Kuzul

“Relief pitchers are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

OK, that may be paraphrasing Forrest Gump’s mother’s famous line, but that doesn’t make it any less accurate.

Relievers, after all, are a fickle animal, and closers fall under the same umbrella.

That’s the nature of the beast when dealing with pitchers who are either failed starters, inconsistent performers from year to year or prone to various and lengthy injuries—and in many cases, all three.

The exception that proves the rule, of course, is Mariano Rivera. The longtime New York Yankees closer was, in fact, a failed starter, but he’s also been remarkably healthy and productive since taking over the closer gig in 1997.

Back in March of 2011, the Washington Post created a dynamite graphic showing just how incredible Rivera’s run had been to that point, by comparing his tenure to every other team’s closers from 1997 on.

Alongside the visual—which you’ll want to see, so do click the link—ran this caption:

Major league teams often struggle to find and keep a reliable closer for more than a handful of seasons. The Yankees’ Mariano Rivera, however, has proven exceptionally reliable and durable, holding the role a record 14 consecutive years with the same team.

The key takeaway from the graphic? From 1997 through 2010, 17 of baseball’s 30 teams had used eight or more different closers.

In other words, more than half the teams in the sport averaged a new closer every other season—at least—over that 15-year span.

Rivera’s reign will come to a close when he retires at the end of this season, meaning the Yankees, at long last, will be joining every other team in the never-ending quest to find a ninth-inning solution.

If the Yanks want an example of what that can be like, well, they can just ask their arch rivals.

The Boston Red Sox know all too well.

In just the season-and-a-half since letting closer Jonathan Papelbon move on, the Red Sox have acquired Mark Melancon, Andrew Bailey and Joel Hanrahan with the intention of making them their ninth-inning arm at different points.

All three have failed.

After saving 20 games for the Houston Astros in 2011, Melancon was such a disaster last April in Boston—he went 0-2 with a blown save and allowed 11 runs over his first four appearances—that he was sent to the minors for a month and eventually was traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates last winter.

The 28-year-old right-hander, wouldn’t ya know it, is excelling in Pittsburgh, where he’s sporting an ERA under 1.00 as the setup man for baseball’s most surprising team.

Melancon, of course, is handling the eighth inning while the ninth belongs to Jason Grilli, who was a veteran journeyman until the Pirates determined he was so good that he could take over at closer for Hanrahan, who was shipped during the offseason to—you guessed it—Boston.

While Hanrahan was an All-Star for Pittsburgh in both 2011 and 2012, his stint as the Red Sox’s closer came to an abrupt end when he struggled, hit the disabled list and wound up needing Tommy John surgery that will keep him out the rest of 2013.

That meant the closer job was turned over to Bailey, acquired in the winter of 2011 from the Oakland Athletics, for whom he was Rookie of the Year and a two-time All-Star. The injury-prone 29-year-old missed most of his first season in Boston after surgery to repair a torn ligament in his right thumb, but he was more than ready to replace Hanrahan.

Until, that is, he missed about a month with a biceps injury and then struggled so badly in June, blowing four saves and giving up nine runs in 10 appearances, that Boston cried uncle and handed the reins to Koji Uehara.

Whether Uehara, a 38-year-old who owns all of 18 career saves in the majors, can hang onto the gig remains to be seen, but one thing’s for sure: The Boston Red Sox, in first place in the American League East, are once again on the lookout for a closer.

Almost makes one long for the days of Keith Foulke, doesn’t it?

By the way, who was the guy who led the Red Sox in saves last year, their first sans Papelbon? That’d be Alfredo Aceves, who wasn’t particularly good (5.36 ERA) but did manage 25 saves.

This season, though, Aceves has been returned to a spot starter role, and it’s no secret Boston has been searching for a way to unload him.

This rundown, by the way, leaves out Eric Gagne and Bobby Jenks, two former All-Star closers the Red Sox acquired at different times to help out Papelbon in the late innings, who then blew up in Boston.

What’s funny in all this is that the Red Sox may not learn from their very own history. 

In fact, they’ve been linked to—drum roll please—Papelbon, who’s now with the Philadelphia Phillies.

That would just bring everything full circle, wouldn’t it?

Especially if Papelbon, who’s blown four of his past six opportunities, returned to Boston and either struggled badly or succumbed to the first major injury of his career.

That would prove once again that when it comes to relievers, even closers, you never know what you’re gonna get.

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Make it an even dozen for Max Scherzer, and some history on the side.

The Detroit Tigers right-hander picked up another win on Friday night, pitching seven innings and allowing three earned runs in a 6-3 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays. That makes Scherzer a perfect 12-0 on the season.

Now, us nerds know that a pitcher’s win-loss record is hardly the best indicator of how well (or not well) he’s pitched. But Scherzer’s 12-0 start to the season still has a certain “Hey, cool!” factor to it, as it’s not every day you see a pitcher start a season with a record like that.

Or every quarter-century, for that matter. Before Scherzer, the last pitcher to start a season 12-0 was Roger Clemens in 1986.

And according to Baseball-Reference.com, there have been only four other cases since 1916 of pitchers beginning the season with a record of 12-0 or better as a starter: Eddie Cicotte in 1919*, Johnny Allen in 1937, Dave McNally in 1969 and Ron Guidry in 1978.

Scherzer’s in a pretty exclusive club with his 12-0 record, but we naturally have to inquire about the path that led him there. Compared to the other guys, was it harder or easier for Scherzer to get to 12-0?

Let’s discuss.

*Cicotte did pick up a loss early in the 1919 season, but it was as a reliever. As a starter, he went unbeaten until the middle of June.

How Many Starts Did it Take?

We’re going to be kicking around a few notions in this piece, and here’s Notion No. 1: A longer road to 12-0 is a more perilous road to 12-0.

Makes sense, right? The more starts a pitcher has to make to get to 12-0, the more likely it is that he’s going to run into trouble and have his unbeaten streak snapped.

Take Scherzer, for example. His record is 12-0, but he’s made 16 starts on the season. Four of those no-decisions could have ended up as L’s had things gone differently. 

So the difficulty of his road to 12-0 is already looking pretty good. It looks even better in light of the other five guys in the club.

Of the five other guys, only three got to 12-0 in fewer starts than Scherzer. Another guy (Allen) got there in just as many starts as he did.

Only McNally took longer than Scherzer and Allen to get to 12-0, and he took a dog’s age to get there. He was darn lucky along the way, too, as five of his nine no-decisions saw him pitch fewer than five innings. He pitched fewer than four innings in four of those.

It’s hard to imagine anyone ever taking more than 21 starts to get to 12-0, so McNally is probably going to wear the “Most Perilous Road to 12-0” hat forever and ever. But in light of the other guys in the 12-0 club, Scherzer hardly had it easy getting there.

That’s also true if we take home ballparks into consideration.

Liking That Home Cooking?

Here’s Notion No. 2: A pitcher who has a hitter-friendly home ballpark is going to have a harder time getting to 12-0.

This should also make sense. Pitchers are going to start at their home ballpark more often than anywhere else, and they stand a greater chance of racking up losses if their home park is friendlier to hitters than it is to pitchers.

Fortunately for us, Baseball-Reference.com keeps track of “Pitching Park Factors” for every ballpark throughout history. A PPF of 100 is neutral, while anything under that favors pitchers and anything over that favors hitters.

Here’s a look at how many home starts our six guys made on their way to 12-0, how many wins they racked up at home and the PPF for their home ballpark that year.

Cicotte, Allen, McNally and Guidry all made their homes at ballparks that were friendly to pitchers. Clemens made his home at a park that was neutral.

But Scherzer, on the other hand…

I’m guessing that some out there might still think of Comerica Park as a pitchers’ park because of how it played earlier in its history. But that ship sailed when the fences were moved in about a decade ago, and the last few years have season the Tigers’ digs become a hitting haven. Hence the 105 PPF.

If that’s not enough to convince you, Comerica is the third-best offensive park in the majors in 2013 by ESPN.com’s reckoning.

Scherzer has basically made the bulk of his starts in a bandbox, and it hasn’t been easy for him. He may be a perfect 8-0 at home, but he has a 4.01 ERA at Comerica this season compared to a sub-2.00 ERA on the road.

But if Scherzer has all those wins at home and a high ERA at home, then that means…

Yup, he’s getting a lot of run support. And not just at home, either.

How’s Your Run Support?

And now for Notion No. 3: A pitcher who gets less run support is going to have a harder time getting to 12-0.

It’s my duty as a nerd to take this moment to wag my finger at the idea of the win itself, as it’s downright silly to credit one guy with an overall team accomplishment. Pitchers can do a lot to help their teams win, yes, but they’re only “winners” if their guys come through with some runs.

But I digress. Let’s go to the table for this section, which shows the number of runs per start our pitchers got during their journeys to 12-0 compared to how many runs their teams were averaging.

I should note that the run support figures are not per 27 outs, a la Baseball-Reference.com’s usual standard. Just per game, which is ordinarily not the best way to go about such things. But the records for Cicotte and Allen aren’t complete enough to calculate run support per 27 outs, so sue me.

At any rate, the numbers in the table shouldn’t surprise you. The only starter to begin 12-0 who wasn’t getting run support better than his team’s usual output was Cicotte in 1919. He had an ERA in the low 1.00s at the time he got his 12th victory as a starter, and he absolutely needed it.

As for Scherzer, it says a lot that the Tigers scored six runs for him on Friday night and his average run support went down. He indeed has been getting a ton of support from Miguel Cabrera, Prince Fielder and the rest of the boys this year.

But while Scherzer’s usual run support looks high on its own, it pales in comparison when placed against the kind of run support Allen and Clemens were getting on their roads to 12-0. Both the 1937 Indians and 1986 Red Sox were strong offensive clubs, but they basically turned into the 1927 Yankees when Allen and Clemens were on the mound.

Has Scherzer had it easy compared to all other pitchers in 2013? Yes.

Has he had it easy compared to the other guys since 1916 to start 12-0? Not quite.

This is also true in terms of the competition he’s faced. 

Picking on People Your Own Size?

Now for Notion No. 4: The more tough offensive teams a pitcher faces, the harder it’s going to be for him to get to 12-0.

Indeed, but this is where things get tricky. In a long enough streak of starts, a pitcher is going to face the same team multiple times. Each time he does, odds are the team isn’t going to be performing the same as it was the last time he saw it.

So I had to cheat a little bit to come up with the following numbers. I used season-long runs-per-game averages for each pitcher’s opponents during his streak, and I also used the season-long runs-per-game average for the whole league. Not perfect, but it’ll have to do.

*Note: “League” here is American League, not all of Major League Baseball. All six of these guys were/are AL pitchers, and Scherzer hasn’t made a start against a National League club yet.

I’ll stop once again to acknowledge the strings attached to this data, but none of our six guys really had it “difficult” in terms of facing only the hard-hitting teams in the league time after time. That’s not the least bit surprising, as we probably wouldn’t be sitting here talking about them if they had been.

But relative to the other guys, you can see that Scherzer has had it tough this year. With the exception of his own team, he’s had to face each of the top run-scoring teams in the American League: Boston, Baltimore and Oakland. But amazingly, he hasn’t yet faced the second-worst run-scoring team in the league: the Chicago White Sox.

You can also see that Scherzer has only racked up six wins against below average-offensive clubs—those being teams with R/G outputs below league average. Somehow, he failed to collect wins in starts against Seattle and Houston. The Mariners are the worst-scoring team in the AL, and the Astros are the fourth-worst-scoring team in the AL.

So Scherzer has faced some decent competition, and he hasn’t racked up the bulk of his wins against subpar offensive teams. Add that to his relatively long journey to 12-0, his tough home ballpark and his relatively modest run support, and his road to 12-0 is looking like a tough one.

But there’s a catch. There’s always a catch.

Any Cheap Wins in There?

Lastly, here’s Notion No. 5: A pitcher who actually has to earn his wins is going to have a harder time getting to 12-0.

For example, a pitcher who wins 12 starts in which he went eight innings and allowed no more than two earned runs in each one clearly had a better stretch than a pitcher who had a couple five-inning stinkers that turned into wins, right?

Of course. And fortunately for us, there is such a thing as a cheap win, and it’s a simple concept. Any win earned in an outing that wasn’t a quality start—at least six innings, no more than three earned runs—is a cheap win.

Here’s a look at how many cheap wins our six guys racked up on their roads to 12-0.

There’s your catch. Three of Scherzer’s 12 wins have been of the cheap variety, and that’s one more than any of the other five guys earned on their way to 12-0.

Scherzer’s first cheap win came in his first start when he lasted only five innings and gave up four earned runs against the Yankees. The next came on April 24 against the Royals, in which he gave up five earned runs in five innings. The third happened on May 10 when he gave up four earned in eight innings against the Indians.

Had Scherzer not gotten his usual run support in those games, he’s not 12-0 right now, and you and I are doing other things with our time.

This is not to bring this conversation to a screeching halt by saying that Scherzer’s road to 12-0 has been decidedly easy. It hasn’t been, and him getting there is still a darn cool achievement.

This is just as good a sign as any that he’s lucky to be where he is. As impressive as it looks on paper, Scherzer’s win-loss record doesn’t tell the whole story.

Note: All stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com.

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter.

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I’ll take a wild guess and say that about 98.32 percent of rumored trades between now and July 31 won’t happen. In fact, a large percentage of those probably weren’t even seriously discussed by the teams mentioned.

So while we were all seriously discussing how those players would fit on their new teams and speculating on which prospects were going to be part of the trade package, the general managers involved in the rumored deal were probably working on a deal that was completely under wraps and then surprised the heck out of everybody once it was announced. 

And despite being completely fooled year after year, those discussions among fellow baseball fans are what makes this one of the best times of the year to be a baseball fan.

You can’t predict baseball on or off the field. Expect the unexpected. Just don’t expect these four rumored trades to happen.     

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Have you seen what Houston Astros slugger Chris Carter is doing these days?

No, not those 15 homers.

Try those 108 strikeouts.

The 26-year-old has racked up the most swing-and-misses in baseball. By a good amount, too, as Carter is about 10 strikeouts ahead of a handful of hitters in the Swiss-cheese stick department through Friday games.

In fact, Carter is on pace for 219 strikeouts, which means he could whiff his way to the record set by Mark Reynolds, who struck out 223 times in 2009.

Carter could very well top that, uh, “mark,” especially since the last-place Astros are making sure to give him plenty of plate appearances at first base, outfield and designated hitter. Carter has split his playing time at those three spots pretty evenly, which is helping him stay in the lineup every day, despite the holes in his swing.

But it’s not just Carter. The rise of the strikeout is a sport-wide epidemic, and that’s the reason the single-season hitter strikeout record will be the next big one to fall.

What’s also interesting is that, despite the increase in strikeouts across baseball in recent seasons, there’s yet to be a season with more than one 200-strikeout hitter.

That could change soon, too.

Consider the following…

1. The five highest single-season strikeout totals, all north of 200, have happened, amazingly enough, in the past fives seasons, with one coming each year, per Baseball Reference.
2. Of the 33 occasions in which a player whiffed 180 or more times, only six occurred prior to the 2000 season, per Baseball Reference.
3. The first time the league-wide strikeout-per-nine rate passed the 7.0/9 barrier was in 2010, and it’s increased every year since, with 2013 and 2012 currently tied at 7.56 K/9, per FanGraphs.
4. The first season in which the league-wide strikeout percentage—that is, the percentage of all plate appearances that end in a strikeout—crossed 18.0 percent was 2009, and that has increased every year since, too, with 2013 and 2012 tied at 19.8 percent, per FanGraphs.

That last point, in particular, is rather incredible: One out of every five batters who steps to the plate is going to be sent back to the dugout, bat in hand.

Is it any wonder, then, that someone, whether it’s Carter or Dan Uggla (99 strikeouts) or Mike Napoli (98) or Jay Bruce (97)—or any of a host of other all-or-nothing types, really—will strike out 224 times?

Or more.

And there may be an even better chance that we see two 200-strikeout “Kampaigns” in the same season for the first time ever.

After all, we haven’t even mentioned yet that the notorious Reynolds has struck out 91 times to this point. Or that other kings of swing-and-miss Adam Dunn, Ryan Howard and Pedro Alvarez have each whiffed 89 times this year, too.

All this, of course, raises the question: Why are strikeouts such an epidemic these days?

Sure, there’s been a mindset shift to the point where whiffs are now considered acceptable, whereas in previous eras, a strikeout was considered an embarrassing no-no. But that’s more anecdotal evidence.

What about cold, hard data?

Well, for starters, pitchers are throwing harder than ever. The league-wide average velocity in 2013, per FanGraphs, is 91.7 miles per hour. That number has trended upward since this sort of thing started being tracked by PITCHf/x in 2007.

There are also more reliever specialists, meaning more righty-righty and lefty-lefty matchups late in games, which results in less frequent contact by a hitter who the opposing team can exploit by using an arm from the same side.

To that same point, baseball decision-makers have gotten smarter over the past decade or so. Thanks to the prevalence of sabermetrics and statistical advancements in front offices, teams are now better-equipped to make sure that they have the edge as often as possible.

And how about these last two?

One, hitters are sporting a 9.2 SwStr%—meaning, the percentage of total pitches a batter swings and misses on—which is the third-highest rate since the stat started being tracked in 2002, per FanGraphs.

And two, pitchers are throwing first-pitch strikes at a historically high rate. In fact, at 60.3 percent, it’s higher than 60 percent for the first time. Ever.

Or, at least, since the data has been tabulated from 2002, again according to FanGraphs.

Basically, it won’t be long before someone strikes out 224 times. Or 225. Or 230.

It could be Carter. It could be Dunn. Heck, it could be Reynolds, breaking his very own mark. 

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When the Los Angeles Dodgers signed Yasiel Puig, he didn’t even know what color they wore.

A true story, according to Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times. And also a relevant story on this lovely Friday, for today is the one-year anniversary of Puig‘s union with the Dodgers.

And my what a year it has been.

This time last year, Puig was a relative unknown. For most fans, he was just some Cuban guy with a name nobody could pronounce. Now he’s one of the biggest stars in baseball, a player known as “ManBearPuig” and the inspiration for at least one rock band.

It’s a fantastic story, and there’s only one thing to do with fantastic stories: hop into the TARDIS and go back and relive them.

June, 2012: The Signing That Nobody Understood

On June 28, 2012, the news was reported by Enrique Rojas of ESPNDeportesLosAngeles.com: a young Cuban outfielder named Yasiel Puig had signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers for seven years and $42 million.

And the world went: “Huh?”

Most people were saying “Huh?” because they didn’t know who Puig was. He had been a star in the Cuban National Series, hitting .330 with 17 home runs and 47 RBIs in the 2010-2011 season. But unlike fellow Cubans Yoenis Cespedes and Aroldis Chapman, Puig hadn’t played on a national stage in the World Baseball Classic and, in fact, had played very few games of any kind outside of Cuba.

Those in the know were saying “Huh?” for a different reason: they just didn’t get it.

Isn’t that right, Rany Jazayerli?

He wasn’t alone.

ESPN’s Keith Law wrote in an Insider post that Puig‘s monster contract seemed to be a “bizarre overreaction” to the upcoming international spending cap, which would limit the amount of money teams could spend on international players. 

Ben Badler of Baseball America was even more baffled, writing: “What are the Dodgers thinking?”

Badler gave a full rundown on what sort of player scouts saw Puig to be, and the player they saw wasn’t worth anything close to $42 million:

Those who have seen Puig seem lukewarm on his talent. He has good bat speed and generates plus raw power, but scouts have expressed concerns about his hitting approach…He projects as a corner outfielder and has drawn question marks from scouts about his defensive instincts. He is an interesting prospect with raw talent, but for several teams, he wouldn’t have even been a first-round pick if he were in the draft.

On top of his supposedly iffy talent, Puig was also rusty. Due to disciplinary action after he had tried and failed to defect from Cuba, he hadn’t played baseball in over a year.

Essentially, the Dodgers paid $42 million for a fixer-upper, hence the reaction the signing got from the experts. To paraphrase Vin Scully: You talk about a roll of the dice, this was it.

Then again, maybe not.

“I don’t know,” said one international director Badler spoke to. “I don’t know what’s going on in Dodger land. They must have seen something.”

Oh, they just might have.

Late Summer to Fall, 2012: The Legend Takes Shape

When the Dodgers signed Puig, they surely envisioned him in their starting outfield sometime in the near future.

But not in the very near future. The first order of business was to just get Puig back out on the diamond, and the Dodgers decided to start him out slow by sending him to their rookie ball affiliate in early July.

Rookie ball proved to be no match for Puig. He played in only nine games with the AZL Dodgers, and in those he collected 12 hits in 30 at-bats for a .400 average. Of those 12 hits, four were homers and another three were triples.

The Dodgers had seen enough. They made the decision to move Puig up the ranks, promoting him to High-A Rancho Cucamonga in early August.

“He is certainly on a fast track,” wrote Steve Dilbeck of the Los Angeles Times, “though it’s not all that surprising. Not for $42 million.”

Dilbeck‘s thinking at the time was that Puig‘s fast track would only take him so far. Some action at Double-A or even Triple-A was not out of the question, but action at the major league level surely was.

But Puig managed to make that a tough call. He kept hitting with Rancho Cucamonga, compiling a .327/.407/.423 slash line in 14 games. He also got to impress his boss for the first time.

“He’s got a lot of pluses—power, speed, arm. He’s still a lot of a work in progress. He’s a very intriguing player,” Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti told Bill Shaikin of the Times. He also added: “We don’t have anybody in the system that can square a ball up like he does.”

Shaikin wrote that Puig was generating enough buzz to have people at Rancho Cucamonga whispering about a potential major league call-up when rosters expanded in September. But the Dodgers avoided pushing that particular button, and played the rest of the season without Puig.

But if the whole idea was to get Puig back into playing shape and to establish him as a legit major league prospect, well, mission accomplished. At the very least, Puig had the experts convinced.

Baseball America‘s post-2012 scouting report of Puig (subscription required) had this to say: “Puig has the tools to justify his contract. He’s a physical specimen, generating explosive bat speed and plus-plus raw power.”

MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo was also on board:

Puig’s best raw tool is his power, which is easily plus, though it may not be ready to show up consistently in games just yet. He’s shown plus speed and the Dodgers think he should be able to steal some bases. With the potential to hit for average and power with an above-average arm and good speed, the Dodgers hope he can develop into a Sammy Sosa-like impact player at the big league level. 

As positive as the reviews were, however, they were not 100-percent positive.

The Baseball America scouting report on Puig mentioned that scouts weren’t very enthused with Puig‘s maturity, as he had a tendency to rub people the wrong way while he was playing with Rancho Cucamonga.

Shaikin described an incident that shed some light on this sentiment:

After [Puig] singled for his first hit in Rancho Cucamonga, a scout timed Puig at seven seconds to first base — that is, barely faster than walking. After a single to right field, Puig took a wide turn and gestured toward the right fielder, who promptly threw behind him and threw him out at first base. After he hit an apparent double down the left-field line, Puig coasted so slowly into second base that the left fielder would have had him out easily with an accurate throw.

And, after an opposing manager got in an umpire’s face, Puig mimicked the gesture of the umpire ejecting the manager. Just for laughs, Puig said.

Sound like any other uber-hyped, uber-talented outfield prospect you can think of?

For their part, the Dodgers weren’t too concerned with the perceived maturity issues. Scouting director Logan White brushed them aside and put a positive spin on Puig‘s attitude.

“I think he’ll have a lot of flair. I think the fans in L.A. will like him,” said White.

Spring Training: The Legend Catches On

After gaining so much steam during the late summer and the fall, the Puig hype machine found itself going over some speedbumps during the winter.

In early October, shortly after the major league regular season ended, Puig was diagnosed with a staph infection in his elbow. It wound up sidelining him for a few weeks, and would rob him of a chance to further his development in the Arizona Fall League.

Puig did go on to play in the Puerto Rican Winter League, but not particularly well. By the time he declined an invitation to go to the Dodgers’ annual winter camp, he was only hitting .232 with one homer.

Still, at least Puig was playing, and he had a clear goal in mind. When Ralph Pagan Archeval of ESPNDeportes.com asked Puig if he was looking to be in the majors in 2013, Puig responded: “I plan to be there next year.”

When spring training came around, Puig made it abundantly clear that he had the ability to follow through on this goal.

Puig made his spring training debut with the Dodgers on February 23 and started hitting right away. By the middle of March, his situation was enticing enough to make Steve Dilbeck of the Times ponder if he was going to force the Dodgers’ hand and crack the big club’s Opening Day outfield.

Wrote Dilbeck:

That seems ridiculous, I know. It’s the middle of March. His situation demands perspective. The Cuban defector is as green as a player can be.

Yet while everyone has nodded heads in approval while waiting for his lack of experience to show, all he has done is continue to crush the ball.

The Dodgers soon decided that Puig would be opening the season in the minor leagues. But his hitting didn’t stop, and neither did the praise. Eventually, it got to a point where even uniformed people weren’t afraid to pay Puig the best compliment an athlete can get.

“I don’t think I’ve seen anybody do something like this,” Mattingly told the Times. “You don’t see this kind of package. This is a Bo Jackson-type package you just don’t see.”

“He’s a monster, man,” center fielder Matt Kemp told the Times. “He’s big. When everybody sees him, they think about Bo Jackson.”

Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports scoffed at the comparisons to Bo Jackson, remarking that Jackson ran better and had an RPG for an arm. But even while doing so, Passan ventured to argue that Puig did indeed belong in the club’s plans for Opening Day.

Executives from other teams also couldn’t help but admire Puig, as ESPN’s Jayson Stark noted:

Puig ended the spring season with video-game numbers: a .500 batting average, a 1.328 OPS and three home runs. Yet the Dodgers did what they promised they would, angering Dodgers fans and the rest of humanity at large by optioning Puig to Double-A for the start of the season.

“You really want this guy totally ready as possible when he walks in the door at Dodger Stadium and to not have to go back down again,” said Mattingly.

Hmmm…In retrospect, good call, then.

June, 2013: The Legend Arrives

When Opening Day came, the Dodgers featured a starting outfield of Carl Crawford in left, Matt Kemp in center and Andre Ethier in right. Just as it looked on paper before spring training.

Their best player from spring training, meanwhile, was down at Double-A Chattanooga and apparently not very happy about it.

Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times wrote earlier this month that Puig was sulking with Chattanooga, and that he “butted heads” with coaches. His situation was not made any better by a thumb injury that put him on the seven-day disabled list, and that was soon followed by an arrest for reckless driving.

On the bright side, Puig was hitting. So well, in fact, that he had the Dodgers pondering by late May whether it was time to call him up. As Hernandez reported:

Not long after, their hand was forced. Kemp was placed on the DL in late May with a hamstring injury, and Crawford was on his way there in early June with a thigh strain.

The Dodgers made the call on June 2: 

From here, well, we all know the story, right?

Puig got things rolling with a brilliant game-ending double play in his debut. Then he hit two home runs in his second career game, and a grand slam a couple days later. He had five home runs through his first five games, and Puigmania was officially underway.

Puig is now almost a full month into his major league career, and his numbers are still astounding: a .427/.457/.708 slash line and seven home runs. Everyone knows he won’t be this hot forever, but that hasn’t stopped people from clamoring for Puig to be given a high honor: an All-Star appearance.

Jeff Passan is on that bandwagon:

So is FoxSports’ Ken Rosenthal:

And SI.com’s Jay Jaffe:

All for a player who has only played in 23 games, and will only have played in about 40 by the time the All-Star break comes.

It should be absurd, but it’s not. Puig really has been that good, and he really is that big of a sensation. Once an unknown with a funky name, Puig has ascended to the top of Major League Baseball’s Mt. Olympus.

And did I mention it only took him a year to get there?

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com.

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When Alex Rodriguez looks back on his early Twitter days, he’s not going to be able to say he wasn’t warned.

The headline on CBS Sports: “This is probably a bad idea: Alex Rodriguez has joined Twitter.”

The headline on Yahoo! Sports: “Alex Rodriguez, welcome to Twitter, a place you should never have come.”

These headlines now sound oddly prophetic. Barely a moment after the world first realized the New York Yankees third baseman had joined Twitter, he’s already in trouble. In a way that only he could, A-Rod has unwittingly used Twitter to further cement his status as baseball’s single biggest lightning rod.

Consider this tweet that A-Rod sent out on Tuesday:

Rodriguez has been recovering from a second hip surgery ever since January, but now it sounds like he’s getting really close to making his return. You can’t blame him for being excited or for having the impulse to share his excitement with the world. That’s what people tend to do these days.

There’s just one problem: The news A-Rod was so eager to share may not be true. And even if it is, it’s not his to share.

It’s the Yankees’ to share, and they, not surprisingly, are ticked.

Andrew Marchand of ESPN New York spoke to Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, and it sounds like he stopped just short of blowing smoke out his ears.

“You know what, when the Yankees want to announce something, [we will],” Cashman said. “Alex should just shut the f— up. That’s it. I’m going to call Alex now.”

And just like that, A-Rod is in trouble again. Meanwhile, you, me and everyone else are sitting here going, “Golly, is this the most A-Rod thing to ever happen?”

It just might be, for it really is that typical.

Listen, there are far worse ways A-Rod could have gotten himself into trouble on Twitter. He didn’t pull an Ian Stewart and throw his employers under the bus. He didn’t say something he shouldn’t have to a trolling fan. He didn’t tweet anything incriminating.

It’s possible A-Rod simply misread the situation. Maybe he mistook Dr. Kelly’s opinion that he’s ready to play in games for an approval and just didn’t stop to think before he whipped his phone out.

Either that, or Dr. Kelly did issue a go-ahead and it just never crossed A-Rod’s mind that a doctor’s approval and his bosses’ approval are two different things.

Whatever the case, if A-Rod is guilty of anything here, it’s simply being aloof. There are worse crimes than that.

However, that’s also what makes this silly little controversy just so darned typical. “Aloof” has long been one of the best adjectives for Rodriguez, and he’s gone and proved that the shoe still fits as well as ever.

As Hardball Talk’s Craig Calcaterra noted earlier this month, Rodriguez has tended to be portrayed by the media as a guy obsessed with his image, a prima donna who wants nothing more than to be liked.

A-Rod’s not the only athlete like that, but there’s something different about him. For a guy who apparently cares so deeply about his image, he’s never given any indication that he actually has a clue how to take proper care of it.

Rodriguez earned himself a ton of ill will when he came clean in 2009 about his juicing during his Texas Rangers days, and it’s hard to imagine him having any fans or defenders left if he ends up getting busted in the Biogenesis scandal.

But it’s not just the PED stuff that speaks to A-Rod’s aloofness. He’s a master at inadvertently shooting his public perception in the foot by doing, well, other things. For other professional athletes, Rodriguez is a living, breathing life lesson for how not to be likable.

For example, if you want people to like you, be mindful of with whom you hang out in public. For that matter, it’s a good idea to stop hanging out with people that your bosses don’t want around, especially if they have ties to the seedier corners of your past.

It’s also recommended that you stay out of high-stakes poker games that are (allegedly) drug-addled and violent. And if you must have fun at the ballpark, it’s better to be spotted trying to spit seeds in a cup across the dugout than it is to be spotted flirting with a couple of spectators.

We know about these things because the microscope is on A-Rod around the clock. He should understand that by now, and he should also understand that he’s going to be scrutinized for even the littlest things. Yet he’s always finding ways to show that he just doesn’t get it.

Judging from his tone, Cashman was thinking the same thing. Or something along those lines. His comments to Marchand definitely had a “Here we go again” vibe to them.

If he hasn’t already, Cashman will let A-Rod know that he made a mistake in tweeting about being cleared for games. One wonders if Cashman will also let him know about the mistake he made before that one.

That was joining Twitter in the first place.

It’s easy to speculate that A-Rod joined because he’d heard all about professional athletes becoming fan favorites on Twitter, and he figured it was worth a shot.

But professional athletes also get themselves in trouble on Twitter. Frequently, in fact, even when they’re not trying to.

A-Rod being A-Rod, it’s no wonder Rodriguez’s presence set off alarm bells. Everyone could see trouble on the horizon.

Everyone except A-Rod, that is. Because of course.

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter.

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In light of how things were going for a while there, it didn’t occur to me to imagine a scenario in which there would be a huge fuss over Ricky Nolasco.

But lo and behold, such a fuss is happening now.

ESPN’s Buster Olney has reported that the Miami Marlins are “aggressively” shopping Nolasco. FoxSports.com’s Ken Rosenthal has painted the NL West as the central hub of Nolasco mania, and it sounds like his destination could be decided by a bidding war between the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers.

If it does indeed come to that, the Giants had better win it. They and the Dodgers both have a need for Nolasco, but the Giants’ need is stronger.

Obtaining Nolasco could be tough. Rosenthal and Danny Knobler of CBSSports.com have both noted the Giants’ interest in the 30-year-old right-hander, but Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle has indicated that Nolasco has become the Dodgers’ latest obsession:

Makes sense indeed. The Dodgers have lost Chad Billingsley for the season due to Tommy John surgery. Josh Beckett is next to him on the disabled list, and he may not pitch again this season either if he needs surgery to repair a nerve issue. Ted Lilly should be back, but the Dodgers should know by now that they can’t count on him to stay healthy.

Meanwhile in San Francisco, the Giants only have one starting pitcher on the DL to the Dodgers’ three: right-hander Ryan Vogelsong. Unless you want to count Chad Gaudin, who was filling in for Vogelsong, as a starter, in which case the Giants have two starters on the DL.

But while these numbers say the Dodgers are worse off than the Giants in terms of depth, other numbers say that their starting rotation isn’t holding them back as much as the Giants’ rotation is.

For all their difficulties, the Dodgers’ starting pitching ranks fifth in MLB in ERA at 3.51, according to FanGraphs. Over the last 30 days, their rotation has a 3.38 ERA.

The Giants occupy the opposite end of the spectrum. Their starters rank 23rd with a 4.47 ERA, and “improvement” over the last month has only meant a 4.09 ERA. Their rotation has shown signs of life, but these signs have only served to take it from bad to mediocre.

This speaks to the major difference that exists between the Dodgers’ rotation and the Giants’ rotation. Both may be lacking in depth, but at least the Dodgers have some stability.

Clayton Kershaw needs no introduction. Behind him is Zack Greinke, the $147 million man who is rounding back into form with solid seven-inning performances in three of his last four starts. Behind him is Hyun-Jin Ryu, who has surrendered more than three earned runs only twice in 15 starts. 

After this super-solid trio comes Chris Capuano, who was solid last year and now has a 2.55 ERA in his last six starts. Stephen Fife hasn’t been too shabby as a fill-in, as he boasts a 3.25 ERA in five starts thanks in large part to a huge ground-ball rate (see FanGraphs).

This is an embarrassment of riches compared to what the Giants have. Madison Bumgarner has been consistent and Matt Cain has been largely terrific since the start of May, but there’s a limit to how much one can trust Tim Lincecum’s June revival given what he’s become since the start of last season.

Barry Zito is fine at AT&T Park, but he has a better chance of cutting down a tree with a herring than he does of turning in a decent performance on the road (11.28 ERA in five starts). Chad Gaudin was doing all right in Vogelsong‘s place, but who knows how long he would have been able to keep it up? He hadn’t been a full-time starter since 2009.

So when you think about where Nolasco would fit on these two clubs, there’s certainly a bigger role for him to play in San Francisco than in Los Angeles. On the Dodgers, he would at best be a No. 4 behind Kershaw, Greinke and Ryu. On the Giants, Nolasco would easily be a No. 3.

This being Nolasco—he of the 4.68 ERA between 2009 and 2012—that may seem far-fetched. But this season, it’s really not.

As I first noted a couple weeks ago, Nolasco was never really as bad as his ERAs indicated. While those floated in the 4.50-5.00 range, his FIPs and xFIPs were consistently in the 3.00s and low 4.00s.

In 2013, Nolasco‘s 3.68 ERA is sort of a happy medium between his 3.55 FIP and 3.86 xFIP. It should also be looked at as his reward for the adjustments he’s made.

Nolasco is breaking out his sinker more than ever before this year. And while the numbers aren’t as good as they were the last time I checked, Brooks Baseball has the batting average against Nolasco‘s sinker at .264. Opponents hit .324 off it last year.

Nolasco‘s slider has also been better. He’s taken some velocity off if, and that’s seemed to help. Hitters are only hitting it at a .185 clip in 2013.

If Nolasco were to join the Giants and keep doing what he’s been doing, he’d be nothing short of a godsend. He could help satisfy their need for some stability for their rotation, and they’d have options available to them upon Vogelsong‘s return. There would be a logjam, sure, but ’tis better to have a logjam than a shortage of logs.

In terms of actually striking a deal for Nolasco, the key thing for the Marlins is going to be offloading the rest of his $11.5 million salary. The Dodgers can afford that easily, but the Giants can too. It wouldn’t be a long-term commitment either, as Nolasco is due for free agency at the end of the year.

Neither the Giants nor the Dodgers have a particularly strong farm system to dip into, but I wonder if the Giants could entice the Marlins with a just-about-major-league-ready reliever in right-hander Heath Hembree with another prospect on the side. That could be enough to get the Marlins to bite.

Yeah, I know. The last time the Giants broke off a chunk of their farm system for a rental was when they dealt Zack Wheeler for Carlos Beltran. That’s in the “Would love to have that one back” file in Brian Sabean’s office.

But consider the circumstances this year. It counts for a lot that Buster Posey isn’t down and out. And given the ballpark they play in, the Giants are always going to be better off putting their faith in pitching than in hitting.

Also, nobody’s running away with the NL West or even threatening to run away with it. The Arizona Diamondbacks are the top contender, just as they were in 2011, but this year it doesn’t seem like they have much of an idea what to do with first place. They might as well be keeping it unprotected on their front lawn.

A single move could make a difference for the Giants, and Nolasco is both a sensible and a practical target. All they have to do is beat the Dodgers to him.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted.

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Work on those breaking pitches, kids. Develop an elite one, and you’ll go far.

But therein lies a question: What exactly separates an elite breaking ball from a run-of-the-mill, garden-variety breaking ball?

I asked the same question about changeups last week, thus giving myself an excuse to have fun with numbers and pictures. I’m going to do the same thing now with breaking balls, albeit with a slightly different plan of attack.

I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s not entirely fair to lump curveballs and sliders into one great, big discussion. Since it’s not, I’m going to tackle them individually with a few telling examples.

Also, this discussion is going to differ from last week’s discussion on changeups in that there’s not going to be much talk about deception, velocity and sequencing. These things play a part in the making of a great breaking ball, but they pale in comparison to the main ingredient: the actual break. All breaking pitches move, but the best move a little differently.

Now then, who’s up for a talk about Uncle Charlie?

On Curveballs: Mere Mortals vs. Wainwright and Kershaw

This shall otherwise be known as the “Adam Wainwright and Clayton Kershaw Appreciation Hour.”

According to Baseball Info Solutions by way of FanGraphs, Wainwright has saved more runs above average with his Uncle Charlie than anyone else over the last two seasons. According to Brooks Baseball, hitters are hitting his hook at a mere .168 clip in 2013.

Kershaw, meanwhile, has saved more runs above average with his curve than any other southpaw since the start of 2012. Brooks Baseball has the average against the Los Angeles Dodgers ace’s hook at .068. When I punch that into my calculator, it makes a happy face.

It’s appropriate that these two would have the best curveballs out of their respective breeds. If you’ve watched them, you’ll know that their hooks really are different.

What makes Wainwright’s curveball so special is its incredible two-plane break. Any right-hander can throw a classic 12-6 curveball, but Wainwright’s is the rare right-handed curveball that’s more like 11-5 or even 10-4.

By comparison, consider Jordan Zimmermann. He has a curveball that’s nice and average. So average, in fact, that he’s saved zero runs above average with it since the start of 2012 (see FanGraphs).

In terms of movement, there is a difference between Zimmermann‘s hook and Wainwright’s hook. Brooks Baseball can help us out with the averages for 2013:

*Note: For horizontal movement, it’s important to know that positive movement is away from right-handed batters. Negative is in on right-handed batters.

Zimmermann‘s curveball isn’t exactly flat as far as curveballs go, but Wainwright’s has a significant edge in both horizontal movement and vertical movement. It’s the horizontal movement that really counts, though, and it fortunately shows up to the naked eye.

Observe the curveball that Zimmermann throws to Aaron Hicks here at about the 0:23 mark:

Now observe the curveball that Wainwright throws to Ike Davis at about the 0:23 mark:

In case you didn’t quite catch the difference between the two, here’s a look at the break of Zimmermann‘s curveball in still form:

And the break of Wainwright’s curveball in still form:

You can see just how different Wainwright’s curveball is from your typical 12-to-6 curveball. One of those goes from up to down. Wainwright’s goes from up to down and from right to left. In the case of the hook pictured above, his curveball had enough break to go from the letters to the knees and to traverse the width of the plate.

As for Kershaw, his curveball is different than most other lefty curveballs in large part because of the way he throws.

Your typical left-hander doesn’t come right over the top when he throws the ball. They have a tendency to be slingers, and the nature of their deliveries makes it easier for them to put a little extra horizontal movement on a breaking ball.

The tradeoff, however, tends to be less vertical movement.

Consider Jeff Locke and Madison Bumgarner, for example. They both throw from roughly three-quarter arm slots, and their curveballs break in a similar way. With data once again courtesy of Brooks Baseball:

Bumgarner gets more horizontal break on his curveball, but neither pitcher gets a lot of downward movement. What they throw are closer to slurves than actual curveballs.

Kershaw is different. He throws more over the top than your typical lefty, and that affords him some very righty-like break on his curveball.

Per Brooks Baseball, Kershaw‘s curveball gets an average of minus-2.99 inches of horizontal break, which puts him more or less in Locke’s neighborhood. The difference is that he gets an average of minus-8.51 inches of vertical break, which blows that of Locke and Bumgarner out of the water.

Want to see it in pictures? Very well then.

Skip to the 0:35 mark here, and you’ll see Locke freezing Ryan Sweeney with a curveball on the outside corner:

Skip to the 0:25 mark here, and you’ll see Kershaw getting Brandon Belt swinging on a hook more or less down the middle:

And now for Locke’s curveball in still form:

And Kershaw‘s curveball in still form:

You can see the difference. Both pitches started behind the batter, but Kershaw‘s took a nosedive rather than continuing on a relatively straight path to the outside corner like Locke’s curveball.

So what sets an elite curveball apart from the rest of the pack?

The short answer, according to the guys with the two most effective curveballs in the game, essentially amounts to originality. There are plenty of good curveballs out there, but nobody throws ’em quite like Wainwright and Kershaw. It stands to reason that their hooks are so successful in large part because hitters just don’t see that kind of movement from anyone else.

The benefit of originality works for sliders too.

On Sliders: Mere Mortals vs. Darvish, Romo and the Big Unit

Picking out the nastiest slider in the game is sort of like trying to pick out the best Led Zeppelin song. There are so many good ones, and they’re all the “best” in their own way.

Yu Darvish‘s slider, however, stands out as being the “When the Levee Breaks” of MLB sliders. It’s my personal favorite, and it also has Nolan Ryan’s endorsement (h/t dallasnews.com) as the best in the game.

The numbers support Darvish‘s slider as well. Per FanGraphs, no pitcher in baseball has saved more runs above average with his slider since the start of last season than Darvish. According to Brooks Baseball, hitters are hitting just .160 against it in 2013 with zero home runs.

And yes, it really is that nasty. We can tell by comparing it to Jason Hammel‘s slider.

Like Zimmermann‘s curveball, Hammel‘s slider is nice and average. For his career, he’s saved exactly 0.1 runs above average with it (see FanGraphs) and the movement on it is nothing special.

Here’s the comparison between Hammel‘s slider and Darvish‘s slider in 2013, once again using data from Brooks Baseball:

Hammel has a tendency to get a little more downward movement on his slider, but that advantage doesn’t even come close to making up for the advantage Darvish‘s slider has in horizontal movement.

And once again, the difference shows up in pictures.

Skip to about the 0:24 mark here, and you’ll see Hammel getting Vernon Wells swinging on a slider low and away:

Now let’s look at Darvish throwing a pitch with more or less the same purpose to Dustin Pedroia at the 0:25 mark here:

And now for the still image showing the movement of Hammel‘s slider:

And the still image showing the movement of Darvish‘s slider:

Hammel‘s slider did break to the outside, but much of its energy was spent on downward movement. Darvish‘s slider looks like it saw Pedroia‘s bat and then took immediate evasive action both downwards and horizontally. It has a tendency to do that on a regular basis.

As nasty as Darvish‘s slider is, it’s not quite in a league of its own. Per FanGraphs, Sergio Romo has saved more runs above average with his slider than any other reliever in baseball over the last two seasons, and it breaks very much like a Darvish slider.

Just check out the slider Romo throws to Wilin Rosario at about the 0:30 mark here:

Per Brooks Baseball, that slider had about 13 inches of horizontal break, and it looked a little something like this:

As Yoda would be inclined to say in this moment: Hit that, you cannot.

The sliders featured by Darvish and Romo are as good as they get for right-handers for pretty much the same reason Wainwright’s curve is as good as it gets for right-handers. Any righty can create sharp downward movement with a slider. It takes a special somebody to create sharp downward movement and sharp horizontal movement. Darvish and Romo do that better than everyone else.

Left-handers, on the other hand, once again present an odd sort of challenge due to the slinging nature of their deliveries, but we can get a decent idea of the difference between an average lefty slider and an elite lefty slider by weighing C.J. Wilson’s against CC Sabathia’s.

Wilson has surrendered 4.5 runs below average with his slider in his career (see FanGraphs), but it’s been better lately. In three of the last four years, it’s been a slightly above-average pitch for him.

Sabathia’s slider, meanwhile, is among the best in history. Per FanGraphs, only one other pitcher has saved more runs above average with his slider than Sabathia since BIS started keeping track in 2002—don’t worry, we’re going to talk about the guy ahead of him on that list in just a moment.

Here’s the movement comparison between Wilson’s slider and Sabathia’s slider for 2013, according to Brooks Baseball:

There’s not a huge difference between the two sliders in terms of vertical movement, as both tend to let gravity do the work. Sabathia’s slider, however, tends to feature twice as much horizontal movement.

But since that difference is so minuscule, it’s really hard to notice with the naked eye. So I’m going to cheat a little bit and swap out Sabathia for the keeper of the best lefty slider baseball has ever known: Randy Johnson.

Skip to the 0:40 mark here, and you’ll see Wilson get Matt Tuiasosopo swinging on a slider down below the knees:

Now skip to the 0:20 mark here and geek out over a classic Big Unit slider:

This is ordinarily where we go to the still shots to check out the movement, but this is a special case where GIFs are a bit more helpful. Here’s a GIF showing the key stages of Wilson’s slider:

And a GIF showing the key stages of Johnson’s slider:

Sadly, we don’t know the exact movement of the slider Johnson threw, as it was well before science gave the world the PITCHf/x tracking system. In lieu of numbers, the best we can do is adjectives.

The best word for Wilson’s slider: “solid.”

The best word for the Big Unit’s slider: “Holybleepinghogs!”

Something along those lines would also be appropriate for the sliders of Darvish, Romo and Sabathia. While we’re at it, we might as well make up words for the curveballs of Wainwright and Kershaw.

Or we could just save time and energy and go with the word that brought us here in the first place: 

Elite.

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Yasiel Puig, it seems, can do just about anything. Except get the Los Angeles Dodgers to win baseball games.

The 22-year-old rookie sensation went 2-for-4 Friday night—his 11th multi-hit game in his first 17 career contests—and yet still couldn’t prevent the Dodgers from losing to the San Diego Padres, 5-2.

The defeat was L.A.’s ninth in its past 12 and dropped the club to 30-42, a season-worst 12 games below .500.

So much for the idea that Puig is the Dodgers’ savior this season.

In case you think that recent won-loss record was cherry-picked, Los Angeles has gone just 7-12 overall since Puig made his debut on June 3.

There’s also this: Before Puig, the Dodgers were 8.5 back in the NL West; after Puig, they’re 9.5 out entering play Saturday.

All this despite the fact that Puig himself has had a historically productive start to his MLB career. The Cuban import is 30-for-66 (.455) with six homers, 12 RBI, 13 runs and a pair of steals.

Even when a player is as ridiculously hot as Puig has been, it’s hard for a team as a whole to win games when it’s being outscored as the Dodgers have been. With Puig, L.A. has given up 70 runs—4.1 per game—but tallied only 60—3.5 per game.

Pre-Puig the Dodgers were surrendering 4.3 runs per and scoring—get this—3.5 runs per game. Puig‘s individual performance has had exactly zero impact on the team’s ability to generate runs.

You could argue that L.A. would be much worse offensively sans Puig, which is almost definitely true, but it’s still rather disheartening for the Dodgers that they’ve been unable to take advantage of deploying baseball’s hottest hitter over the past three weeks.

Obviously, the elephant in the room here is that the Dodgers only called up Puig because their outfield was in shambles, what with both Matt Kemp and Carl Crawford, two of the the club’s best hitters, being felled by hamstring injuries in the span of a couple games.

To be clear, Puig isn’t to blame for his team’s continued overall struggles, particularly on offense. If anything, what this is proving is how darn near impossible it is in baseball for just one player to be the driving force behind a team’s turnaround.

That’s what happens, though, when a lineup is missing key hitters and is instead forced to use fill-ins on a regular basis.

In Friday’s loss to the Padres, for instance, the Dodgers’ wheel of chance landed on Skip Schumaker (.646 OPS) and Elian Herrera, who was just called up from the minors.

In addition to those two, the team has been forced to give far, far too many plate appearances to the likes of Nick Punto (.653 OPS), Dee Gordon (.532), Justin Sellers (.510) and Luis Cruz (.344). The primary reason? Shortstop Hanley Ramirez (1.042 OPS) has spent more time on the DL than in the lineup.

It also doesn’t help when first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, the one hitter who’s been healthy and relatively productive all season, has seen his average and OPS drop from .326 and .884 to .299 and .811 since Puig has come aboard.

A season-long problem remains as the Dodgers are still in serious need of some slugging.

To wit, among hitters with at least 100 plate appearances, the team leader in that category is Crawford (.470 SLG), who’s nobody’s idea of a slugger and who’s also been out since June 2, the day before Puig‘s arrival.

The Dodgers currently sport a .375 slugging percentage as a whole, bad for fourth-worst in the sport.

Again, one man can’t do it all. Even when that one man is Puig.

If there is any good news, it’s that Kemp, slated to begin a rehab assignment with Triple-A Albuquerque on Saturday, is making his way back with designs of returning next week.

But if his early-season struggles are any indication, Kemp, who has been sidelined since May 30 for his bum hammy, may not help much. The 2011 NL MVP runner-up, who underwent offseason shoulder surgery that may have hampered him to this point, has a triple-slash line of just .251/.305/.335.

Since Puig‘s debut, the Dodgers haven’t been hurting for excitement and energy—they’ve been hurting for offense. And wins.

Incredible as Puig has been to this point, he’s done nothing to help the Dodgers’ overall production or, more importantly, their position in the standings.

What’s scary, then, is what is going to happen to baseball’s most disappointing team once Puig cools off.

Despite popular belief, that will happen. He’s not going to hit over .400 all year.

And even if Puig somehow does that, it still might not be enough to do the one thing that matters most.

Get the Dodgers to win games.

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Though he won both of them, Gerrit Cole barely looked like a major league-caliber pitcher in the first two starts of his career. If it was more of the same in his third start, it was going to be all too easy to demand that the Pittsburgh Pirates return him to Triple-A as soon as possible.

What Cole, the No. 1 overall pick of the 2011 draft, delivered on Friday night against the Los Angeles Angels was not more of the same. Though he failed to put an exclamation point on the end of it, he at least made his message easy to decipher.

“Yeah, I belong here.”

Cole’s latest start was easily his best yet. He held the Angels to two earned runs over six and one-third, allowing four hits, a walk (his first) and a home run (also his first). The Pirates won 5-2, giving Cole a perfect 3-0 record.

Bear in mind that Cole did this against a hot team. According to FanGraphs, no team in baseball had scored more runs over the previous seven days than the Angels.

But the best part? Cole struck out five hitters. He had struck out only three in his first two starts combined, and those five strikeouts are a fine testament to how well Cole pitched.

The velocity was certainly there. Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports will gladly tell you all about it:

The velocity was great, but what was even better was that Cole’s hard stuff was actually as overpowering as the velocity says it should be for a change. 

Cole got eight whiffs in his debut against the San Francisco Giants. According to Brooks Baseball, seven of those came on 64 fastballs, which doesn’t add up when one considers just how hard Cole is capable of throwing a baseball.

Against the Los Angeles Dodgers his last time out, Cole got only four whiffs. Brooks Baseball says he once again threw 64 fastballs and got only three whiffs with those. That made it a grand total of 10 whiffs on 128 fastballs through two starts. 

The only proper reaction to something like that: Befuddlement.

Against the Angels, however, Cole got a total of 10 whiffs. The raw data at Brooks Baseball says he got nine of those on 77 fastballs, but this is a case where I’m not inclined to trust the raw data. It looked to me like Cole was mixing up his pitches a lot better than that, with his slider being particularly effective.

We know at least one was. Don’t we, Baseball America‘s Ben Badler?

Elsewhere, I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple of the “fastballs” Cole threw need to be reclassified as changeups. A good changeup from Cole, after all, has the velocity of most other good fastballs.

Regardless of how the pieces fall into place, there’s no denying that Cole was absolutely in control through the first six innings of the game. He flashed dominance in his first two starts, but he actually was dominant on Friday night.

Until the seventh inning, anyway. Cole gave up a leadoff home run to Albert Pujols to start the seventh inning, and that seemed to rattle him. He immediately followed his first career homer with his first career walk to Mark Trumbo, and then he gave up two straight bullets. The first ricocheted off him and became an out, and the second went into center field for an RBI.

Had Cole cruised through the seventh like he had cruised through the first six innings, he would have turned in one of the top performances by a Pirates hurler this year. As it is, the game score of 61 that he earned is a new personal best.

From here, keeping Cole at the major league level isn’t going to be an easy call for Pirates general manager Neal Huntington. He told Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com that he was looking to see both dominance and staying power from Cole. He wasn’t sure he had seen either in Cole’s first two starts, and understandably so.

Huntington surely saw the dominance on Friday night, as the rest of us did. But after what happened in the seventh inning, he may not be entirely convinced he’s seen the staying power yet.

There’s also business to consider.

Ron Cook of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette may be justified in wondering if the Pirates acted too soon and called Cole up before the Super Two cutoff. Huntington may be inclined to send him back down to Triple-A for a week or two just to be safe.

Then there’s the looming logjam. A.J. Burnett, Wandy Rodriguez, Jeanmar Gomez and James McDonald are all on the disabled list, but the Pirates’ official website says Gomez and McDonald could be back soon. Their pending returns could combine with Cole’s clock status to force Huntington’s hand.

But the Pirates need to be real here.

Cole has considerably more upside than both Gomez and McDonald, and their rotation would be something legitimately scary if Cole were to be well established by the time Burnett and Rodriguez are ready to come back. The three of them would look mighty good next to a resurgent Francisco Liriano and a quietly excellent Jeff Locke.

The Pirates have built their success this season around strong pitching. In a day and age when pitching rules, they’d be wise to do everything in their power to stay headed in that course. They have a better chance of doing that with Cole as a regular contributor in their rotation than they do with him as a part-time contributor.

Keeping Cole right where he’s at could indeed cost the Pirates a few bucks in the long run. But in the short run, keeping him right where he’s at could be a deciding factor in ending their postseason drought.

It’s worth the sleep they might lose for the Pirates to find out—for I’d say the drought has gone on long enough.

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