Welcome to week 21 in our ongoing series highlighting the best hitting and pitching performances from the previous week. This installment affords us the unique opportunity of highlighting two hitters from the same team. Their efforts have helped keep their team’s playoff hopes alive. Our two pitchers are helping their teams maintain their division leading positions. It’s an all playoff race edition.
BEST HITTER: Bryce Harper, OF, Nationals
The pre-season favorites for the NL East division have essentially fallen on their faces having been outproduced by the Mets. The Nationals are currently four games back of the division leaders. As they’re 7.5 games out of the wild card race, winning the division is necessarily for them to reach the playoffs. If it weren’t for a their ongoing five game winning streak, they might not be in any race at all. But thanks to the effort of the man who should be the NL MVP, they are still alive.
This past week Bryce Harper hit .529/.700/1.235. He led baseball in every major offensive rate stat except batting average, which as we all know isn’t actually all that important (not that a .529 batting average is anything to scoff at, though). Harper and the rest of the Nats still have a chance to catch the Mets and they’ll need more weeks like this to do it.
Honorable Mention: Staying on theme, the player with the second best wOBA (.565) and wRC+ (329) was the Nationals Ryan Zimmerman, who hit .500/.481/1.115. There was a time in his career that Zimmerman could carry an offense. Those days are gone but if he can return to form for just the last 3 weeks of the season perhaps the Nats will catch the Mets.
MLB Leader:
AVG – Logan Forsythe (.545)
OBP – Bryce Harper (.700)
SLG – Bryce Harper (1.235)
wOBA – Bryce Harper (.696)
wRC+ – Bryce Harper (356)
HR – Nolan Arenado (6)
SB – Ryan Braun/Ender Inciarte (4)
fWAR – Bryce Harper/Nolan Arenado (1.0)
LOS ANGELES, CA – AUGUST 28: Clayton Kershaw #22 of the Los Angeles Dodgers throws a pitch against the Chicago Cubs at Dodger Stadium on August 28, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)
BEST PITCHER: Clayton Kershaw, Dodgers
For a while there it looked like the Dodgers might pull a Nationals and fall flat on their faces too. The Giants were creeping up an it appeared we might have a race again in the NL West. Instead the Dodgers were able to regroup. Now in the middle of a three game winning streak, they hold a commanding 7.5 game lead on the second place Giants.
These two teams faced off last week in what might have been the final nail of the coffin. Clayton Kershaw dominated San Francisco. He held them to just one run on six hits and a walk to toss a complete game. All the more impressive were the 15 strikeouts he issued.
Honorable Mention: Bartolo Colon threw 17 innings across two games and accumulated just 11 strikeouts. But you don’t always need to tally a bunch of punchouts to be effective. In those 17 innings, Colon allowed exactly zero runs. He’s far from the best pitcher in his rotation but he’s very capable of spurts like this. It’s gone a long way towards helping the Mets earn and now maintain their spot as division leaders.
MLB Leaders:
K% – Clayton Kershaw (46.9%)
BB% – 13 players tied (0.0%)
AVG – Alfredo Simon (.091)
WHIP – JA Happ/Tommy Milone (0.43)
ERA – 11 players tied (0.00)
FIP – Clayton Kershaw (0.14)
xFIP – Clayton Kershaw (0.95)
fWAR – Clayton Kershaw (0.)
Statistics courtesy of FanGraphs
