Daily Clips

September 9, 2016

LOS ANGELES DODGERS

DAILY CLIPS

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2016

LA TIMES: Dodgers cross fingers, dream about October as Clayton Kershaw returns this weekend- Andy McCullough

Dodgers' breakup with Don Mattingly has worked out pretty well for all concerned- Dylan Hernandez

DODGERS.COM:

Kershaw may not be back at Cy Young level- Ken Gurnick

Kershaw returns to surging Dodgers club- Richard Justice

Middle infielders hammering homers at historic rate- Andrew Simon

OC REGISTER:

Dodgers excited to get Clayton Kershaw back Friday- JP Hoornstra

Joc Pederson 2.0: Dodgers outfielder improves approach without sacrificing power- Bill Plunkett

On deck: Dodgers at Marlins, Friday, 4 p.m.- Bill Plunkett

DODGER INSIDER:

Clayton Kershaw’s three remarkable months revisited- Cary Osborne

Triple-A Dodgers get even, Low-A Loons get odd with 15 runs- Cary Osborne

Yimi Garcia had arthroscopic knee surgery Tuesday- Jon Weisman

TRUEBLUELA.COM: Dodgers vs. Marlins schedule & probable starting pitchers- Eric Stephen

O'Koyea Dickson drives in three, Oklahoma City ties series at one game apiece- Craig Minami

ESPN LA:

What are the most important things to watch in Clayton Kershaw's start?- Mark Simon and Sarah Langs

Significant questions surround Clayton Kershaw as he makes his return- Buster Olney

It's Clayton Kershaw time: What does ace's return mean for Dodgers?- Doug Padilla

USA TODAY: Clayton Kershaw returns in time for Dodgers' stretch run- Cliff Corcoran

YAHOO SPORTS:

The greatest call ever: The story of Vin Scully's ninth inning of Sandy Koufax's perfect game- Jeff Passan

What I learned from Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully- Yahoo Sports Staff

Meet the man with the gargantuan task of following Vin Scully- Mike Oz

Vin Scully's greatest gift? Bringing people together- Israel Fehr

THE RINGER:

The Dodgers’ Inexhaustible Supply of Starters Is Defying History and Logic- Ben Lindbergh

LA TIMES:

Dodgers Dugout: Why Dave Roberts should be named manager of the year- Houston Mitchell

LOS ANGELES DODGERS DAILY CLIPS

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2016

LA TIMES

Dodgers cross fingers, dream about October as Clayton Kershaw returns this weekend By Andy McCullough The subsequent months have sanded away the details of his dejection. Dave Roberts cannot recall whether he read the message in a text or listened to Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman speak the words aloud. But he can still recall their meaning. “We’ve got some bad news,” Friedman told the manager July 17. Roberts was with his team in Arizona, preparing for Clayton Kershaw to rejoin the club days later in Washington. Kershaw would not be boarding a plane bound for the East Coast, Roberts learned. He had experienced a recurrence of pain caused by the herniated disk in his lower back. There was no timetable for his return. “It was definitely deflating,” Roberts said. The setback could have served as a seismic shock to the organization. Kershaw had acted as Atlas during the first three months of 2016. But how the organization and Kershaw responded in July and August set the stage for Friday at Marlins Park, when he will return to a big league mound for the first time since June. As Kershaw concentrated on physical therapy, the Dodgers fashioned themselves into a playoff contender. The offense took flight. The starting rotation found stability in a strategy that looked like chaos. Roberts oversaw a clubhouse that impressed him with its professionalism and unity. As the Dodgers pulled ahead of San Francisco last month, Kershaw reshaped his habits in deference to his new physical reality. He declined to rush back. He huddled with the team’s medical and training staffs to prepare him for a gasp at greatness in the season’s final weeks, when he might reclaim his place as the ace of a team with championship aspirations. “It’s almost like we just traded for the best pitcher in baseball in September,” third baseman Justin Turner said. The Dodgers (79-60) enter this weekend in their most comfortable position all season. Winners of five in a row, they lead the National League West by five games. Acquired at the deadline and sidetracked by blisters, Rich Hill has dominated in his two starts. Another left-handed menace will now join him in the rotation. The Dodgers do not know what to expect in Miami. They do not know how Kershaw’s back will respond after he pitches. But they understand how even a limited version of Kershaw can elevate their ceiling. He is unlikely to throw more than five innings Friday. He will be monitored with care throughout the process, but Roberts expects to keep a tight leash on Kershaw during his first three outings. If his body responds, he still won’t be let loose until October.

“The reason he’s coming back is for the postseason,” Roberts said. During the final week of June, after posting an 11-2 record and a 1.79 earned-run average in 16 starts, Kershaw left the team in Milwaukee to head to Los Angeles. Robert Watkins, the team’s back specialist, administered a pain-killing epidural injection. Turner approached Kershaw when he heard the news. He offered condolences and a promise. When you come back, Turner told him, you’re going to come back to a better team. The Dodgers upheld their end of the bargain. The team has a record of 38-24 since Kershaw went on the disabled list. Unlike 2015,when Kershaw and Zack Greinke dragged the team into the playoffs, the offense is filled with healthy players capable of punishing opposing pitchers. Four members of the starting lineup — Turner, Corey Seager, Yasmani Grandal and Joc Pederson — have hit 20 homers or more, and Adrian Gonzalez has hit 17. “We’re a scary team,” Roberts said. To fill the void in the starting rotation, the Dodgers utilized an unorthodox but effective strategy. Leaning on its farm system, the team shuttled starters and relievers back and forth from the 25-man roster, somehow flourishing despite receiving an average of only five innings a game from starters. The depth provided time for Hill’s blisters to heal. It also allowed the team to use rookie Kenta Maeda on five days’ rest, as he did during his career in Japan. The situation seemed laughable on the surface — a team with one reliable starting pitcher, who works a Japanese schedule — but the results are difficult to argue. Kershaw toiled under the care of physical therapist Stephen Smith, who helped him strengthen his back and core muscles so his body could handle the strain of his workload. Kershaw does not just tax his body on the mound. He punishes himself in between outings to create reserves of energy. Friedman described Kershaw as “extremely routine-oriented,” an ace who dislikes deviation from his five-day schedule. When Kershaw hears a suggestion about altering his program, strength and conditioning coach Brandon McDaniel explained, he tables the discussion until the next off-season. In this case, Kershaw understood the necessity of change. Team officials described him as open to suggestion and willing to be creative. Kershaw drove the discussion, Friedman said. “He’s been able to think through what will allow him to achieve very similar results in a slightly different way,” Friedman said. In deference to Kershaw’s interest in privacy, team officials kept quiet about the details of the alterations. What mattered, they emphasized, was he was still capable of completing the tasks necessary to return. Kershaw maintained a program to strengthen his left shoulder. He was cleared to run in August, which allowed Kershaw to resume a vital part of his conditioning. McDaniel described the necessity of being more efficient in the workouts and “adding in some things that cleaned up some movement patterns.”

“I really wouldn’t say that he’s doing that much different,” McDaniel said. “There are some things that obviously we can’t do. I don’t think Kersh is going to go jump off a 10-foot box any time soon, but he wasn’t doing that before.” For now, the team feels confident that he is capable of performing at a high level. As the years pass, Friedman explained, both the Dodgers and Kershaw will have a better sense of how to manage his workload to keep him healthy. The initial disk herniation does not necessarily foretell a future of further injury, according to Andrew Hecht, the chief of spinal surgery for Mount Sinai Health System and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Hecht said the “overwhelming majority” of athletes he treats for herniated disk avoid surgery and return to action. “Could he become symptomatic again? Well, anything is possible,” Hecht said. “But it’s a very promising thing that he’s now throwing without pain, pitching in simulated games and now getting ready to return.” Earlier this week, Roberts watched video of Kershaw’s rehabilitation outing with Class-A Rancho Cucamonga. The curveball looked shaky, a reasonable outcome after months without usage. But his fastball velocity encouraged Roberts. The slider darted and bit. He looked, Roberts said, “like Clayton Kershaw.” On Tuesday afternoon, Kershaw trotted into the bullpen in left field at Dodger Stadium and completed his usual throwing to prepare for a start. He can be hyper-critical of himself, which made his reaction to this session so surprising. He burst into a smile. “Actually, good,” Kershaw said. “I actually feel all right.” Kershaw turned away from his locker and headed for the clubhouse exit. “We’ll see. We’ll find out Friday.” Go to latimes.com/sports on Friday for a live, in-game blog following Clayton Kershaw’s progress in his return start against the Miami Marlins. Dodgers' breakup with Don Mattingly has worked out pretty well for all concerned By Dylan Hernandez While the Dodgers were in Colorado early last month, third baseman Justin Turner and since-traded catcher A.J. Ellis slipped into a restaurant a couple of blocks from the team hotel. There, they shared a table with Tim Wallach and Lorenzo Bundy, a couple of former Dodgers coaches now with the Miami Marlins. The Marlins were in town for an upcoming series against the Rockies. Soon after, Don Mattingly showed up.

Stories were exchanged. Laughs were shared. Hearing what Mattingly said that night convinced Turner the league standings were indicative about something. “It kind of worked out for everyone,” Turner said. That happens sometimes. When Mattingly and the Dodgers finalized what they described as a “mutual” decision to part ways in October, you wondered what the implications would be for the parties involved. You wondered how long Mattingly would last working for Jeffrey Loria, the notoriously meddlesome owner of the Marlins. You also wondered if the clumsiness the Dodgers demonstrated in divorcing their manager of five years was an ominous sign of what was to come. But now? Entering a three-game series between the Dodgers and Marlins in Miami, everyone is in a better place. Until a groin injury to All-Star outfielder Giancarlo Stanton sent the Marlins tumbling down the National League wild-card standings, Mattingly was arguably the leading candidate for NL manager of the year. That trophy is now expected to end up in the hands of Dave Roberts, the man the Dodgers selected to replace him. “At the time, even though people didn’t necessarily believe us, we said there are times when a change is best for everyone,” Dodgers General Manager Farhan Zaidi said. Zaidi pointed to his own experience moving to the Dodgers from the Oakland Athletics. “I got along with everybody there great; I was really happy there. I ultimately decided to come here just because I thought it was time for something else,” Zaidi said. Mattingly’s departure from the Dodgers was a major disappointment to the players. “I loved playing for Donnie,” Turner said. “I loved the staff. Obviously, the unknown is a scary thing. We didn’t know what was going to happen. We didn’t know Dave Roberts was going to be the next manager and how great of a guy he was.” Turner and the other players have taken to Roberts’ upbeat demeanor. They like his energy and how he addresses problems immediately. They like that he projects confidence in times of crisis. When Clayton Kershaw landed on the disabled list with a herniated disk in his back and half of the Western Hemisphere predicted the Dodgers were finished, Roberts never called a team meeting. Doing so could have resulted in panic spreading through the clubhouse, according to some veterans. And with Kershaw sidelined, the Dodgers surged past the division rival San Francisco Giants into first place. The first-time manager has also shown tactical aptitude, which has enabled him to win games with a dumpster fire of a rotation. If his starting pitcher is in trouble in the second inning — and, yes, this has

happened — he won’t hesitate to replace him. The front office typically provided him with an eight-man bullpen and Roberts used it to his advantage. "It’s using the full roster, using all 25 guys, using all 13 guys on the pitching staff,” Zaidi said. “I think it also rubs off on a team in a positive way. They see a manager making an aggressive move like that, they feel like he’s not giving up on this game, he’s giving us a chance to win this game, he’s going to do everything he can. I think that some of the never-out-of-it, comeback mentality comes from players taking their lead from that.” On the other side of the country, Mattingly is in the first year of a four-year contract that afforded him job security he never received from the Dodgers. The Marlins have long been associated with ineptitude. Their last postseason appearance was in 2003. The last time they had a winning record was in 2009. They were 71-91 last year. Mattingly’s efforts to transform the culture started well, with the Marlins recording a winning record in each of the first four months of a season for the first time in franchise history. There were obstacles to navigate, including an 80-game drug suspension for 2015 batting champion Dee Gordon, the former Dodgers second baseman. As late as Aug. 15, the Marlins were 62-56 and tied for the second NL wild card. Around that time, Stanton sustained a groin injury. For a team ravaged by injuries and short on organizational depth, the loss of the one of the league’s premier power hitters was too much to bear. The Marlins cratered. The Marlins have lost 10 of their last 12 games, but they remain on the periphery of the wild-card race and have a chance to finish the season with a winning record. And Mattingly has discovered a measure of peace he never experienced in Los Angeles.

DODGERS.COM

Kershaw may not be back at Cy Young level By Ken Gurnick MIAMI -- Since Clayton Kershaw last pitched for the Dodgers on June 26, they are 38-24. They have gained 13 games in the standings, stormed into first place, acquired Bud Norris, Rich Hill, Josh Reddick, Jesse Chavez, Josh Fields and Carlos Ruiz, and traded away A.J. Ellis. On Friday night, Kershaw returns from almost 2 1/2 months on the shelf with a herniated disk to start against the Marlins ace Jose Fernandez and Kershaw's old manager, Don Mattingly. This week, Mattingly said Fernandez is "on that route" to becoming a Kershaw-type stalwart. That's high praise.

Rick Honeycutt has been the pitching coach and voice of reason since Kershaw's debut, through three National League Cy Young Award-winning seasons and the NL Most Valuable Player Award of 2014. That was the year Kershaw overcame a strained teres major muscle sustained Opening Day in Australia, the only other time Kershaw was on the disabled list. Kershaw was 11-2 with a 1.57 ERA and heading for another NL Cy Young Award before his last start. Honeycutt cautions that even Kershaw can be rusty from inaction, so don't expect too much too soon. "To be off two months and not be in a competitive situation, everybody has to be conscious that he's not in midseason form," said Honeycutt. "He wouldn't be going out there unless he felt well enough to do it. At the same time, he still has not been in a competitive situation at the big league level, using all of his pitches. At that time in '14, it was the curveball that was not as good as it can be. That's not only a control pitch, it's a feel pitch and a release point." For purposes of managing expectations, recall that Kershaw threw seven scoreless innings in his first start off the disabled list in 2014, but he then lost three of his next four starts -- including a seven-run, 1 2/3-inning disaster in Arizona -- before rewriting the record books. "In '14, we were able to do more [Minor League] rehab starts," Honeycutt said, noting that Kershaw has had only one last week, which lasted three innings. "The timing allowed him [in '14] to work up to 60 and 90 [pitches] in the Minors. This time, it's a little different because we're going back in games before we reached that level. "The understanding this time is there is a progression that we have to do. In that respect, I think we've got time and we have to be very conscious of that situation, no matter how well he's pitching." In other words, Kershaw will be on an unspecified but rigid pitch/innings limit. Winning on Friday is important. Having Kershaw on the mound in October is essential, and that is the real goal here. Honeycutt said Kershaw understands there isn't time for another setback. "If we go past X, it could lead to X, and we don't have the time to go backwards," Honeycutt said. "I feel right now he's got a really good understanding. In a perfect world, you'd say, 'Go pitch with a [Minor League] team in the playoffs and continue to build up.' At the same time, would you rather have his 60 pitches in this game or 75 in another? That's the give and take." The Dodgers tentatively have Kershaw mapped out for four regular-season starts. Kershaw returns to surging Dodgers club By Richard Justice In the 74 days since Clayton Kershaw most recently threw a pitch for the Los Angeles Dodgers, plenty has changed. Most notably -- and most dramatically -- the standings. In less than 11 weeks, the Dodgers have made up 13 games. Yes, you read that correctly. Los Angeles trailed the San Francisco Giants by eight games in the National League West when Kershaw walked off the mound with an aching back on June 26. As the Dodgers prepare for Kershaw's return in

Miami on Friday -- in an epic pitching matchup against Jose Fernandez that will be MLB.TV's Free Game of the Day -- they lead by five games. Sure, the Giants have had their troubles (25-37) since then, but the Dodgers have done their part in running up the second-best record in the Majors at 38-24. How they've done it is the amazing part. They've used 11 starting pitchers, including five rookies. They've put five more starters on the disabled list. And it hasn't mattered. Starting pitching? Who needs it? The 11 starters used during Kershaw's absence have thrown the fewest innings in the Majors and averaged fewer than five innings per start. Rookies Kenta Maeda and Julio Urias have been very solid. But as a group, the rotation has posted a 4.91 ERA (ranked 19th among 30 Major League teams) since the staff ace went down. The Dodgers have gone 38-24 anyway because their strengths are greater than their weaknesses. Their bullpen led the Majors in innings while Kershaw was sidelined, and it compiled a solid 3.59 ERA. Their offense has averaged five runs per game, good for sixth highest overall in the big leagues. Los Angeles has homered 83 times in 62 games, and the club is on a pace for its most in a full season since 2004. Four Dodgers have have hit 20 long balls in a season for the first time since '01: third baseman Justin Turner (25), catcher Yasmani Grandal (24), rookie shortstop Corey Seager (24) and center fielder Joc Pederson (20). Seager has emerged as one of the five best players in the game, hitting .345 with eight home runs in this stretch. He has all but locked up the NL Rookie of the Year Award, and he should finish high in NL MVP Award voting as well. During the Dodgers' run, first baseman Adrian Gonzalez has batted .328 with 11 home runs. Grandal has clubbed 14 of his 24 home runs. Turner, who is emerging as a star in his own right, has hit 14 home runs and 45 RBIs. Even outfielder Yasiel Puig, who was banished to the Minors on July 31, has gone 4-for-9 with two home runs in four games since returning to the Major Leagues. When Puig was sent down, there were plenty of people who thought he'd played his last game for Los Angeles. So even with Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman scrambling to find pitching -- acquiring Bud Norris from the Braves and Rich Hill from the Athletics and summoning a string of rookies from the Minors -- only the Cubs have had a better record (41-24) in the past two-plus months. "There are many people that wrote us off," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. No one could have seen it coming. At the time of Kershaw's injury, Los Angeles was 14-2 in his starts, 27-34 with anyone else on the mound. And the Dodgers have been hit hard in other areas. They've placed 27 players on the diisabled list, tying the 2012 Red Sox for the most since 1987.

The Dodgers have used 54 players in all, including 31 pitchers, 15 of them starters. When Kershaw is activated, there'll still be five starters on the DL: Scott Kazmir, Alex Wood, Brandon McCarthy, Brett Anderson and Hyun-Jin Ryu. McCarthy and Anderson could return before the end of the season, but Kazmir didn't make it through his rehab start on Wednesday. Speaking of rookies, there's also Roberts. To hold a club together with a revolving-door roster and the loss of a player who appeared on his way to winning both the NL Cy Young Award and the NL MVP Award in the same season for a second time reflects well on his ability to communicate, organize, teach and motivate. This week, Roberts started rookie pitchers four days in a row and got victories from all of them: Jose De Leon, Maeda, Ross Stripling and Brock Stewart. In the long history of the Dodgers, this was a first, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. And there's 28-year-old rookie left-hander Grant Dayton, who wasn't even invited to big league camp and began the season in Double-A. He made his debut on July 22, and in 16 games since, he has been invaluable out of the bullpen, compiling a 1.83 ERA. Dayton got the biggest out of the game Wednesday in a 3-1 victory over the D-backs when he entered the game with the bases loaded in the seventh and struck out Rickie Weeks to end the inning. The home dugout at Dodger Stadium erupted in cheers, and Dayton was greeted with high fives and slaps on the back. "All the young have guys are really growing," Roberts said. "This is definitely a crash course." Kershaw will love the energy and emotion the Dodgers are riding. And having pitched only 121 innings, he could enter October fresher than he has been in years. There's no telling how it will work out. The Dodgers and Giants still play six more times, so Los Angeles hasn't yet won anything. Down the line, there could be a postseason matchup with the Cubs. But that's a discussion for another day. The Dodgers still have some business to take care of, and they now have their ace back. All things considered, they couldn't be in a better place. Middle infielders hammering homers at historic rate By Andrew Simon Middle infielders, rarely known for power production, are flexing their muscles like never before in 2016. Both second basemen and shortstops have set single-season home run records for their position, and together they are accounting for a far bigger share of MLB roundtrippers than in years past. From last season to this season, the number of middle infielders who have gone deep 20-plus times has skyrocketed from four to 16 -- a group that will continue to grow over the final month.

This suddenly threatening group features veterans with spiking power numbers such as the Twins' red-hot Brian Dozier and the Nationals' Daniel Murphy, as well as youngsters with wall-clearing pop such as the Rangers' Rougned Odor and the Dodgers' Corey Seager. Both contingents have done their part to shift the positional power hierarchy, outpacing the considerable overall rise in homers throughout the game. As seen in the chart below, about 19 percent of homers this season have been hit by players who were manning second base or shortstop. Since 1974, a period for which Baseball-Reference.com has complete splits, the previous record was 17.1 percent (2007). Through Monday, middle infielders had combined to hit a record 19.2 percent of the league's home runs this year. The question is what looms behind this surge in middle-infield power, and whether it is likely to continue. On this subject, there are a variety of theories. Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein pointed to the recent influx of talent at these positions. A record 14 middle infielders age 26 or younger already have hit at least 15 homers this season, smashing the record of 10 set in 2007. And while that sort of thing can be cyclical, it does suggest sustainability. "Right now, there's tremendous young talent in the game overall, and you tend to see the cream of the crop of the young talent in the middle of the field," said Epstein, whose 22-year-old shortstop, Addison Russell, has 19 homers. "You have multidimensional shortstops like this, obviously, they're among the most special players in the game." Could those players also be changing in ways that make them more likely to hit for power than their baseball ancestors? Nationals manager Dusty Baker, whose own big league career began in the late 1960s, not only sees teams that are looking for power more, but also bodies that are getting bigger and often stronger. While Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. redefined what a shortstop could look like back in the 1980s, no other 6-foot-4 players stuck at the position until last year. Seager and the Astros' Carlos Correa -- both 22 or younger and listed at 6-foot-4, 215 pounds -- have combined for 69 homers in fewer than 400 career games since their debuts. But size isn't everything. Correa's double-play partner, Jose Altuve, has slammed 22 homers this year despite being listed at 5-foot-6. Padres 28-year-old rookie second baseman Ryan Schimpf, who is 5-foot-9 and 180 pounds, has come out of nowhere to hit 17 homers in 68 games. "Guys are becoming much more efficient at using their bodies mechanically from a swing perspective," San Diego manager Andy Green said. "We're seeing smaller guys generate more power. When you look at Schimpf, he falls right into that mode." It's also possible that this power outburst isn't as much about the players as it is the way teams view and deploy them. Perhaps a certain type of player who would have been moved to a corner position in years past now gets the chance to stick in the middle infield.

"I think it's all about finding as much offense as you can, and the defensive stereotypes or defensive expectations of where the offense comes from is a little different nowadays," Houston manager A.J. Hinch said. "All teams are starving for offense, and we'll put just about anybody anywhere." In that environment, there had been 1.17 home runs hit per team game this season through Tuesday, up from just 0.86 in 2014 and tied with the '00 season for the most in history. Buoyed by all those balls leaving the yard, scoring is up from 4.25 to 4.51 runs per team game over the past year, reaching the highest level since '09, despite an all-time-record average of 8.00 strikeouts. The middle-infield power display fits into that trend, but also exceeds it. Consider these facts and figures: • Second basemen have gone deep 502 times this season, smashing the previous record of 477 set in 2009. • When the Rays' Nick Franklin smacked a two-run shot against the Orioles on Wednesday afternoon at Tropicana Field, it was the 424th homer by a shortstop this year -- surpassing the record set in 2002. That total was at 425 by night's end. While second basemen are carrying more of the power load, shortstops still have accounted for nearly nine percent of MLB homers in '16 -- a new record. • Put together, middle infielders have accounted for 927 dingers. With three-plus weeks left on the schedule, that's already 56 more than the previous mark, set in 2003, and 169 more than last year. • Second basemen have more homers than center fielders and entered Wednesday tied with left fielders -- traditionally a much more power-oriented position. By contrast, second basemen hit 186 fewer homers than left fielders last year, and less than half as many in 2000, when left fielders set a record with 783 big flies. Looking beyond the homers, second basemen had a .771 OPS through Tuesday, just behind designated hitters (.777) and ahead of all three outfield spots. Meanwhile, shortstops (.727) were not far behind left fielders (.736). • Overall, the number of players this season with at least 15 homers (123) is well shy of the 2000 record (145). But 26 of those players have spent the majority of their games at one of the middle-infield spots -- six more than the previous high set in '07. • Of those 26 middle infielders with 15-plus homers, 19 already have set a new career high, and all but one (Correa) has exceeded his total from 2015. • By slamming 22 homers since July 31, Dozier (39) is approaching Davey Johnson's single-season record for a second baseman (43). In 2015, Dozier was the only player at his position to hit 22 or more for the entire season. • Murphy (.595) and Dozier (.576) rank second and tied for fifth for the highest single-season slugging percentage by a qualified second baseman since integration (1947). Murphy's mark trails only Jeff Kent, who posted a .596 slugging percentage in 2000. Altuve, Robinson Cano and Odor also sit in the top 40 on that list. • Five players in their age-23 season or younger who play primarily at shortstop (Xander Bogaerts, Correa, Russell, Seager and Trevor Story) have reached 15 homers. The previous record was two, and five players total managed that feat from 2001-14. • The flip side of the power is that both second basemen and shortstops are in the process of putting together the highest strikeout rates in history for their positions. Shortstops, for example, have seen their K rate rise steadily, from 14.9 percent in 2010 to 18.4 percent this year.

OC REGISTER

Dodgers excited to get Clayton Kershaw back Friday

By JP Hoornstra LOS ANGELES – The last time Clayton Kershaw appeared in a game for the Dodgers, Brock Stewart had yet to make his major league debut. After recording his first career win Wednesday night, Stewart stood at his locker in the Dodgers’ home clubhouse, the one to Kershaw’s left. “I’ve seen him on TV all the time,” Stewart said of Kershaw. “It’s something special to see it in person. I can’t wait.” One stall down, to Stewart’s left, stood catcher Carlos Ruiz. He was playing for the Philadelphia Phillies when Kershaw pitched last, long before he swapped spots with A.J. Ellis in a stunning August trade. “I caught two (of Kershaw’s) bullpens,” Ruiz said. “That was fun to catch him. He was throwing a lot of strikes. I can’t wait for the opportunity to catch him.” It’s stunning to consider how much 75 days can shift the course of a baseball season. Then again, all Kershaw has to do is look to his left. On June 26, the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Dodgers, 4-3, at PNC Park. Kershaw suffered his second loss of the season. Three days later he was diagnosed with a mild disc herniation in his lower back and he hasn’t pitched in a major league game since. That will change Friday in Miami, when Kershaw starts the Dodgers’ series opener against the Marlins. “We’re excited for us as a team, but I think we’re excited for Clayton, too,” Manager Dave Roberts said. “It’s been a season of highs and lows. For him to watch his teammates the last two and a half months, it’s been very difficult. So the anticipation to get him back on Friday, yeah, we’re very excited.” Kershaw was 11-2 with a 1.79 ERA at the time of his injury. The Dodgers’ resiliency in the meantime has been well-documented. They trailed the first-place Giants by eight games in the National League West after the June 26 loss in Pittsburgh. Now they lead the division by a season-high five games. For a pitcher who’s started an average of 32 games the last seven seasons, the waiting was the hardest part. Kershaw alluded to that Sunday, when he told reporters, “I didn’t really learn anything other than it’s not fun to not play.” Privately, Kershaw tried to put on a good face for his teammates, but Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen said “you could tell that he felt that pain for two months.” Physical or emotional? “He’s an emotional guy,” Jansen said. “He tried to hide it. You could tell he wanted to be out there so bad to help us win.”

This weekend offers the Dodgers a preview of their likely postseason rotation. Kershaw will start opposite another ace, Marlins right-hander Jose Fernandez, followed by left-hander Rich Hill on Saturday and Kenta Maeda on Sunday. That’s a formidable top three – one the Dodgers haven’t been able to use in the same series all season. For more than a month, their three best pitchers lined up only in the imagination. Now they’re lined up to pitch consecutive games for the first-place team in the NL West. Said Roberts: “It’s starting to shape up the way we envisioned.” Joc Pederson 2.0: Dodgers outfielder improves approach without sacrificing power By Bill Plunkett LOS ANGELES – Nothing up his sleeve, Joc Pederson is pulling off a magic trick – changing while staying the same. As a 23-year-old rookie last year, the Dodgers’ center fielder swung and missed a lot – a whole lot. In fact, only one regular in the National League had a lower contact rate than Pederson in 2015 (faded Phillies slugger Ryan Howard). Only four players in the majors struck out more times than Pederson’s 170 (a number held down by then-manager Don Mattingly’s decision to platoon Pederson in August and September). After making the All-Star Game (and the Home Run Derby), Pederson was one of the worst hitters in the National League during the second half of the season – something he acknowledges in painful hindsight. “It’s hard to tell someone you have to make adjustments until you fail. And I failed and I needed to make some changes,” Pederson says now. Pederson has made those changes. His strikeout rate is down this year. His contact rate is up – way up. In fact, Pederson’s improvement from a 66.7 percent contact rate in 2015 to 75.8 percent this season is one of the biggest jumps by any player in the past 15 seasons, according to FanGraphs. And that is not a jump many players make. Contact rate is not a number that fluctuates very much over a player’s career. “It’s probably one of the more sort of stable numbers,” Dodgers GM Farhan Zaidi said. “Something like contact rate or even his swing-miss rate is down from something like 14 percent to 10 percent this year – basically any stat that is more pitch-based than at-bat or plate appearance-based, obviously the sample is bigger because you have four or five pitches per plate appearance. The sample gets bigger faster. “For those reasons, those numbers are a little more stable. So to do what he’s done generally indicates some real sort of change – and in this case – improvement in making contact.” Even more surprising in Pederson’s case, those improvements have not come at a cost. He has not cut down on his swing, tempered his approach or sacrificed power for contact – changes that would have

been akin to “throwing the baby out with the bath water,” as Zaidi put it, for a player whose main value is his ability to hit with power. But Pederson’s average exit velocity (93.2 mph) is actually up from last season and once again ranks among the NL leaders. His hard-hit rate has remained stable and he is hitting home runs (20 so far this season after hitting 26 as a rookie) slightly more frequently than he did a year ago. “I’m just trying to continue to mature as a hitter,” Pederson said, talking specifically about the entry angle of his bat in the strike zone and “getting on plane with the ball better” and more consistently, adjustments that he credits former minor league coach Johnny Washington, current Triple-A Oklahoma City hitting coach Shawn Wooten and Dodgers assistant hitting coach Tim Hyers with helping him make. “I had to change my bat path,” Pederson said. “I had to change the entry angle and bat path and what position my body was in. I’m still not satisfied with where I’m at. It’s encouraging that there’s been some improvements. But I think there’s still a lot more in the tank. I think hitting is very mechanical and if you’re in a position to hit you’re going to hit the ball hard more often.” Pederson is “very mechanics-based” in his thinking about hitting, said house-mate and teammate Corey Seager, and can be very analytical about his swing or someone else’s. “He’s helped me with little gimmicks and things that he notices,” Seager said. “And when I ask him questions he has answers. “I think he knew (he had to make changes this season) but at the end of last year, I don’t think he knew which one he wanted to make – so he made all of them and he was always searching. I think this year, he knew what he wanted to do and how he felt he needed to do it.” Indeed, Pederson talks very confidently of focusing on “where the bat is in sequence with my body.” “You look at Big Papi, Josh Donaldson, Barry Bonds – all those great hitters – their barrel is in the same spot consistently,” Pederson said. “I was inconsistent. That’s why you saw spurts of great and spurts where I was the worst player in the league. I got away with so much in the minor leagues. I guess the pitchers weren’t as consistent or whatever. The league taught me that I needed to make a lot of growth. It’s still telling me that so I’m going to do everything I can to get better.” When asked to explain Pederson’s improvements this season, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts and Zaidi talk less about those mechanics and more about Pederson “maturing as a big league ballplayer.” “A lot of the things – playing every pitch, the quality of the at-bat, how he reacts to ups and downs in games or in a short period of the season – shows me growth,” said Roberts, who has helped by further limiting Pederson’s exposure to left-handed pitching this season. Zaidi makes much the same point, saying Pederson’s current season is “more reflective of his true ability” than last season’s wild ride. But Pederson isn’t sure it’s time to make that determination. “I was looking at Nolan Arenado’s numbers just the other day,” he said. “His first year I think he hit like 10 home runs in 500 at-bats, 18 home runs (in his second season) then he hit 42. Now he’s at about 40 again. You look at him and say, ‘Oh, he’s young and he rakes.’ But he went through a process as well.

Not saying that’s going to be my path by any means. Just that it takes time for hitters to adjust, get to know themselves. Not everyone’s going to be Kris Bryant, Mike Trout, Bryce Harper where it’s just production right away. “Some people make adjustments faster than others. I’m doing the best I can to make adjustments at the quickest rate possible.” On deck: Dodgers at Marlins, Friday, 4 p.m. By Bill Plunkett Where: Marlins Park TV: SNLA, 4 p.m. Did you know? Clayton Kershaw has not pitched for the Dodgers since a June 26 loss in Pittsburgh. The Dodgers have gone 38-24 since then. Only one team in the majors (the Chicago Cubs) has had a better record in that time. THE PITCHERS DODGERS LHP CLAYTON KERSHAW (11-2, 1.79) Vs. Marlins: 5-3, 2.40 At Marlins Park: 2-1, 1.27 Hates to face: Christian Yelich, 4 for 9 (.444) Loves to face: Martin Prado, 5 for 34 (.147), 5 strikeouts MARLINS RHP JOSE FERNANDEZ (13-8, 3.03) Vs. Dodgers: 3-0, 2.88 At Marlins Park: 27-2, 1.57 Hates to face: Corey Seager, 2 for 2 Loves to face: Howie Kendrick, 0 for 3, 2 strikeouts UPCOMING MATCHUPS Saturday: Dodgers LHP Rich Hill (11-3, 1.94 ERA) at Marlins RHP Tom Koehler (9-10, 3.87 ERA), 4 p.m., SNLA Sunday: Dodgers RHP Kenta Maeda (14-8, 3.29 ERA) at Marlins RHP Jose Urena (3-6, 4.54 ERA), 10 a.m., SNLA

DODGER INSIDER

Clayton Kershaw’s three remarkable months revisited By Cary Osborne It’s been 76 days since Clayton Kershaw last pitched in a Major League game.

Kershaw missed 12 starts due to a mild disc herniation in his low back. Today, he hits the reset button with his first start since June 26, when he labored through six innings in Pittsburgh having allowed four earned runs (all in the second inning) while dealing with pain. But in those first three months of the season, so much happened that even with all that time that has passed, Kershaw’s 16 starts still stand out as one of baseball’s most remarkable stories of 2016. Kershaw had one of the best first halves in Dodger franchise history and easily one of the best of any pitcher in the last 25 years. Just to refresh your memory … His 16.1 strikeout-to-walk ratio is the best mark in a first half by any pitcher since at least 1913 (as far as Baseball Reference goes back for the record) and Kershaw was on his way to threatening Phil Hughes’ all-time record of 11.6 from 2014. Kershaw’s 0.727 WHIP is also tops for a first half, ahead of all-time greats Grover Cleveland Alexander (0.747 in 1915), Pedro Martinez (0.774 in 2000) and Greg Maddux (0.776 in 1995). His opponents’ on-base percentage of .205 is also now the standard for pitchers in a first half. Only four left-handed pitchers in baseball history have walked nine batters or less with a minimum of 100 innings pitched in a first half — Kershaw, Slim Sallee (nine in 1918), Cliff Lee (six in 2010) and David Wells (six in 2003). Jon Weisman had this nugget: When Kershaw recorded his 100th strikeout in 2016, he set the MLB record for doing it with the least amount of walks — six. Kershaw had a run where he struck out 34 batters without issuing a walk that covered his three starts from April 26 to May 7. From April 15 to May 29, he struck out 91 batters and walked three. From April 21 to May 15, Kershaw had six games with at least 10 strikeouts. It set a Dodger record, and it was the 12th time in big league history a pitcher has had at least six games with 10 Ks. In May, he went 6-0 with a 0.91 ERA, striking out 65 batters in 49 2/3 innings. According to Baseball Reference, of pitchers with a minimum of 90 innings in the first half, Kershaw’s 1.79 ERA is the 10th-best since 1992. (He’s also ninth-best with his 1.78 from 2014). We can go on and on. However, at least at the outset of his return, we can’t expect him to be this Kershaw, as Ken Gurnick captured in his story for MLB.com on Thursday. Gurnick spoke to Dodger pitching coach Rick Honeycutt, who said: “To be off two months and not be in a competitive situation, everybody has to be conscious that he’s not in midseason form.” The fact that Kershaw came back is remarkable enough. But we know Kershaw, and he might have another story to write in September and maybe beyond.

Triple-A Dodgers get even, Low-A Loons get odd with 15 runs By Cary Osborne The Triple-A Oklahoma City Dodgers got six strong innings from Logan Bawcom and evened up their Pacific Coast League playoff series 1-1 with Nashville with a 5-2 win on Thursday in Oklahoma City. Bawcom, a 27-year-old right-hander, allowed three hits and one run, while striking out six and walking two. On the season, he has a 1.89 ERA in 95 innings with the Triple-A Dodgers. Reigning PCL Player of the Week O’Koyea Dickson homered in his third consecutive game with a two-run shot in the third inning. The best-of-five American Conference Finals series now heads to Nashville on Friday where Texas League Pitcher of the Year and recent callup from Double-A Tulsa Chase De Jong starts for Oklahoma City. Low-A Great Lakes pounded Bowling Green 15-1 on Thursday in Game 1 of the Midwest League Eastern Division Semifinals to complete Wednesday’s suspended Game 1, which was halted by rain. According to Loons manager of communications Matt DeVries, it’s the most runs in Loons playoff history and largest margin of victory. Seven of the nine batters in the Loons’ lineup drove in a run, including catcher Jake Henson, who plated four. Right fielder Gage Green fell a homer short of the cycle and went 4 for 4. Game 2 is today at Bowling Green. The Rancho Cucamonga Quakes also had an offensive explosion. The problem was, so did the other team. Rancho lost 17-11 in Game 2 of the California League South Division Semifinals and are tied 1-1 in the best-of-five series with the Lancaster JetHawks. Andre Ethier continued his rehab assignment with the Quakes and went 2 for 3 with two singles. Second baseman Noah Perio hit two homers and outfielder Johan Mieses hit his 29th homer of the year. Game 3 is in Lancaster on Friday. Yimi Garcia had arthroscopic knee surgery Tuesday By Jon Weisman Yimi Garcia had arthroscopic surgery Tuesday on his left knee to remove a small bone fragment, the Dodgers said Wednesday. The operation caps a mostly lost year for Garcia, who pitched 8 1/3 innings this year with a 3.24 ERA and 11 baserunners against four strikeouts, before going on the disabled list April 23 with right biceps soreness. In the process, Garcia became the answer to a future trivia question — he was moved to the 60-day disabled list May 27 to make room on the 40-man roster for the debut of Julio Urías.

Garcia, who turned 26 last month, has a career ERA of 3.12 in 75 innings with 81 strikeouts and a 0.95 WHIP.

TRUEBLUELA.COM

Dodgers vs. Marlins schedule & probable starting pitchers By Eric Stephen For the better part of the last 10 weeks, the Dodgers’ starting rotation was very much like driving or flying in a thick fog. There was no point in trying to predict more than a few days ahead simply because visibility and circumstances didn’t allow it, and the main focus usually resolved around getting through the moment at hand in very careful fashion. But now, the Dodgers appear to have the top of the rotation set exactly how they want it, beginning with a weekend series against the Marlins in Miami that features what will likely, should everything go as the Dodgers hope, be their playoff rotation, starting with the return of ace Clayton Kershaw a mere 75 days after his last major league start. Here is a look at the probable pitchers this weekend in south Florida, beginning with a fantastic duel of aces in the series opener. Friday, 4:10 p.m. PT (SportsNet LA, MLB Network) Kershaw continues what was shaping up to be an historic campaign when he was sidelined, with a 1.79 ERA and 145 strikeouts against only nine walks in his 16 starts. He only threw three innings plus some extra bullpen work in his rehab start last Saturday in Rancho Cucamonga, so it stands to reason Kershaw will be limited somewhat in his first time back. Limited though is a relative term, and for Kershaw probably won’t mean he’s getting pulled after four innings to limit his workload. But it means, at least in his first game back, he might not be around in the later innings, and surely his 7.56-inning average per start will go down. The main thing for the Dodgers and for Kershaw is that he is healthy and effective while on the mound, whether he is 100 percent or still “pretty banged up” as Jon Heyman of Today’s Knuckleball reported on Thursday. Among major league starting pitchers with 100 innings in 2016, Kershaw ranks second in strikeout rate (32.9%), behind only Jose Fernandez, who starts the opener for Miami. In 40 starts at home in his career, Fernandez is 27-2 with a 1.57 ERA. Both home losses came this season, with Fernandez 10-2 thanks to his home ERA ballooning all the way to 1.91 in 14 starts, with 128 strikeouts in 89⅔ innings. Saturday, 4:10 p.m. (SportsNet LA)

Rich Hill has pitched six scoreless innings in each of his two Dodgers starts. No pitcher in franchise history, at least back to 1913, has started his Dodgers career with three straight scoreless starts. Tom Koehler has a 2.85 ERA in 10 starts since the All-Star break, with 52 strikeouts and 17 walks in 60 innings. He beat the Dodgers on Apr. 26 at Dodger Stadium, allowing three runs (two earned) on three hits in five innings, though he walked more (4) than he struck out (3). Sunday, 10:10 a.m. (SportsNet LA) Kenta Maeda has been the rock of the 2016 Dodgers rotation, leading the club with 27 starts and 153 innings, and is coming off a strong start of 6⅓ innings on Monday against Arizona. But he hasn’t lasted six or more innings in back-to-back starts since June 3-8. Jose Urena had a 7.52 ERA in the bullpen before moving into the Marlins rotation after the All-Star break. He has a 4.63 ERA in eight starts, with 34 strikeouts and 14 walks in 44⅔ innings, though the numbers are a bit skewed thanks to an eight-run outing on July 29 against St. Louis. Urena hit one of 99 batters faced as a reliever this season, but as a starter has five HBP in 191 batters faced. He got his first major league save by recording the final five outs at Dodger Stadium on April 27, including two strikeouts. O'Koyea Dickson drives in three, Oklahoma City ties series at one game apiece By Craig Minami Oklahoma City and Great Lakes each won, Rancho Cucamonga lost and are tied one game each with Lancaster with the finale scheduled for Friday. Ogden, who had won their division on Wednesday, lost their final regular season game as they got ready to host Orem for the first game of their playoff series. Player of the day 26-year old O'Koyea Dickson hit .328/.398/.596 this year at Oklahoma City. On Thursday, Dickson hit a deep fly ball that was caught at the wall in center to drive in the tying run in the first and then put the Dodgers ahead in the third with two-run homer. Triple-A Oklahoma City The Dodgers rebounded from their first game loss to defeat the Sounds (Athletics) 5-2 and even their playoff series with each team winning one game. For an Oklahoma City team, it was their first win of any kind in the playoffs since 2008. Prior to Thursday, a team wearing Oklahoma City on their uniform had lost 12 straight games. Logan Bawcom pitched six innings and gave up one run, three hits, walked two and struck out six. That was more than enough for Bawcom to get the win. Sam LeCure, Joe Broussard and Jacob Rhame each pitched an inning to close out the game.

The Sounds scored in the first inning on a two-out single but then the Dodgers answered with Micah Johnson, who went 2-for-3 with three runs scored, working a walk and eventually getting to third base. Johnson scored on O'Koyea Dickson's sacrifice fly. Johnson would be on when Dickson hit his two-run homer. Later, in the fifth, after Jack Murphy homered, Johnson tripled and scored on Chris Taylor's sacrifice fly. The series moves to Nashville for the next three games, two of those games are guaranteed on Friday and Saturday. Class-A Rancho Cucamonga The Quakes saw the JetHawks (Astros) score eight runs in the first inning before they got even one out, and even though they tried to come back, the Quakes lost by an 17-11 score. The loss made it one game apiece for the two teams and Lancaster will host the last game on Friday with the winner moving on to the next series that starts on Saturday. Mike Ahmed gave the Quakes a brief 2-0 lead in the top of the first with a two-run homer. Then Michael Boyle proceeded to see eight JetHawks, who often hit Boyle's first pitch, get eight straight hits, including two home runs, that gave the JetHawks an 8-2 lead that they never relinquished. Boyle did go on to pitch five innings and while he was the losing pitcher, he saved the Quakes bullpen some usage by being able to recover a bit. Former first-round pick Chris Anderson followed and he gave up six runs on seven hits. The two Quakes' pitchers saw the JetHawks hit seven home runs off them. At the plate, Noah Perio's performance should be noted, Perio hit two home runs and went 3-for-5. Class-A Great Lakes The Loons and Hot Rods (Rays) first game of their series was suspended after the top of fourth due to rain. They picked up after that on Thursday and the Loons took a 1-0 series lead when they beat the Hot Rods 15-1. Dean Kremer followed Yadier Alvarez's four scoreless innings with a three inning performance. Kremer gave up a run and three hits and got the win. Alvarez did his work on Wednesday before the rain ended it. The Loons had 20 hits on Thursday, Jake Henson hit three doubles and had four RBI, Gage Green went 4-for-4 and Omar Estevez had three hits. This series moves to Bowling Green for the next two games with the Loons needing only one win to move on to the next series. Pioneer - Ogden The Raptors and Rockies played their final Pioneer League regular season game on Thursday and the Rockies won 9-2 to send their fans home with a win. The Raptors had won the second-half division title on Wednesday night and knew they were hosting Orem on Friday night for the first game of their three-game playoff series.

The Raptors had scored 32 runs in the first three game of this series, scored only twice in this game and only had four hits as a team. Transactions No transactions reported on Thursday. Thursday Scores Oklahoma City 5, Nashville 2 Lancaster 17, Rancho Cucamonga 11 Great Lakes 15, Bowling Green 1 Grand Junction 9, Ogden 2 Friday Schedule 4:35 p.m. PT - Great Lakes (Jordan Sheffield) at Bowling Green (Genesis Cabrera) 5:05 p.m. - Oklahoma City (Chase De Jong) at Nashville (Chris Jensen) 5:30 p.m. - Orem (Angels) (Sam Pastrone) at Ogden (TBD) 6:35 p.m. - Rancho Cucamonga (Adam Bray) at Lancaster (TBD)

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What are the most important things to watch in Clayton Kershaw's start? By Mark Simon and Sarah Langs How will you be able to tell if Los Angeles Dodgers starter Clayton Kershaw is all right, as he returns to the majors with a start against the Miami Marlins on Friday night? Clayton Kershaw Leads MLB in ... Walk Rate 2% Opp OPS .475 First-pitch strike rate 69.8% Perhaps the easiest way to know that Kershaw is doing well will be in the basic numbers. Kershaw ranks second in the majors (among pitchers with at least 15 starts) in opponents' batting average and hard-hit rate. His walk rate and OPS are easily the lowest in the majors, and his first-pitch strike rate ranks highest. Regarding the latter: From inauspicious beginnings come unfortunate endings for hitters. Batters are hitting .119 against Kershaw in pitcher’s counts this season, the lowest of any pitcher. They’re hitting .111 in two-strike counts, also the lowest among that group. Watch the movement Baseball Tonight analyst Dallas Braden offered a couple of things to look for beyond Kershaw’s basic performance. We mixed that with some revealing numbers.

Fastball location: Kershaw wants to avoid throwing a flat fastball that stays over the heart of the plate. In his last start, against the Pirates, his fastball spin rate deviated significantly from his norm. It was his fourth-lowest of the season. The result was his highest rate of fastballs over the middle third of the plate widthwise (46 percent) since two starts in 2011. Opponents were 5-for-14 and 6-for-12 against the pitch in his last two starts. His miss rate was 15 percent with it, compared with 23 percent in his first 14 starts. Slider spin rate: Opponents are hitting .130 against Kershaw’s slider this season, fourth-lowest among those who have made at least 15 starts. In Kershaw’s last start, his slider was flat. It had its second-lowest spin rate of the season, and at 778 rpm, it deviated significantly from his norm, which typically exceeds 1,000 rpm. Kershaw had three strikeouts with the slider, but he allowed four baserunners with it versus the Pirates. Before that, he had 61 strikeouts and 16 hits allowed. Curveball drop: The Kershaw curve is a nasty pitch, one described as nearly unhittable. Opponents are hitting .079 against it, lowest in the majors. It will be evident if Kershaw is all right by whether his curveball drops to the bottom of the strike zone. Pre-injury, it was doing so in a big way. Kershaw’s curve drops at a rate of 20.8 feet per second as it crosses home plate, fifth-highest of anyone with at least 15 starts this season. A couple of other Kershaw-related storylines to watch tonight: Catch him if you can Much has been made of Kershaw preferring now-departed A.J. Ellis as his personal catcher. Now he’ll have to work with either Yasmani Grandal or Carlos Ruiz (who was acquired for Ellis). Kershaw fared well with Grandal in 2015 (1.62 ERA, compared with 2.44 for Ellis), but he was much better with Ellis this season (1.32, compared with 2.84 with Grandal). Ruiz has plenty of experience catching great lefties. He caught more than 1,300 innings of Cole Hamels to a 3.12 ERA with the Phillies. Phillies pitchers had a 4.26 ERA with Ruiz catching this season. Their ERA with others is 4.61. The advantage that Grandal brings, besides a .629 slugging percentage since Kershaw has been out (fifth-best in the majors), is that he’s an excellent pitch framer. He has the second-most called strikes above average among catchers (and ranks first when evaluating on a rate basis). Ruiz ranks 63rd out of 74 (whereas Ellis ranks 40th). Kershaw has gotten 23.2 called strikes more than the average pitcher would have gotten in 22 games with Grandal catching over the past two seasons (though almost all of that is from 2015). He’s gotten minus-15.4 from other catchers. One other reason Kershaw might get close calls (and avoid walks): He throws 77 percent of his pitches in competitive locations (within 18 inches of the center of the strike zone), the highest rate among pitchers with at least 15 starts. The other guy on the mound

Slider - This Season FERNANDEZ KERSHAW Miss rate 51% 46% Opp BA .147 .130 Hard-hit rate 7% 10% This will be the first time that Kershaw will face Marlins starter Jose Fernandez. These are the most prolific swing-and-miss starters in the majors. Kershaw’s 33.1 percent miss rate on all of his pitches trails only Fernandez's 33.4 among those with at least 15 starts in 2016. Fernandez has the second-highest miss rate on sliders. Kershaw is not far behind, ranking ninth. Fernandez is 27-2 with a 1.57 ERA in 40 career home starts (10-2, 1.91 ERA this season). Over the past four seasons, Kershaw has a 2.24 road ERA (4-1 with a 2.29 ERA in 2016). Next-lowest among the 120 pitchers with the most innings pitched is Jake Arrieta, 2.80. Significant questions surround Clayton Kershaw as he makes his return By Buster Olney Clayton Kershaw returns to the Dodgers' rotation today, and as Clark Spencer writes, the matchup against Marlins ace Jose Fernandez will be tantalizing. Seventy-five days have passed since the last time Kershaw was on a major league mound, enough of a layoff that when he climbs the mound tonight, there will be curiosity and some doubt about how he will fare. There are folks within the Dodgers' clubhouse who assume he will pitch great, because Kershaw was dealing with back discomfort long before he went on the disabled list -- and still managed to put together the greatest start to a season for any pitcher in MLB history. The more significant questions that hang over Kershaw is how he will feel coming out of his start and whether he can comfortably adapt his work ethic around the new realities of age and physical erosion -- because Kershaw does not do anything half-speed. He pitches with maximum effort, does his weight training with total investment, runs with intensity. Four or five years ago, Kershaw agreed to have ESPN cameras and a reporter follow him around during an offseason workout, and he arrived at his former high school in the Dallas suburbs without any kind of entourage. No personal trainer, no handlers, no workout partner, nothing. Just a pitcher who seemed to go through his day with the same competitive zeal he has when he pitches against the Giants in July, emptying buckets of baseballs as he long-tossed into a net. Kershaw is 28 years old now, 6-foot-4 and 225 pounds -- an oak tree of a pitcher -- and he's accumulated almost 2,000 innings as a professional pitcher. That's 6,000 outs generated by his unusual delivery, in which he hangs in the air momentarily and then drives toward the hitter ferociously, the power G-force of his mechanics absorbed by his right leg, hip and lower back.

There is a physical toll for all that excellence, as there was for Sandy Koufax, who attacked hitters with a mid-90s fastball and knee-buckling curveball for years before the pain in his elbow became too much to endure. In 1966, Sandy Koufax was 30 years old, and he went 27-9, threw a league-high 323 innings, struck out 317 batters and posted a career-best 1.73 ERA -- and then retired. Kershaw struck out 145 batters and walked nine in his first 121 innings this season, and there's every reason to believe he'll continue to be great, for as long as he pitches. The larger and more pertinent questions are about his discomfort and how long he can work through it while bull-rushing every batter, every inning, every drill, every workout. Dodgers since Kershaw's last start Since June 26. STATISTIC NO. MLB RANK W-L 38-24 2nd OPS .785 4th Runs PG 5.0 7th Starters' ERA 4.61 20th More on Kershaw's return from ESPN Stats & Information: After Kershaw's last start, the Dodgers were 41-36, eight games back of the Giants, their largest deficit of the season. Now the Dodgers have a five-game lead over the Giants in the NL West. As the corresponding table shows, the offense has stepped up in his absence. Since Kershaw last pitched • Yasmani Grandal is fifth in the majors in slugging (.629) and tied for fourth in home runs (18). • Corey Seager is fifth in the majors in batting average (.345). • Adrian Gonzalez is eighth in the majors in batting average with runners in scoring position (.387). From Elias Sports Bureau: Kershaw was having an outstanding season, but he's unlikely to qualify for the leaderboards; he would need to throw 41 innings before the season ends. Meanwhile, he has 145 strikeouts and just nine walks this season, and if he gets his 150th K before his 10th walk, he'll have the fewest walks at the time of his 150th strikeout since the mound was moved to its current distance in 1893. Despite the time he has missed, Kershaw has the second-highest WAR of any National League pitcher this season, and he's still tied for 15th in strikeouts despite being tied for 46th in innings pitched. Even after losing his last start, the Dodgers were 14-2 in Kershaw starts and 27-34 when others started at the time of his injury. However, the Dodgers have jumped ahead in the NL West without him, having gone 38-24 in his absence. That has been thanks to their offense and not the pitching. Since Kershaw's injury (June 26), Dodgers hitters have averaged 5.0 runs per game after averaging 4.1 runs per game prior to the injury (4.3 in Kershaw's starts). Meanwhile, Dodgers pitchers have a 4.15 ERA since June 26 after posting a 3.79 ERA in non-Kershaw starts prior to that. What are his Cy Young Award chances?

If he makes five more starts, Kershaw would be on pace to toss fewer than 160 innings this season. The only starting pitcher to win a Cy Young Award with fewer innings pitched in the league where he won the honors was Rick Sutcliffe, who went 16-1 while throwing 150 1/3 IP with the Cubs after throwing 94 1/3 innings with the Indians before being traded to Chicago. L.A.'s dreams about October resume today with Kershaw's return to the mound, writes Andy McCullough. It's Clayton Kershaw time: What does ace's return mean for Dodgers? By Doug Padilla MIAMI -- As the Los Angeles Dodgers' lead continues to grow in the National League West, the club has yet another reason to stand tall as Clayton Kershaw will return to the mound Friday night against the Miami Marlins. Life without Kershaw was supposed to spell doom for a Dodgers club that had an inconsistent offense, a bullpen with only one set role and a starting staff that often was shaky on the days its ace was not taking the ball. The Dodgers were falling out of contention in late June with Kershaw. It wasn’t expected to look pretty without him. When Kershaw broke out to what appeared to be a historic start to the season, the Dodgers’ identity consisted mostly of their three-time Cy Young Award winner, with a little bit of Corey Seager, a sprinkle of Kenley Jansen and the question whether Chase Utley would hold up physically under a heavy workload. Seager and Trayce Thompson were the offense’s motor. Then up cropped the worst-case scenario. Kershaw’s back conked out after a June 26 start, and the Dodgers were somehow supposed to get the speedboat ashore without a motor. Fortunes were not supposed to get better. They did. The bullpen, already starting to turn a corner, found sustained success. The offense received a huge jolt first from Justin Turner, then Howie Kendrick. Yasmani Grandal, Adrian Gonzalez and Joc Pederson followed soon after. Without the best range, the defense managed to catch what was hit at it. The club did not give away games. The formula has pretty much continued since, with a few setbacks here and there -- but mostly, the Dodgers have managed to keep on winning. They are 14 games over .500 (38-24) without Kershaw. They were five games over (41-36) with him. So as Kershaw gets set to pitch opposite the Marlins’ Jose Fernandez on Friday, he rejoins a far more complete team, and one that will allow him to work his way slowly into the mix. When Kershaw was 11-2 after 16 starts and had 145 strikeouts to nine walks, who would have thought it would be anybody but him to light the way through the dark tunnel? So what can be expected from Kershaw over the final three-plus weeks of the regular season?

Get ready for strict control measures during Kershaw’s first outing in 2½ months. Kershaw won’t like the concept that he won’t have the chance to go the distance, but he already has said that he understands the need to take precautions. A six-inning maximum is expected, with the idea that a five-inning start is probably more likely. Kershaw did not have an start under six innings this season and had only three last year, with one coming in his last outing of the year when he left the game after eclipsing the 300-strikeout mark. And what is possible from Kershaw after a long layoff? For his first start off the disabled list in 2014, after missing more than a month, he did not allow a run over seven innings with nine strikeouts. How can anything top the hype of Kershaw’s first start in 75 days? Put him in Yankee Stadium for an early-evening start five days later and watch the hype machine explode. It still is not known if Kershaw will return to the mound five days from Friday, or if the team will take it slower with his return, but if he does come back on regular rest, the Dodgers will be playing the finale of a three-game interleague series against the Yankees. Kershaw has never pitched in the Yankees’ home park. Don’t be surprised if it happens. Expect an increase of 10-15 pitches from his previous outing. Putting Kershaw on a schedule to start every fifth day would mean the third outing of his comeback makes him the pitcher for the Sept. 19 opener of a three-game home series against the Giants. It also could be another Kershaw-Madison Bumgarner matchup. Considering that Kershaw had a simulated game and a minor league outing before his return, and then would have pitched in two regular games, his third start would essentially be the equivalent of his final spring training start as he builds himself into a regular workload. Staying on that every-fifth-day schedule, Kershaw’s fourth start would be another home tilt, this one against the Colorado Rockies. Kershaw should be close to a 100-pitch-per-game pitcher at this point, although it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the Dodgers play it safe with this number. If a home start against the Rockies in a Kershaw DL season sounds familiar, it should. Kershaw fired his only no-hitter against Colorado nine starts after returning from the DL in 2014. Assuming everything stays on schedule, Kershaw is lined up to make his final regular-season start at San Francisco during the final series of the season. It also will be the final series in the Hall of Fame broadcasting career of Vin Scully, and hearing him call one more Kershaw outing would be something to record and save for posterity. A healthy Kershaw might be under no restrictions at this point, but if the division already is clinched, it could be a shorter outing to point him toward a division series opener on Oct. 7. If the season ended today, the Dodgers would open the NLDS at Washington, and a healthy Kershaw will be pointed toward Game 1. Kershaw is 10-2 with a 2.02 ERA in 14 appearances (13 starts) against the Nationals. Where Kershaw has been used on short rest in past division series, the assumption this time around is that the Dodgers would use a four-man rotation for the five-game series and have Kershaw pitch in Games 1 and 5, if necessary.

USA TODAY

Clayton Kershaw returns in time for Dodgers' stretch run By Cliff Corcoran

Clayton Kershaw, the best pitcher in baseball, will return to the mound for the Los Angeles Dodgers Friday night after an 11-week absence caused by a herniated disc in his lower back. He is doing so in the wake of Los Angeles expanding its National League West lead over the rival San Francisco Giants to a season-high five games with just 23 left to play. Given that confluence of events, a successful return by Kershaw seems likely to snuff out any remaining hope the Giants might have had of reclaiming the division and could have significant postseason and Cy Young Award repercussions, as well. Having thrown just 34 pitches in three dominant innings of work for High-A Rancho Cucamonga in his lone rehab start last Saturday, Kershaw is likely to be limited to 60 to 70 pitches in his matchup against Miami Marlins ace Jose Fernandez in Miami. The Dodgers hope he can stretch those pitches over five innings. That would position Kershaw to go as far as seven full innings against the Yankees next Wednesday in what would be his Yankee Stadium debut. If he clears those hurdles, the limits should be off for his final three regular season starts, two against the Giants, making a San Francisco comeback all the more unlikely. Already the Giants’ chances of winning the West are down to 7.3% per Baseball Prospectus’s Playoff Odds Report. That’s due less to the Dodgers’ remarkable ability to persevere through a record-tying cavalcade of injuries—matching the 2012 Red Sox by having 27 men on the disabled list at one time—than to the Giants having compiled the worst record (17-32) in baseball since the All-Star break. The Dodgers, meanwhile, have weathered the absence of their ace with remarkable aplomb. Since Kershaw’s last start on June 26, the Dodgers have posted the second-best record in baseball, a 38-24 (.613) mark bested only by the Cubs over that span. Their salvation has been an offensive surge which has seen the Dodgers go from scoring 4.14 runs per game through June 26 to 4.98. That surge in run scoring has masked the fact that the Dodgers’ pitching has indeed suffered from the loss of Kershaw and company. The Dodgers allowed just 3.6 runs per game through Kershaw’s last start on June 26. They have allowed 4.4 runs per game since and have played almost as far above their Pythagorean expectancy as the Giants have played below theirs. Even with Kershaw returning, the back of the rotation is a patchwork of two spots split among four rookies, three of whom—top prospect Julio Urias and righties Ross Stripling and Brock Stewart—have workload concerns. The fourth, 24-year-old righty Jose De Leon, has made just one major league start. With Scott Kazmir having failed to make it out of the first inning of his rehab start on Wednesday due to continued pain in his neck and ribs, and Brandon McCarthy hit hard by high-Class A hitters in his rehab start on Monday, there’s no guarantee that any of the team’s other veteran starters will contribute down the stretch. Despite that lack of depth, a rotation topped by Kershaw, deadline addition Rich Hill and stalwart Kenta Maeda would still match up well in a likely Division Series confrontation with the Nationals, who have lost Stephen Strasburg to injury yet again Wednesday night. Maeda is an upgrade on last year’s Game 3 starter, Brett Anderson, and one could argue that the one-two punch of Kershaw and Hill could be as good heading into October as the Kershaw-Zack Greinke combination was a year ago.

In Kershaw’s case, as great as his career has been, his performance over the first three months of this season represented a new peak with his 218 ERA+, 1.67 Fielding Independent Pitching and 16.11 strikeout-to-walk ratios over that span all representing career bests. As for Hill, compare what he has done in 20 starts since making his return with the Red Sox last September to what Greinke did for the Dodgers last year: Pitcher - ERA - ERA+ - FIP - WHIP - K/9 - K/BB Greinke - 1.66 - 220 - 2.76 - 0.84 - 8.1 - 5.00 Hill - 1.85 - 223 - 2.40 - 0.94 - 10.5 - 3.91 There’s reason to expect a quick Kershaw return to peak performance. Coming off the only other disabled list stint of his career in May 2014, after a trip to Australia and a strained teres major muscle behind his pitching shoulder, Kershaw striking out 18 in his first 14 innings while allowing just three runs and walking no one in two starts. He allowed more than three runs in just one of his remaining 24 starts and won Cy Young and MVP awards despite missing a month. This year he has missed more than two months, but he was so good before landing on the DL that Cy Young contention is still not beyond his reach should he perform as well over his final five starts as he did in his first 16. Kershaw averaged 7.6 innings per start prior to his injury. If he throws five innings Friday, seven on Wednesday, then returns to that average for his final three starts, he’ll finish the season with 155 2/3 innings pitched, putting him 6 1/3 innings shy of qualifying for the ERA title. Since the Cy Young award was created in 1956, only two starting pitchers have won the award in non-strike years with fewer than 200 innings pitched. One was Kershaw in 2014, when he threw 198 1/3 innings. The other was Rick Sutcliffe in 1984. The Chicago Cubs acquired him June 13 of that season and he threw just 150 1/3 innings in the NL that year, but his 16-1 record was enough to win over the electorate voters. Won-loss records are less important to Cy Young voters these days, but they can still influence voters. Kershaw is already 11-2 and has a decent chance to finish with 15 wins. If he can maintain his remarkable rate stats, there could be a legitimate sabermetric argument for Kershaw winning the award. Despite not pitching since late June, Kershaw enters Friday night’s start tied with Madison Bumgarner and Noah Syndergaard for second place among NL pitchers in Baseball-Reference’s wins above replacement, trailing only Washington’s Max Scherzer. FanGraphs’ version of WAR has Kershaw in second by himself behind only Syndergaard. Baseball Prospectus’s WARhas Kershaw in fifth, but within striking distance of fourth-place Bumgarner and third-place Scherzer, who, based on more traditional statistics, appear to be the two pitchers most likely to win the award. Scherzer, who leads the NL with 197 innings pitched, is on pace for 231 innings pitched. If both pitchers finish the season with their current ERAs (1.79 for Kershaw, 2.88 for Scherzer) and the innings totals projected above, the difference between Scherzer and Kershaw will be 75 1/3 Innings, but also 43 earned runs allowed, which translates to a 5.14 ERA over those 75 1/3 innings. That suggests the quality of Kershaw’s performance will have been more valuable than the quantity of Scherzer’s.

Could Kershaw win the Cy Young Award with 155 2/3 innings pitched in 21 starts? If they yield a 15-2 record, 186 strikeouts, a 1.79 ERA, 0.73 WHIP and a strikeout-to-walk ratio north of 16, which is what his numbers project to, it’s not out of the question. Indeed, with a player as great as Kershaw, there’s very little that seems truly impossible.

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The greatest call ever: The story of Vin Scully's ninth inning of Sandy Koufax's perfect game By Jeff Passan It was 9:46 p.m. on September the 9th, 1965, and all anyone heard on the FM radio signal beaming from KFI to the world was noise. At first it was 29,139 people sounding like a million and then a woman’s wail overpowering the masses and then a whistle reverberating and another whistle and another. And only then, as the voices yielded to the limits of their larynx and the euphoria at Dodger Stadium started to evaporate, did the man on the radio deign to speak again. For 38 seconds, he had let cacophony finish the story he’d told with such melody. Now he needed a bookend. “On the scoreboard in right field,” Vin Scully said, “it is 9:46 p.m. in the City of the Angels, Los Angeles, California. And a crowd of 29,139 just sitting in to see the only pitcher in baseball history to hurl four no-hit, no-run games. He has done it four straight years, and now he capped it: On his fourth no-hitter he made it a perfect game. And Sandy Koufax, whose name will always remind you of strikeouts, did it with a flourish. He struck out the last six consecutive batters. So when he wrote his name in capital letters in the record books, that ‘K’ stands out even more than the O-U-F-A-X.” It was to that point, and maybe still, the greatest game ever thrown: 113 pitches, 79 strikes, 14 strikeouts, all with an arm that between starts found itself jabbed with thick-gauged needles to remove excess fluid and rubbed with chili pepper extract to numb the pain. Koufax warranted every bit of adulation, though it would be wrong in hindsight not to acknowledge another truth every bit as evident today as it was exactly 51 years ago. That night, at Dodger Stadium, in the City of Angels, Los Angeles, California, there were actually two perfect games. Perfection is 27 outs and 1,028 words. It is 1 hour, 43 minutes of baseball and 8 minutes, 45 seconds of a radio broadcast. It is a fastball and a quick wit, a curveball and a willingness to bend convention. It is Sandy Koufax and it is Vin Scully, one artist playing muse to another. “Three times in his sensational career has Sandy Koufax walked out to the mound to pitch a fateful ninth where he turned in a no-hitter,” Scully said to start the ninth inning of a game that personified mid-1960s baseball. Hits were hard to come by – 1965 was the leanest year for them in nearly half a century – and the Dodgers had managed one all night, a seventh-inning bloop double by Lou Johnson, who two innings earlier had scored the game’s only run on a walk, sacrifice, stolen base and overthrow. Twenty-four times a Chicago Cubs player had stepped in against Koufax, and 24 times had he retreated to the bench defeated. First up in the ninth was Chris Krug, the Cubs’ catcher whose error gifted the

Dodgers their run, and Koufax started him off with a curveball for a strike. Krug swung through a fastball for strike two, and Scully delivered the first of an inconceivable number of memorable lines for an off-the-cuff broadcast: “You can almost taste the pressure now.” By then, Dodgers fans understood what all these years later we now know: Scully endeavors to turn baseball into a multisensory experience in which he acts as our eyes and nose and hand and even our tongue and amalgamates them into something we consume with our ears. He limned the world before him and allowed us to dream it: “Koufax lifted his cap, ran his fingers through his black hair, then pulled the cap back down, fussing at the bill. Krug must feel it too as he backs out, heaves a sigh, took off his helmet, put it back on and steps back up to the plate.” As Krug took a ball and fouled off the next pitch, Scully stopped to name all nine Dodgers on the field. He called the infielders “the boys who will try to stop anything hit their way,” and, after scrolling through the outfielders, said: “And there’s 29,000 people in the ballpark and a million butterflies.” At 37 years old then, and today just the same, Scully made even the rote sound exquisite, his choice of words and mellifluous voice imbuing gravitas. The tension of Krug’s at-bat resonated because Scully felt it, too. Another foul ball. Another ball, outside, which caused boos toward the umpire that Scully knew unfair. “A lot of people in the ballpark now are starting to see the pitches with their hearts,” he said. Never did Scully fall into that trap. For 16 years he had called Dodgers games with dutiful equilibrium. To lapse into homerism would be disingenuous. Scully knew the best play-by-play men trafficked in facts, not emotions. Much as he admired and rooted for Sandy Koufax, Scully recognized play-by-play is meant to exist in a church-and-state world, where the story of the game supersedes all. That didn’t stifle his enthusiasm. On the contrary, Scully called Krug’s strikeout on a fastball with the proper fervor before segueing back to the facts: “Sandy Koufax has struck out 12. He is two outs away from a perfect game.” Scully was, and five decades later remains, the master at never allowing the situation to overwhelm him so much he forgets to pair his aural candy with the necessary meat and potatoes. After pinch hitter Joe Amalfitano fell behind 0-2 and left the batter’s box, Koufax stepped off the rubber and paced behind it. “I would think that the mound at Dodger Stadium right now is the loneliest place in the world,” Scully said, and counterintuitive though it sounded – a man with tens of thousands of people urging him toward something achieved only seven times, lonely – Scully echoed the reality of every pitcher. The mound is isolated, secluded, desolate, the domain of one and only one, the vise of the moment ever squeezing. Amalfitano waved at a fastball for the third strike, bringing up pinch hitter Harvey Kuenn. “The time on the scoreboard is 9:44,” Scully said. “The date, September the 9th, 1965.” It was his second mention of the time and third of the date. This was intentional. Whenever a no-hitter went into the ninth inning, Scully asked his sound engineer to start recording a tape so he could deliver a copy of the live broadcast to the pitcher. Scully always included the date so the pitcher could play the tape for his grandchildren and give them a sense of how long ago it took place. The addition of time was almost ornamental, a special souvenir for Koufax that Scully never intended to become one of the defining moments of the call.

Koufax started Kuenn with a fastball for a strike, then missed high on a pair, including one pitch after which his hat flew off his head. “You can’t blame a man for pushing just a little bit now,” Scully said. “Sandy backs off, mops his forehead, runs his left index finger along his forehead, dries it off on his left pants leg.” This was classic Scully: universal observation followed by vivid scene description. The king of muscular verbs – mop and taste and fuss and heave – Scully always respected his audience enough not to pander to the lowest common denominator. On Koufax’s 14th pitch of the inning, Scully didn’t call the pitch type for the first time. It was a strike, which meant Koufax was one away, which prompted another time check: “It is 9:46 p.m.” Ten seconds later, Scully uttered the words for which he’d waited all night: “Swung on and missed! A perfect game!” He was speaking for Sandy Koufax. He just as well could’ve been for himself. In old, dusty vinyl collections across Los Angeles, a gem of a record lurks, unspun in decades. At the top of the label, it reads: Danny Goodman. He was the Los Angeles Dodgers’ marketing guru who, among other things, introduced the United States to bobbleheads. Goodman would sell anything, including the record that on the bottom of the label said: Every so often, a copy of Goodman’s version or another record company’s will crop up on eBay. It’s the nostalgic way to re-live the ninth inning, just as Jane Leavy’s peerless biography, “Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy,” weaves his life story through the prism of the entire perfect game, from his childhood to the Yom Kippur game in 1965 to his retirement a year later. The book also fills in the first eight innings, with Scully’s call never again heard publicly. At least one copy exists – and Sandy Koufax owns it. A fan approached him with a scratchy recording off a transistor radio. It’s missing the first inning, but the rest is there, all for Koufax to listen to, to enjoy, the baseball version of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. Scully has been the world’s long enough that there’s something romantic about leaving this slice of history to the person who inspired it. The ninth inning is enough, really, a delightful encapsulation of Scully’s 67-year career calling Dodgers games, which ends when their season does. Losing Scully – his voice, his knowledge, his tangential stories, his measured, old-timey delivery – will hurt the game, a premise Scully himself would find laughable. He’s just a play-by-play man, after all. A voice. And yet those 1,028 words in those 8 minutes, 45 seconds in which the breadth of his repertoire ingrained itself into baseball lore make a compelling point otherwise. Vin Scully isn’t just anything. He’s everything. What I learned from Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully By Yahoo Sports Staff For over 67 seasons, legendary Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully has regaled fans with amusing anecdotes while calling baseball games. It’s not simply the way Scully tells those stories, it’s the various topics he covers. One day, he’ll decide to tell you about what is like to watch Jackie Robinson run the bases. The next, he’ll teach you the meaning behind Friday the 13th.

When we first came up with the idea of “Vin Scully Day” at Yahoo Sports, it became obvious that passing along our favorite Vin Scully clips would make for a fun idea. Considering the wide range of options, we were sure to get some excellent contributions. But as we reached out to other writers, that idea shifted to something slightly different. People were more than happy to share specific clips of Scully, but many had stories that expanded beyond his broadcasting career. Some of the people we reached out to had personal interactions with Scully they wanted to share. One found a newspaper column written by Scully in 1958. As you might expect, all of them were entertaining enough to share. If anything, the stories below confirm that Scully’s contributions to the game expand far beyond his role as a broadcaster. Calling Vin Scully a legendary broadcaster doesn’t do justice to his legacy. Vin Scully is a legendary baseball icon, on par with the greats who have played the game, changed the game and governed the game. We’re going to miss him so much when he’s gone. CEE ANGI, THE ATHLETIC Vin Scully has taught me about life lessons, baseball, musicals, and history. There have been many great history lessons from him (baseball and non-baseball related), but there have been a few that have stuck with me, particularly the history of the Star Spangled Banner, deep thoughts on D-Day, and even a fairly comprehensive history on fish and rays during a game against, predictably, the Tampa Bay Rays. But one of my absolute favorite history lessons came earlier this season when the Los Angeles Dodgers played the San Diego Padres on the history of beards. Vin noted that he noticed more and more beards on the faces of players around the majors and wanted to inform his reader on the history of beards. Mind you, it wasn’t research on baseball and the history of beards, but on the history of facial hair in general, dating back to Biblical times. There were some gems in the discussion: That ladies like them, that beards were first seen as ways to frighten off adversaries and wild animals, and some contextual conversation on beards relating to Alexander the Great (who believed he was too handsome to cover his face with facial hair), that beards were a Divine mandate in the Bible, and that a female pharaoh of Egypt, Hatsheput wore a fake beard to convince people that she was a man. It was a bit of a silly topic, but one that stuck with me, as not only was it a subject matter that the listener might not have known about, but that he is seamlessly calling an inning with two outs in the middle of it all. In 1958, right after the Dodgers (and Vin Scully) moved to Los Angeles, Scully filled in for a vacationing L.A. Times columnist by writing a piece about how nervous he was. Along the way, he talked about a man who’d had an influence on his life: “He was the headmaster at Fordham Preparatory School. A tall, well-groomed priest with a polished air of refinement, a tremendous faculty for understanding and a lifetime pledge to a vow of poverty. He had devoted his life to the schooling and upbringing of other people’s children and he interested me in dramatics, debating and oratory. I represented the school in an oratorical contest and he was rather upset when I didn’t have black shoes to go with a navy blue suit. The day of the contest he summoned me to his office and in front of his desk on the floor there were 13 pairs of black shoes. He had borrowed

them from every priest in the school and I had to try them all on until I found a pair that fit. He taught me to be myself at all times, to be honest and not to fear mistakes. He made me believe in myself.” It’s easy to read Scully’s tribute to his former headmaster and toss it on the pile with all the other tributes to teachers you’ve ever read—who doesn’t say nice things about teachers, after all? Writing a nice thing about a teacher is as reflexive as saying thank you when you’re trick-or-treating, the sort of easy trained behavior that we all pretty much do without trying. But Vin gets to something so much more personal in just a few sentences—in just one sentence—indeed, in just one clause: “He had devoted his life to the schooling and upbringing of other people’s children.” There’s a whole novel about this headmaster in that clause, a chapter each on unpacking what we mean by “Devoted,” to unpacking “Life,” to what we mean by “Schooling and Upbringing,” and, of course, “Other people’s children.” You are convinced by that one clause that Vin Scully didn’t ever stop thinking about this headmaster, and that he didn’t ever stop thinking about other people. What I learned from Vin Scully, and from his titanic success as a broadcaster: The world really does need good people. The media business might have a bias toward conflict, but we personally have a bias toward dignified people who have an orientation toward love. If there’s a comp for Vin Scully, it’s Fred Rogers, another person who so stood for love and dignity that he made you feel loved and dignified. Mr. Rogers never met you, but he convinced you that if he did he would love you and care deeply about you as an individual. Vin Scully is the same. From afar, he makes us believe in ourselves. CRAIG GOLDSTEIN, BASEBALL PROSPECTUS I was raised a Dodgers fan and thus have been listening to Vin most of my life — or at least since the advent of MLB.TV. This means I’ve heard most of his stories (several times) and it becomes harder to separate things I’ve known forever versus things I’ve known forever that I’ve also learned from Vin. In this vein, I’m sure I had heard him talk about the Sword of Damocles many times before — in fact, as a lover of Greek mythology, I’m sure I’d heard it elsewhere too — but this particular instance has always stuck with me. It involves former perennial dark-horse Cy Young contender Chad Billingsley, who had been working his way back from injury and former Padres journeyman Eric Stults. Billingsley is on the mound, Stults at the plate, when Scully begins to unfurl the story of Damocles. This is Vin at his best, in my eyes. Telling a story, fictional or historical, that applies to the situation at hand. Nothing about Damocles (or many of the yarns he spins) is inherently related to baseball, but he fleshes out details of a player’s story, emotion, or otherwise. His usage of the Sword of Damocles in this situation is a window into the pressures and anxiety shouldered by pitchers whose very careers hang by a similarly thin thread (or ligament). I know with Vin retiring the one-man booth is likely gone for good, and there’s good reason — it’s a really hard thing to pull off. One of the benefits though, is that it forces the broadcaster to talk to the audience rather than to another person, something Scully has excelled at, and something that continually reinforces his connection to his audience. He speaks to us. We are not merely passive listeners of a conversation being had by two (or three) knowledgeable people, but rather we are engaged in that conversation. There are plenty of good broadcasts that are still around, but few of them are able to weave in off-topic threads as capably and as comfortably as Scully, which means the days of learning about Greek mythology during a baseball broadcast number in the precious few. MARK TOWNSEND, BIG LEAGUE STEW

We all know what happened on Dec. 7, 1941. Honestly though, it’s not a subject I ever broached with my grandparents — all of whom are now gone — so it was a history lesson for me when Scully recently recounted the attack on Pearl Harbor through his eyes. This wasn’t one of Scully’s typically upbeat anecdotes. This was a personal account of a life-changing day in our world’s history. The Vin Scully we’ve seen, heard and grown to love is always sturdy and always sharp. On that day, and in those moments, he let us in a little deeper while putting the impact that day had on his life and the importance of sports into perspective. That’s the magic of Vin Scully. Vin Scully taught me a very important lesson: Be Yourself. At SiriusXM, we’ve been working on a career retrospective on Vin, that’ll run right after the season ends. His long time broadcast partner, Ross Porter, recently confirmed a story I’d heard long ago. The Dodgers, going back to Red Barber, had always been a single announcer broadcast. So, even though Vin would work with Jerry Doggett, Don Drysdale and Porter, they’d always work “one at a time”. When Vin’s innings off would come up, he wouldn’t sit in the broadcast booth. The reason behind it was that Vin didn’t want to pick up the mannerisms of the other broadcasters. See, Vin realized that what made him unique was, well, him. His interest in drama, and history and storytelling. Those are the things that made Vin Scully unique. It’s understandable when you’re on a career path, that you would mimic the things your heroes do. But, and I realize this is some schmaltzy, Mr. Rogers level analysis, but, you can only be who you are. That’s a pretty important lesson, in any industry. Your strengths will make you successful, trying to be someone else will limit who you can be. Even though I’ve only met him once in passing, and have never talked about this with him. I’m forever grateful to Vin for that lesson. CHRIS CWIK, BIG LEAGUE STEW With Vin Scully, there are just so many different clips to choose and stories to tell. Among all of them, one sticks out above the rest for me. I’ll never forget when Scully recounted the time he raced Jackie Robinson on ice skates. It’s not so much what the story says about Robinson that sticks with me, it’s the fact that Scully saw Robinson play, and knew the man on a personal level. Every baseball fan knows Robinson’s story. He remains one of the game’s greatest players, but also one of the game’s most transcendent ones. He’s an inspiration to so many people. I never saw Jackie Robinson play. In fact, he died many years before I was even born. But Vin Scully did see him play, and he knew him well. Because of Vin Scully, I know what Robinson was like. I have some knowledge of how he approached life, and got a peak at his competitive nature. Robinson is far from the only baseball legend Scully saw. He’s a walking, talking encyclopedia of baseball knowledge. Through him, younger fans are able to get a true look at what the game and its stars were like long before they were born. I’ll miss those history lessons. ISRAEL FEHR, BIG LEAGUE STEW What makes Vin Scully so incredible as a broadcaster is his ability to make anything interesting and paint a vivid picture of something completely random. I can’t exactly explain why this specific story sticks with

me but it does. Roy Oswalt was pitching for a not-so-great Astros team against a fairly mediocre Dodgers team in the middle of August. In most cases there wouldn’t much to take from that game, but that’s never the case when Scully is on the call. Oswalt took the mound for the bottom of the first inning and after a quick introduction of the right-hander’s season and career stats, Scully launched into a story about Oswalt’s impressive ranch. Haven’t you heard? It’s 1,000 acres right in the middle of Mississippi and you can hunt and fish there to your heart’s desire. As Oswalt fired eight innings of one-run ball, Scully continued to weave in details about Oswalt’s offseason home – a visiting player, no less – while expertly calling the game. That’s the magic of Scully, at least for me. He brings the viewer even closer to the action with these kind of personal stories without sacrificing the nuts and bolts of the game. You leave the broadcast feeling like you know the players you’re watching a little bit better and it really does add a lot to the experience. MOLLY KNIGHT, AUTHOR OF ‘THE BEST TEAM MONEY CAN BUY’ What did Vin teach me? Well, he’s the most important person in the Dodgers organization, the all-time absolute big dog MVP, and he still held the door for me in the press box whenever we crossed paths, which was often. That might not seem important, but how often do venerated icons hold doors for young nobodies? I learned more from watching the way Vin treated everyone who came into his orbit, from Sandy Koufax and Willie Mays to the Dodger cafeteria workers, the same. He is as classy as ever a human that lived. MIKE OZ, BIG LEAGUE STEW You’ve probably never, in your life, turned on a baseball game and thought to yourself, “Gee, I wish someone would explain to me the history of Friday the 13th while I watch this game.” But that, my friends, is the beauty of Vin Scully. He accentuates your baseball experience with things you never knew you wanted to know. The Friday the 13th stories are my favorite. Best I can tell, he’s told them a few times, but I remember Sept. 13, 2013 against the Giants. Vin’s nearly four-minute dive into the how and why of Friday the 13th is really a great example of what makes him such a treasure. You learn things like: Tuesday the 13th is an unlucky day in Mexico. Or Friday the 17th is unlucky in Italy. And which celebrities died on Friday the 13th — including Tupac. What makes all this even better is how Vin makes it happen between pitches, between the heartbeat of a baseball game. It’s something that not many people could pull off. More proof that we’ll never see another like Vin Scully. Meet the man with the gargantuan task of following Vin Scully By Mike Oz Joe Davis’ phone buzzed. It was his dad, asking the question that perfectly summed the previous two years. On this April evening, Davis was sitting in the broadcast booth, calling his second game for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Kenta Maeda, the Japanese pitcher who, like Davis, was L.A.’s notable offseason

additions, was making his first MLB start and shocked everyone by hitting a home run. As Maeda touched home plate, Davis punctuated the blast with the right amount of awestruck surprise. “Is this real life?” he said. When Davis looked at his phone, he saw the note from his father: “When you said, ‘Is this real life?’ were you talking about Maeda or yourself?” “At that point, yeah,” Davis says, months later, in what will be the final days of the Vin Scully era. “It probably could have applied to either of us.” Here he is, a 28-year-old a few years removed from calling Double-A games, being groomed as the next play-by-play announcer for the Dodgers, a job has the least amount of turnover in sports. Scully, as everyone knows, is retiring at the end of the season. And Davis has the incredibly difficult task of following a legend. There’s no replacement for Vin Scully. There’s no heir apparent — or even an air apparent. There’s just the person who comes next. Just like there was the next Chicago Bulls shooting guard after Michael Jordan or the next San Francisco 49ers receiver after Jerry Rice. Davis knows this very well and he hopes his audience does too. “You really don’t replace him,” Davis said. “As with anybody is any profession who’s been the best to ever do that profession, you just don’t. There’s nobody alive right now or yet to be born that is ever going to do what Vin Scully was able to do in his 67-year career.” Which means that next season, if everything goes according to the understood plan, Davis will find himself in a position that is both historic and tricky. He’s the guy who gets to follow Vin Scully, but he’s also — gulp! — the guy who has to follow Vin Scully. “I hope that people, over time, can learn to accept listening to me,” Davis says, fully aware of inescapable judgment that is coming his way. When Joe Davis was born in 1987, Scully had already been calling Dodgers games for 37 years. It’s unusual enough that a 28-year-old will be the lead play-by-play announcer for an MLB team. It’s downright incredible that a 28-year-old is the successor to Vin Scully, the only play-by-play voice the Dodgers have known since moving to Los Angeles in 1958. Imagine getting that call. Imagine being four years out of college and being told the Dodgers wanted to know more about YOU as they pondered their post-Vin Scully plans. For Davis, the call came in 2014. There was no timeline for Scully’s departure then, so it was all very hypothetical, with lots of curiosity and plenty of whens and ifs. “It’s really cool that they know who I am,” Davis thought to himself then. “But there’s no way that I’m going to be the guy they decide to move forward with eventually.” The process continued. In-person meetings. Auditions. Things like that. And, what do you know, by November 2015, the Dodgers were naming Davis as a part-time addition to their broadcast crew.

The job, on paper, was 50 road games in 2016. But the job, as everyone understood it, was much bigger. He was the Dodgers’ next play-by-play announcer, so long as he didn’t royally screw anything up in 2016. “It goes without saying,” Davis says. “That was one of the coolest calls I’ve ever gotten.” They’ve met in person twice since then: Once at a Dodgers preseason event and once on Opening Day, when the Dodgers were playing in San Diego. Their contrasting schedules — Scully only calls home games and Davis only calls road games — has made it so they haven’t seen each other this season. The big, definitive announcement still hasn’t come from the Dodgers. They haven’t officially named Davis as their guy for 2017, but it’s something of a poorly kept secret that he’ll be their lead play-by-play voice once Scully calls his final out. Take Scully out of the equation and Davis is still quite impressive: He’s a young, up-and-comer in the broadcast industry, who in four years time jumped from Double-A baseball to Comcast Sports Southeast to ESPN to Fox Sports, where he was hired to do national play-by-play for college football, basketball, MLB and the NFL. He’ll do all that in 2017 — about 65 games — plus his Dodgers schedule, making him one of the busiest broadcasters around. The 50-game introduction in 2016 has proven to be a smart move for both the Dodgers and Davis. People hate change. Sports fans especially hate change. So if Davis had walked in fresh for 2017, it could have been disastrous. Remember when Conan O’Brien took over for Jay Leno and “Tonight Show” viewers lost their minds? Davis knows what the alternate scenario would look like: “Vin doing 162 games, retiring and then here’s this random kid doing 162 games and ‘Where in the world is Vin?’ That would be really jarring for people.” Instead, he’s easing his way into the homes of Dodgers fans and … so far, so good. “I knew there would be some natural criticism that would come just because I’m not Vin — nobody is Vin — but it’s been 99 percent positive from people.” Davis said. “Positive might not be the right word because that sounds like I’m gloating about something I’ve done in these 50 games, which is such a tiny sample size. Warm might be a better word for it. A lot of good people are making me feel welcome.” There were many nights, in Davis’ less glamorous, dues-paying days, when he says Scully’s words accompanied him on late nights of work. Davis, who grew up in Michigan, calls himself a “broadcast nerd,” meaning that when he watched sports in his younger years, he absorbed as much as the people calling the game as the people playing it. In college — he attended Beloit College, a small liberal arts school in Wisconsin, where he played football — he’d listen to baseball games on his MLB radio app, cycling through the East Coast games then finishing off many nights by listening to Vin and the Dodgers. When he worked for the Double-A Montgomery Biscuits, Davis’ job included writing game stories and updating the team’s website. He’d do that to the soundtrack of Vin and the Dodgers.

“He’s simply the greatest storyteller to ever live,” Davis says. “Not just baseball announcers, but period. Name a better storyteller than Vin Scully.” You can’t, which is why Davis’ stint in the Dodgers booth will be noticeably different. First off, it won’t be a one-man booth like Scully has done for all these years. Davis will have color commentators with him. This year, when Davis is on, the Dodgers have used a three-man booth with Orel Hershiser and Nomar Garciaparra.

Joe Davis ✔ @Joe_Davis Thanks @JonSooHooPics for capturing my 1st day on the job. Going to be a blast sharing the booth with these two. But the other big difference is that Davis won’t try to be Scully. He can’t. “The tendency, especially in a situation like this, would be for me to try to be Vin,” Davis says. “Just to try to ease the transition for people. Understanding here’s the most beloved sports announcer that ever lived, why not try and be exactly like him, right? Well, that’s not going to work. I’ve learned a ton from listening to Vin, but there’s a difference in learning a ton from a guy and trying to be a guy.” And there’s an even bigger difference in trying to be a guy and trying to be Vin-freakin’-Scully. Davis, when asked to discuss his style, brings up a piece of advice that Scully himself got from his mentor Red Barber: “You bring something to the booth nobody else can, and that’s you.” “The way I look at it,” Davis says,” is trying to do the job the best way that I know how, the way that has allowed me to have some success in my career and not necessarily look at it like I’m following Vin Scully or filling Vin Scully’s shoes, because that puts myself in an impossible spot.” And, that, is real life. Vin Scully's greatest gift? Bringing people together By Israel Fehr It was, of all places, on the back deck of my high-school girlfriend’s house where I began to grasp Vin Scully’s greatest gift. We were preparing for a barbecue on an early summer’s night when an issue arose with the grill, so we called the next-door-neighbor to see if he could help and he was more than happy to trudge over and do so. Feeling like it was the right thing to do, Al was invited to stay for dinner. Still in the getting-to-know-the-family phase of the relationship, I stayed relatively quiet throughout the dinner, but it didn’t take long for Al, who was probably close to 60 years old, and I, a few weeks away from turning 18, to bond over a mutual love of baseball. After the table was sufficiently fed, the conversations broke into smaller groups and Al and I really got going. There were even some disagreements – he had Mantle, I had Griffey – but when the discussion turned to broadcasting there would be no disagreeing.

There was no one — not now, not ever — better than Vin Scully. How could there be? He was simply the best to have ever done it. I grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, watching the occasional late-night Dodgers games we’d get on Canadian TV and later seeking them out on MLB.TV. Scully’s legend was not lost on me. Listening to Scully on TV made it easy to see why he was so revered – the clarity of the delivery, the depth of the storytelling – but it wasn’t until I went to Los Angeles that I could truly understand the Scully experience. Just the summer prior I sat in the bleachers for a series at Dodger Stadium while on a family road trip. What I remember most — other than a monster home run hit by a Marlins rookie named Mike Stanton — was the wave of fans that clutched pocket radios or hauled in large boomboxes to listen to Scully’s broadcast as a group. What struck me most about it was everyone, regardless of age and race, was captivated by every word Scully spoke out of those speakers. It was not at all unlike Al and I, even as we sat there more than 1,000 miles from the man just chatting about him, he was the common link between us. A few weeks later I moved across the country to Toronto to start college and didn’t think twice about the night when the neighbor saved the barbecue. When I came home for Christmas, though, there was a gift for me from someone I was not expecting. Al had left a copy of “Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story” by Curt Smith with my girlfriend’s parents to give to me. Merry Christmas! And, more importantly, pitchers and catchers report in less than two months. I saw Al a handful of times after that. Always a smile and a wave and maybe a comment or two about whatever the hot topic of the day was in baseball. But it’s been years since I saw him. Eventually the girlfriend and I were no more and I’ve spent most of that time living away from home, chasing my own sports journalism dreams. But we’ll always have that night on the back deck, talking baseball and swapping Scully stories. And I’ve got the book to prove it. Because from behind his microphone with his eyes on the diamond, whether it was for one night, one year or a career, Scully has been bringing baseball lovers — even those with a 40-year age difference — together. What an incredible legacy to leave behind.

THE RINGER

The Dodgers’ Inexhaustible Supply of Starters Is Defying History and Logic By Ben Lindbergh On Sunday, rookie starter José De Leon made his Dodgers debut, whiffing nine Padres without issuing a walk. On most teams, an outing like that would’ve automatically triggered another turn in the rotation.

On the Dodgers … well, we’ll see. Los Angeles Times beat writer Andy McCullough’s story about the uncertainty surrounding De Leon’s next start mentioned 11 other Dodgers pitchers who have started, are currently starting, or could still start again this season. De Leon, the team’s top-ranked pitching prospect (and the 35th-best prospect in baseball, per MLB.com), will have to take a ticket and wait until his number is next. De Leon’s limbo is nothing new; for the second consecutive season, there’s been a ton of “TBD” on the list of L.A.’s probable pitchers. From 2010 to 2015, major league teams averaged 10.1 starters per season. The Dodgers, who led the majors with 16 starters last season, are tied for the top spot with 15 this year. They aren’t the first team to test a staff’s limits like this, but based on past precedent, that blueprint shouldn’t be working this well. As one would expect, it takes a melting pot of pitchers to use more than 30 starters in a two-season sample, with reputations ranging from unheard of to heralded, and salaries ranging from league minimum to league leading. Each of the team’s many rotation members comes with a unique set of instructions. The second-half anchor of the 2016 rotation, offseason addition Kenta Maeda, is pitching on an NPB-style schedule meant to minimize fatigue. Maeda, who leads the team in innings since the All-Star break, has started on “normal” (four days’) rest only once in that span. The Dodgers’ limited-workload contingent also includes De Leon, Ross Stripling, and Julio Urias, the just-turned-20-year-old who started the season as the game’s top left-handed pitching prospect and made it to the majors without ever throwing more than six innings in a minor league start. On the unsung side, there’s Brock Stewart, a converted infielder who started the season in High-A and didn’t make Baseball America’s preseason list of the team’s top 30 prospects. Then there are the fragile free-agent signees who’d be first-round draft picks in a fantasy league scored by DL days: Brett Anderson, Brandon McCarthy, Scott Kazmir (and more). And of course, there’s Clayton Kershaw, the best pitcher in baseball, and trade deadline acquisition Rich Hill, who ranks second behind Kershaw on the leaderboard of lowest ERAs among pitchers with at least 80 innings pitched. Kershaw is due to return Friday from the back injury that’s kept him sidelined since late June; Hill, who’s been plagued by an almost-unhealable blister, has thrown 12 innings in the past two months. Plenty of rotations have had casts this unsettled; prior to last season, 134 major league teams had featured 15 starters or more. What separates the Dodgers from most teams with revolving-door rotations, though, is that the Dodgers are good. The five other teams who’ve used more than 13 starters this season — the Braves, Reds, Padres, Angels, and Athletics — are a combined 125 games out of first place in their respective divisions. That’s pretty typical: Those 134 high-turnover-rotation teams recorded a collective winning percentage of .418. The Dodgers, meanwhile, are on track to finish 92–70 for the second consecutive season, and their five-game lead over historically slumping San Francisco with 23 games to go gives them a better than 90 percent chance of winning the NL West for the fourth year in a row. Let’s put that accomplishment into perspective: Before last season, only one other team in baseball’s long history (the 1989 Giants) had qualified for the playoffs after asking 15 or more pitchers to start. The Dodgers are about to do it in back-to-back years. The cherry on top of this crazy cake is that the Dodgers aren’t succeeding in spite of their rotation. Even though they’ve cycled starters in and out of active duty all season, the Dodgers’ rotation has helped the team, on the whole. That, too, makes the Dodgers stand out. In the 65 full seasons for which we can

calculate Deserved Run Average, Baseball Prospectus’s most comprehensive measure of pitching performance, 71 teams (excluding the 2015 Dodgers) have used 15 or more starters. On the whole, their starters have pitched 7 percent worse than the average rotation; only 13 have been better than average. (The ’89 Giants, for instance, had a below-average rotation but brute-forced their way to the World Series by leading the majors in position player WAR.) The 2015 and 2016 Dodgers’ starters have been 20 percent and 8 percent better than average, respectively. The 1959 and 1987 Yankees are the only previous teams with 15 or more starters to finish with a winning record and a better-than-average rotation DRA — and those Yankees were worse than the 2015–16 Dodgers in both respects. So how have the Dodgers defied the odds? Most teams that use 15 or more starters don’t draw it up that way: Injuries and poor performance force them to dip deeper into their pitcher pools than they’d planned. The further they stray from their frontline arms, the more their performance suffers. Though the Dodgers didn’t exactly set out to use this many starters, they constructed their rotation in a way that made it more likely that they’d have to dig deep. Then they stockpiled backups, some of whom they hoped they wouldn’t have to use. According to Baseball Injury Consultants, the Dodgers lead the majors with 1,234 days lost to injury this season. That can’t have come as a complete surprise to a team that’s shown no fear of free-agent starters with lengthy injury histories or irregular physicals. Because they have the game’s deepest pockets (and most lucrative TV deal), the Dodgers could afford to take on health risks, knowing that even if their efforts at injury prevention fell short, no one loss (or, for that matter, many) would irreparably sabotage their season. Their high-risk pitcher portfolio has rewarded them handsomely in some cases (Maeda, Anderson’s 2015) and backfired just as spectacularly in others (McCarthy, Anderson’s 2016). Big dollars don’t explain everything. Smart player evaluation and development deserve some credit for the Dodgers’ success. De Leon was a draft gem from the 24th round; Urias was a scouting discovery, albeit one who got a sizable bonus; Mike Bolsinger, a useful starter in 2015, was an almost-free find whom the Diamondbacks didn’t want. It’s also helped that the Dodgers have gotten league-leading framing from catcher Yasmani Grandal, a pickup from the Padres whose ability to earn extra strikes more than makes up for his shortcoming as a game-caller. Without their high-priced teammates, though, those inexpensive players wouldn’t have produced a first-place team. Pitchers who’ve started for the Dodgers this year have combined for close to $100 million in 2016 salary, more than nine teams are spending on their entire rosters. Roughly half of that price tag comes from the foursome of Anderson, McCarthy, Kazmir, and Hyun-Jin Ryu, who’ve combined for minus-0.2 WAR, according to Baseball-Reference. Investing that much money with zero return would have sunk some teams, but the Dodgers had the resources to spend their way out of the hole. They also had the resources to make Kershaw baseball’s highest-paid player; fielding 15-plus starters hurts a lot less when one of them is on an all-time top-10 trajectory. The best news for the Dodgers is that they’re tantalizingly close to seeing the chaos subside at the most important point of the year. All season, they’ve been sifting through starters, searching for the most potent mix. Suddenly, it’s starting to solidify. For the moment, Hill is healthy, having thrown a six-inning one-hitter last Saturday and suffered no known setbacks since then. Kershaw’s start on Friday will be telling, but the lefty said almost three weeks ago that he felt “100 percent,” and he made a successful minor league start last weekend. Those two and Maeda would give the Dodgers the best top three of any team in October. De Leon, Urias (who’s been superb since his second start but is probably bound for

the bullpen), Kazmir (who suffered a setback on Wednesday), or McCarthy could capably bring up the playoff rotation’s rear. De Leon has the least big league experience, but based on his first start and his Triple-A performance, he might be the best choice. We’re still a month away from Game 1 of the NLDS, and based on how their seasons have gone, no one would be shocked if Kershaw and Hill were again unavailable by then. In that scenario, the Dodgers would have to do what they’ve done since the start of last season: Make a sacrifice to the Many-Faced God, plug in other pitchers, and play on. Thus far, they’ve survived, and thrived, on fluidity. What the Dodgers have tried isn’t really a replicable plan. Nor is it the new Moneyball; if anything, it’s an approach that wouldn’t work without money. The Dodgers are spending in a way that no team has spent. We probably shouldn’t be shocked that they’re winning in a way that no one has won.

LA TIMES

Dodgers Dugout: Why Dave Roberts should be named manager of the year By Houston Mitchell Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell, wondering where they got this Puig guy from. He's been a real boost to the offense. Manager of the year As the season winds down, the Dodgers have two people who are top candidates for end-of-season awards. Corey Seager is a lock for rookie of the year, and will get consideration for MVP. We'll talk more about that later. But let's talk about Dave Roberts and his candidacy for manager of the year. Imagine the day before the 2016 season started you were told the following: --Clayton Kershaw would spend over two months on the disabled list. --Every member of your projected starting rotation, except Kenta Maeda, would spend time on the disabled list. --So many players would be hurt that you would use 54 players during the season. --Your main left-handed reliever, J.P. Howell would have a 9.00 ERA in April. --Yasiel Puig would be sent to the minors because of attitude problems. --Kiké Hernandez would hit below .200 all season. --Adrian Gonzalez would barely be slugging .400 at the All-Star break. --Andre Ethier would be out all season because of a broken leg.

--One of your big trade-deadline acquisitions would spend a couple of weeks on the DL because of blisters, and the other would hit well below .200 in his first month with the team. --You would be relying mainly on rookies to make key starts down the stretch. And that's not all of it. If you knew all that, how many games would you predict the Dodgers would win? 70? 75? Instead, the Dodgers are 79-60, have a five-game lead in the NL West and are on pace to win 92 games. And Dave Roberts is largely responsible for that. I'm not in the clubhouse before and after games; all I can go by is what I see on TV and the reports I get from those who are closer to the situation than I am. But Roberts has definitely changed the feel and attitude of this team. They seem to be having more fun, they seem to be pulling for each other to do well. Gonzalez is dropping bunts down the third-base line to beat the shift. Players are having more productive at bats (especially in the second half). Roberts is making better in-game decisions, and has juggled his bullpen quite well down the stretch. The team seems more relaxed. It's difficult to imagine another manager getting more out of this team than Roberts. Sometimes he makes decisions that seem strange, but those decisions seem to work out an awful lot. And if you are one of those who believe that a manager's main job nowadays is to be a clubhouse psychologist, then Roberts should be an easy choice for the award. Since the low point of the season, May 21, when the Dodgers were 21-23, the team has gone 58-37, a pace to win 99 games. They were 41-36 when Kershaw got hurt. They have gone 38-24 since then, a pace to win 99 games. If the season ended today, I would vote for Roberts. The other candidates, Joe Maddon of the Cubs, Dusty Baker of the Nationals and Don Mattingly of the Marlins, would not be bad choices, but my vote goes to Roberts. The final 23 games of the season will go a long way to determining who the top candidate really is. By the way, Dylan Hernandez wrote a great column on how Mattingly leaving and Roberts arriving worked out well for everyone involved. And Joe Fox takes a pitch-by-pitch look at Kershaw’s season so far. Have you noticed? Since returning from the minors, Yasiel Puig is hitting .444 with two homers and five RBIs. Andre Ethier Ethier is still on a rehab assignment in Rancho Cucamonga, which is in the Cal League playoffs right now. As Roberts told Times Dodgers reporter Andy McCullough recently: “When he’s ready to come back, and he feels like he can contribute, he’ll be activated.” In other words, do not expect a lot of contributions from Ethier this season, and don't expect to see him on the playoff roster.

Vin's last six games on TV So, KTLA will televise Vin Scully's final six regular-season games. As I mentioned in the last newsletter, that's great news for most of us. But not if you live in Santa Barbara, whose main cable carrier doesn't show KTLA. And not if you live in Las Vegas, where they also don't show KTLA and which blacks out Dodgers games. So, if you are a Dodgers fan in those areas, you are out of luck. Which is unacceptable. Here's what the Dodgers should do: Make a deal to allow Sept. 23, Vin Scully Appreciation Day, to be streamed live on their website, both the pre-game ceremony and the game. Of course, the best thing would be for everyone to get together to work out a deal with Santa Barbara and Vegas so those cities, and any other city in the Dodgers area that doesn't carry KTLA, can see all six games. Are you a Rams fan? If you aren't, skip to the next item, but if you are, I want to alert you to a great event coming up on Sept. 15 at 7 p.m. at the Wiltern Theater. The Times is holding a "Welcome Back to L.A." event about the Rams. Times columnist Bill Plaschke will moderate a conversation with Rams legends Eric Dickerson, Tom Mack, Jackie Slater and Jack Youngblood. Times NFL reporter Sam Farmer will talk to Rams Executive Vice President Kevin Demoff on the journey to Los Angeles and the new Inglewood stadium, and there will be a silent auction of rare Rams memorabilia to benefit the Rams Foundation. Click here for tickets and more information. The rest of the schedule HOME (7 games): Sept. 19-21 vs. San Francisco, Sept. 22-25 vs. Colorado ROAD (16 games): Sept. 9-11 at Miami, Sept. 12-14 at New York Yankees, Sept. 15-18 at Arizona, Sept. 27-29 at San Diego, Sept. 30-Oct. 2 at San Francisco. Trade update How the players acquired at the trade deadline are doing: Josh Reddick: .212 (21 for 99), two doubles, one homer, three RBIs. Note: Reddick is hitting .379 and slugging .517 in his last nine games. Rich Hill: 2-0, 0.00 ERA Jesse Chavez: 1-0, 3.54 ERA in 17 games Josh Fields: 1-0, 3.86 ERA in 13 games And just after the deadline: Carlos Ruiz: .200 (2 for 10) Note: A.J. Ellis is hitting .167 for the Phillies (3 for 18).