Dodgers 3 Nationals 0: Kershaw, Enrique, Kenley’s All You Need

Okay guys, just do exactly that in the playoffs, cool? Kershaw day was a blast, Enrique Hernandez looked like a major league SS, the offense did just enough and the Dodgers won a pretty important series against a legitimatish type contender in August.

The Dodgers baserunning continued to show why it’s the worst in the entire league, but that was almost totally overshadowed after Clayton Kershaw flirted with history, taking a perfect game into the 6th inning, walking nobody and giving up no runs. When Kersh’s command is on point, he’s practically unhittable, and don’t look now but that ERA is down to 7th best in the entire league (with his FIP leading by 32 points) and he’s got an outside chance at a 3rd straight sub 2 ERA season. Oh and while he only struck out 8 in 8 innings, he struck out his 200th batter this season, onnn [checks calendar] August 12th.

Woof *fans self*.

But to his credit, Kershaw probably doesn’t have a shutout if Enrique Hernandez didn’t flop and stop all game making these kind of plays

The dude is a fun fun fun player, and if he can play SS anywhere near the level that he played defensively tonight, his value is going to be a lot closer to a Ben Zobrist type player than anybody else in the league going forward.

The positive vibes didn’t end there, Joc Pederson scored twice, smoked a ball (foul), and saw the ball really well tonight all that needs to happen is for the power to come back and we’ll see a player closer to the Rookie of the Year candidate that he resembled in the first half of the year.

But mostly overlooked is the fact that the list of narratives to point to as far as the team’s record vs “good” teams is running short, yes they were swept in Pittsburgh, but Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke and a competent offense will cover up a lot of deficiencies and the back end of the rotation isn’t as putrid as it was last season.

The team has a 3.5 game lead in the division thanks to the Astros and get to face some guy named Keyvius Sampson next, if the bullpen gets figured out, so will the Dodgers’ chances in October but hey we should probably enjoy having the NL’s ERA leader and FIP leader at the same time.