Notes quotes and comment (Game One edition)

Stop me if you've heard this: Clayton Kershaw is a really good pitcher.

OK, you've stopped me.

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When I'm working during World Series games, I have the TV on around the corner but the sound off and my iPad with the MLB At Bat app up with one of the team's radio feeds playing. It's a bit behind the TV, but that's OK.

Last night I went with the LA radio broadcast, Charley Steiner and Rick Monday. I frequently see complaints about Steiner, which I think boil down to He's not Vin Scully. Well, who is? But Vin is retired now, and we really should let the man enjoy his retirement. Steiner is more than competent. I may try the Houston feed tonight.

I did mutter about one thing Steiner said, in wrapping up the game. He called Kershaw's performance "flawless." Well no. He did give up a homer, after all. That's a flaw. It was very good: three hits, no walks, 11 strikeouts in seven innings. Pitchers don't lose often with that line. But sometimes they do.

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As a Mankatoan, I feel compelled to note that Curtis Granderson, the greatest of the Mankato Mashers, was left off the World Series roster by the Dodgers. The Grandy Man hit .161 for the Dodgers after his midseason trade from the Mets. Even with the occasional long ball tossed in, that's not good enough.

The Dodgers instead went with Brandon McCarthy, an oft-injured pticher who only figures to draw mop up duties if anything in the series. Ideally, the Dodgers will never even have him warm up.

 

Pic of the Week

Clayton Kershaw (facing camera) celebrates Thursday
after getting the final two outs of the decisive Game 5
on one day of rest in the NLDS against the Nationals.

Clayton Kershaw has carried a bad rap as a postseason choker -- or something akin to that -- for a while now. The NLDS this year probably wipes that reputation out. He started Game 4 (an elimination game for the Los Angeles Dodgers) on three days rest, and gave them 110 pitches and 7.2 innings. And they won, even though Kershaw wasn't the winning pitcher.

Two days later, he entered in the ninth inning to protect a one-run lead with two men on and the National League's OPS leader at the plate. He got a popup from Daniel Murphy, then fanned a pinch-hitter, and the Dodgers advanced.

It was a dramatic moment, made more dramatic by Kershaw's balky back, which limited him to less than 150 innings in the regular season.

His postseason stats remain unimpressive. Kershaw has pitched 77 innings in the playoffs in his illustrious career (12 starts, 4 relief appearances). His career ERA in the postseason is 4.79, almost two-and-half runs worse than his regular season career ERA. Even in this most recent series, his ERA was 5.84.

The aces are falling

Adam Wainwright shut down the Pirates to clinch the
Division series for St. Louis, but he couldn't beat the
Dodgers in Game Three of the NLCS.

Aces ruled in the four Division Series. In the two League Championship Series, not so much.

There have been nine games played so far (five in the NLCS, four in the ALCS), which means there have been 18 starts. Six of those starts have been made by pitchers who have won Cy Young Awards (Zach Greinke, Clayton Kershaw, Jake Peavy, Justin Verlander) or who are about to (Max Scherzer). Peavy, whose Cy dates to 2007, isn't what he once was, but even if we leave him out there's Adam Wainwright, who hasn't won the award but has had three seasons in which he could have. None of those starts have been against each other.

Greinke, Kershaw, Scherzer, Verlander, Wainwright. An impressive set of pitchers there. And their teams have gone 1-5 in their starts. The Dodgers got a win out of Greinke's start Wednesday. If you want to include Peavy, the teams are 1-6 with the big gun arms. If you want to include Jon Lester, the best of the Red Sox rotation — a fine pitcher but not quite on the level of the five names who led this paragraph — the teams are 1-7.

It isn't that the aces have pitched poorly. Verlander and Scherzer allowed just one run each, but the Tigers got shut out in Verlander's start and their bullpen imploded in Scherzer's. Kershaw (one run allowed) and Wainwright (two runs) were shut out in their starts, as was Lester (one run).

It's just been two series dominated not by the established aces but by the lesser names. Greinke got the win in his second time around; we'll see if that holds for the other stars as they begin to repeat the rotation cycle.

The kids and the aces

Justin Verlander won't get any Cy Young votes
this year (teammate Max Scherzer will win),
but he's still the better pitcher.

TBS' announcing crews said several profoundly inane things over the course of the 21 games since the end of the regular season schedule, but I doubt any were as silly as Buck Martinez' assertion Thursday night that the "Moneyball" A's — Tim Hudson, Barry Zito and Mark Mulder — lacked a starting pitcher as good as Sonny Gray.

Gray is impressive, yes. But with 64 major league innings under his belt entering the playoffs, he has hardly established himself on a par with the A's Big Three of a decade ago. Zito went 102-63, 3.55 with a Cy Young in seven seasons with the A's and he was probably the least talented of the trio. (Mulder was 81-41, 3.92 in five seasons; Hudson 92-39, 3.30 in six seasons.)

The A's were not alone in this year's division series in placing an elimination game in the hands of a rookie with less than 70 innings in the majors. The Pirates, as did the A's, moved their Game Two rookie up ahead of their Game One veteran for Game Five; for Pittsburgh, it was Garrett Cole over A.J. Burnett, for Oakland it was Gray over Bartolo Colon. St. Louis deployed Michael Wacha in a must-have Game Four.

Wacha won his start; Cole and Gray lost theirs, but hardly embarrassed themselves in the process. They pitched well, but ran into legitimate, top-of-the-line aces in Adam Wainwright and Justin Verlander on the other side.

Earlier in the week, as I contemplated the notion of the Twins making a bid this offseason for Tampa Bay's top gun, David Price (this is likely to be the subject of Monday's print column), I spitballed a "top four-man rotation." Pick any four major league starters, money no concern, for your team. Who do you want?

My four — more or less off the top of my head — was (alphabetically): Felix Hernandez, Clayton Kershaw, Verlander and Wainwright. My four (and yours can be quite different without being provably wrong) have both an established multi-year level of top-grade performance and the likelihood of something left in the tank.

I don't think it's a coincidence that three of the surviving teams pitched one of those guys to clinch their division series: Kershaw, Wainwright, Verlander all got the call, and they surrendered a total of one earned run in 23 innings in their three games.

That's trump ace pitching.