In my last post, I suggested that Chris Sale might be the best lefty pitcher in the game right now, which is an assertion that Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw would take issue with. Even given the injuries that have limited him to fewer than 25 stars per season over the last three years, his career-long history of excellence speaks for itself: seven consecutive All-Star nods from 2011 thru '17, three Cy Young Awards, one NL MVP, and even one Gold Glove to boot. Not to mention he's the active career leader in ERA (2.39), FIP (2.64), WHIP (1.005), win percentage (.689), shutouts (15), hits allowed per nine innings (6.7), and home runs allowed per nine innings (0.4). If there were no such thing as postseason demons, Kersh would have a practically flawless resumé - as it stands, he carries a 4.28 ERA over 23 playoff starts (and six relief appearances), which is not terrible by objective standards, but you would expect more from a future Hall of Famer. Unfortunately his pinch-hitting appearance in the 17th inning last night didn't do anything to bolster his postseason reputation, but at least he'll have another chance to pitch in Game 5.
Hyun-jin Ryu has had a rough go of it since making the jump from the Korea Baseball Organization to the majors in 2013 after seven years with the Hanwha Eagles. After a strong freshman and sophomore season, Ryu missed all of 2015 due to shoulder surgery, and then all but one game of 2016 because of an elbow injury. A groin issue limited him to just 15 starts in 2018, but they were some of the best of his MLB career, as manager Dave Roberts tabbed "Monster" as the Game 1 starter in the NLDS against the Braves, in order to take some of the pressure off Clayton Kershaw given his spotty postseason history. This tactic worked so well that Roberts did not repeat it in the NLCS or the World Series, where Kershaw took the loss in Game 1 of both serieses.
I think I remember hearing somewhere that Dodgers players have won the most Rookie of the Year awards out of any team in the majors. It's possible that 23-year-old Walker Buehler could have added to that total, if this weren't a season that saw the debuts of two of the hottest hitting young outfielders in recent memory (Ronald Acuna Jr. and Juan Soto). As it stands, the player who held the #13 ranking in Baseball America's top 100 prospect list heading into 2018 followed up his eight-game cup of coffee in 2017 with a 137.1 innings of 2.62 ERA pitching, and a fantasy points-per-game total that equalled ace Clayton Kershaw. It's hard to remember, because it seems like 1,000 hours ago, but Buehler pitched a seven-inning gem last night, even though the game didn't end until 11 innings after he came out of the game.
If you look up "journeyman" in the dictionary, you'd likely to see a picture of the smiling face of 38-year-old lefty Rich Hill. Or maybe you'd see him beating the tar out of a cooler full of candy in the Dodgers dugout. Here's the abridged version of D. Mountain's career: he came up for four seasons as a starter with the Cubs in his mid-20's, then struggled so badly in his lone season with the Orioles that the Red Sox converted him to a reliever. After pitching to a 1.14 ERA in 40 games over three seasons with Boston, the Indians took a shot on him as a lefty specialist, but were rewarded with a 6.28 ERA in his 38.2 innings over 63 games. He spent the next year managing only 5.1 innings between the Angels and the Yankees, before once again revitalizing his career with the Red Sox, this time as a starter. Although he only managed four starts in his second go-round in Boston, the 1.55 ERA he put up earned him a major league deal with the A's for next season. He only stayed in Oakland for one injury-shortened half that year however, as he was traded to the Dodgers while on the DL for blister problems. Hill re-upped with Los Angeles for three more years starting in 2017, where he has performed fairly well, both in the regular season (3.30 ERA) and in the playoffs (3.27 ERA), and will now be responsible for pulling LA even in the World Series tonight.
As with Eduardo Rodriguez in the Red Sox version of this feature, I'm putting Alex Wood here with the starters, even though he has been used exclusively in relief during the 2018 postseason. After struggling to find a role in Atlanta's pitching staff over his first two years, the Braves traded Wood to the Dodgers as part of a complicated three-team blockbuster with the Marlins that also involved Hector Olivera, Mat Latos, and Bronson Arroyo's contract, among others. AWood peaked in 2017 with a league-leading .842 winning percentage (16-3) and an All-Star berth, and is arbitration eligible for the third and final time this offseason.
You could say that what Clayton Kershaw has been for the Dodgers' starting staff, Kenley Jansen has been for their bullpen, at least over much of the same timeframe. Since taking over as the closer in 2012 (following a 25-game cup of coffee in 2010, and a 2011 season that he spent setting up for Javy Guerra) Jansen has racked up 259 saves, to go with a 2.21 ERA and a rate of 13.2 strikeout-per-nine-innings, making the All-Star team in the last three consecutive years. While Kenleyfornia had a troubling medical scare involving his heart while pitching in the rarefied air of Coors Field this year, that hasn't stopped him from continuing his dominance in the postseason, where he carried a 1.85 ERA heading into the 2018 World Series... although the home run he allowed last night ballooned that figure all the way up to 1.97.
If the Dodgers bullpen behind Jansen has been portrayed as a weakness for this club, it's due to largely unspectacular names like Pedro Baez serving as the primary setup options. That's no knock against Baez, with his career strikeout rate of nearly 10 per nine innings pitched, but he's not the type of shutdown arm that instills fear into opposing lineups when they see him warming up in the bullpen.
Well-traveled veteran Ryan Madson is the only member of this Dodgers pitching staff with a World Series ring in his career - two, in fact, as both his 2008 Phillies and 2015 Royals won championships. (Corner infielder David Freese holds that honor for the position player contingent.) The second of those two titles came after a stretch where Mad Dog was out of the majors for three years - after completing a three-year extension he signed with the Phillies, which he finished as the team's closer, Madson signed successive one-year deals with the Reds and the Angels, but didn't pitch for either club before latching on with the Royals on a minor league deal. His bounceback 2015 performance netted him a three-year deal with the A's, during the first of which he was the closer, and the second of which he was trade bait, in a deal that brought the A's their current (and far superior) closer. This year was the second in a row that Madson spent with two different teams, and he's evolved into Dave Roberts's "get out of trouble" guy during the World Series, despite the fact that he's allowed inherited runners to score both times he's been used in that role.
Normally I would put a starter-turned-reliever like Kenta Maeda in with the starting pitchers, but since his transition occurred well before the postseason started, he gets listed here with the rest of the bullpen. Maeda's embarrassingly cheap contract he signed prior to 2016 - on the heels of eight seasons pitching for the Hiroshima Carp in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball - includes escalators based on games started, so I'm sure he and his representatives were less than thrilled when Maeken was bumped from the rotation this year. But it's hard to argue with his results compared to the performance of breakout rookie Walker Buehler, and baseball is a business after all.
Relative unknown Dylan Floro would not have made my database if I considered only his time with either the Reds or the Dodgers, but taking his combined work into account actually shows a very solid 2018 performance. Floro was actually drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays, with whom he made his debut (a 12-game cup of coffee) in 2016, which he followed up with three games of long relief for the Cubs the following year, before having his first qualifying season this year. F Loro is not even arbitration eligible until 2021, so he could be a long-term piece for the Dodgers bullpen if the organization so chooses.
Scott Alexander broke onto the scene with the Royals in 2017 and was acquired by the Dodgers in the offseason, where he went through a bit of a sophomore slump. The lefty specialist had one appearance in the 2018 NLDS, before being left off the NLCS roster in favor of Julio Urias, and then subsequently being added back to the roster prior to the World Series, replacing rookie Caleb Ferguson. Scottie Boy did give up the lead in the earlier part of extra innings last night, but fortunately circumstances played out in such a way where he didn't have to take the loss.
The above-mentioned Julio Urias didn't pitch enough in 2018 to qualify for my database (minimum 40 innings pitched) due to a potentially career-threatening shoulder issue, but he returned for four shutout innings towards the end of the season, and has continued his dominance into the playoffs. With a healthy Urias joining exciting young options such as Buehler and Ferguson, this Los Angeles rotation promises to have some bright years in 2019 and beyond.
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