hitters had a 98 wRC+. Rangers hitters on the roster today averaged a weighted 106 wRC+. During the year, Rangers relievers had a 100 ERA-. Rangers relievers expected to relieve in the playoffs averaged a weighted 75 ERA-. The Rangers aren’t what they were for six months. No team is, entirely. So what do we have now? What does the actual, weighted playoff landscape look like?

Time for some tables of numbers. That’s almost as fun as actual baseball!

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The numbers are almost laughable. In a season when over 100 players have hit 20 home runs, Clayton Kershaw has put up a line for the ages. Through Tuesday: a 1.65 ERA, 1.67 FIP, a nearly unthinkable 168:10 strikeout-to-walk ratio. The only blemish is his low innings total, resulting from the back injury that cost him a substantial part of the summer. With no one seeming to run and hide with the NL Cy Young Award, it’s only natural to ask whether Kershaw might still be a worthy recipient of the hardware.

Last week, I used granular batted-ball data to measure the contact-management performance of all ERA-qualifying NL starters. This group did not include Kershaw. In that article I referred to my hypothetical Cy Young ballot, if it were limited to only qualifiers; that ballot would have been headed by two above-average contact managers with very strong K/BB profiles, Max Scherzer and Kyle Hendricks. Today, we add Kershaw to that mix, comparing him to those two pitchers, again utilizing exit-speed/launch-angle data in our analysis.

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Trea Turner is squaring up a lot of baseballs. He’s also flying around the bases. The 23-year-old Washington Nationals rookie has a dozen home runs, seven triples, and 29 stolen bases in just 68 games. His slash line is a sexy .340/.362/.560. In a nutshell, he’s been very, very good.

He’s also thoughtful when the subject turns to hitting. The North Carolina State product likes to keep thing simple, but at same time, he has a nuanced feel for his craft. Launch angle is a familiar term, and he understands that what works for Daniel Murphy isn’t necessarily going to work for him. He isn’t going to tailor his swing for pull-side home runs. Nor is he going to take advantage of his plus-plus wheels by slapping and burning like a young Juan Pierre. Turner is going to be himself, and based on early returns, that’s an All-Star-caliber player.

Turner — currently manning center field after reaching Washington as a second baseman — talked about his hitting philosophy when the Nationals visited Pittsburgh over the weekend.

———

Turner on his approach: “For me, it’s really situational. It depends on different things. Am I leading off the inning? Are there are runners in scoring position? Does the pitcher on the mound have good command or bad command? Am I going good or going bad? There are a lot of questions I ask myself. Based on the answers to those questions, I’ll have an approach. You have to play it by ear.

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The Nationals are far from the only team to have experienced recent playoff disappointment. Some teams don’t even make the playoffs at all! So you can’t really say the Nationals are necessarily unique. Teams run up against obstacles. A lot of those teams can’t get past. That being said, over the past number of seasons, few teams have looked better than the Nationals, and few teams have wound up more disappointing. A Nationals fan might get the sense that a championship will simply never be in the cards, and that familiar feeling is coming back with gusto, with Wilson Ramos having been diagnosed with a torn ACL.

The truest pain here belongs to Ramos. Most immediately, he is the one literally hurting. But he’s also the one who can’t play anymore, and he’s the one who was looking ahead to free agency after having a big bounceback season. Ramos’ short-term future has been blown up in the blink of an eye, and he might wonder whether he’ll even be able to catch anymore down the line. This is somebody’s life, somebody’s career. That is, and is always, the most important thing.

Secondarily, but of fan interest, is the effect on the team. And that’s the only thing we’re really equipped to write about. So, acknowledging that the real story is Ramos himself, I’d like to set that aside for a moment and talk about the postseason. The Nationals find themselves in trouble at the worst possible time.

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The Nationals have had an excellent bounce back season after last year’s struggles, and have already locked up the NL East with a 91-65 record. But all is not well in Washington.

The team was already dealing with the potential absence of Stephen Strasburg, who had to leave his first start back from the disabled list with lingering soreness. Daniel Murphy, probably the team’s MVP this year, has not played in over a week due to a glute strain, and while it doesn’t seem like a major injury, you never like to see important players dealing with issues right before the playoff start.

And now, the Nationals will need Murphy more than ever, because Dusty Baker just confirmed that starting catcher Wilson Ramos has suffered a torn ACL, ending his season a week before the team takes on the Dodgers in the NLDS.

There it is. Wilson Ramos has a torn ACL, Dusty Baker says.

— CSN Nationals (@CSNNationals) September 27, 2016

Ramos’ career year has been one of the primary reasons the Nationals have been better this year than last year, as he’s posted a 124 wRC+ and +3.5 WAR, solidifying what was a black hole in 2015. He gave the lineup depth it didn’t have last year, and provided some right-handed thump to counter team’s left-handed pitching; he had a 160 wRC+ against LHPs this year, second-best on the team.

Jose Lobaton will take over as the Nationals starting catcher, and the offense is going to suffer as a result. Lobaton has a career 77 wRC+, and is putting up a normal-for-him 82 wRC+ this year. He takes some walks and makes okay contact, but there’s not much power there, and the Dodgers pitchers will probably have no problem coming right after him and making him do damage with his swing. Facing a pitching staff as good as Los Angeles’, especially one with two frontline left-handed starters, Lobaton is going to be a huge dropoff from Ramos.

This injury doesn’t sink the Nationals chances, of course; no one player is that important in baseball, and Ramos isn’t the kind of impact player that can swing a series by himself. But no question, this is a significant loss for Washington, especially given that the Dodgers are a formidable opponent. The team has had a great season, but they’re likely going to need some Murphy and/or Strasburg to make it back for the NLDS, because without Ramos too, they’re going into the playoffs undermanned.

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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Stephen Strasburg’s been in the news lately for playing catch. It’s still unclear whether he’ll pitch again this season. Given that the Nationals are just a few weeks away from postseason baseball, and given that Joe Ross just returned from having missed 10 weeks with a shoulder injury and is currently working on a limited pitch count, it’s not an ideal situation for Washington’s rotation. Gio Gonzalez is having his worst season in six years by ERA and FIP, and Lucas Giolito was unable to provide the shot in the arm that many had hoped.

And so, the comfort of having the always stellar Max Scherzer notwithstanding, anyone invested in the success of the Nationals is currently thinking what I’m sure they all expected they would in the spring: thank goodness we have Tanner Roark.

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