Stephen Strasburg Scratched From Marquee Matchup, But Clayton Kershaw Still Puts On A Show
Nate had a little Strasburg in his shorts yesterday, because we were supposed to get a showdown between Clayton Kershaw and Stephen Strasburg on Monday night.
Major letdown, because Strasburg ended up getting scratched right before the game with an upper back strain. It’s not a huge deal for the Nationals, considering Strasburg thinks he’ll be fine before his next scheduled start, and also because Washington is sitting pretty in first place with a 5.5 game lead over the struggling Mets and the mediocre Marlins. It’s way too early to be talking Wild Card, but the Dodgers do hold the first Wild Card spot in the National League at the moment, but by a slim margin, so they had more to lose in his one.
At this point, Kershaw is just moonwalking to his fourth Cy Young award. And before I continue, I just wanted to point out that Kershaw has won three Cy Young awards in the last five years, and the two years that he didn’t win, he finished second and third in the voting. He’s going to need to make some more room on the mantle after this season is done. After going seven innings and allowing just one earned run to the fourth best run-producing offense in the National League, Kershaw lowered his ERA to 1.57. He also struck out 8 batters to increase his MLB-leading strikeout total to 141, when only one other pitcher in the game has more than 118 (Max Scherzer, 128).
Just to put things in perspective, the average ERA in the MLB this year is 4.13. If you double Kershaw’s ERA, it’s 3.14, still a full run lower than the MLB average. If you triple Kershaw’s ERA (4.71), it’s still lower than Dallas Keuchel’s (5.32), Marcus Stroman’s (5.23), Adam Wainwright’s (4.78), and Matt Harvey’s (4.76) — all considered aces coming into the 2016 season. That’s fucking mind-blowing. And while the ERA is obviously incredibly impressive, I still go back to these walk totals, or lack thereof. The average number of walks per nine innings in the MLB this season is 3.13. Kershaw has walked four batters total over his last 11 starts, which have spanned 85 innings. In the month of May, Kershaw had more complete game shutouts (3) than walks (2). Just give ‘em the trophy.