Dodgers 2 Giants 1: Cy Greinke

Sep 1, 2015; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Los Angeles Dodgers starter Zack Greinke (21) delivers a pitch against the San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

The Dodgers have a pitcher with a 1.59 ERA on September 1st it’s absurd, it’s the most fun i’ve had watching a non-Clayton Kershaw pitcher pitch since… ever, Greinke allowed 1 run over 7.1 innings, striking out 5, walking only 1 and baffled Giants hitters all night.

Zack is very clearly entrenched as the Cy Young award frontrunner, and will probably get some MVP votes considering his bat, to put it in perspective, his ERA is 50 points lower than it was when he last won a Cy Young in 2009, and say what you will about raw ERA and ERA in general, but Greinke has put together one of the best 3 year streaks a Dodger pitcher has ever had and I don’t even want to start to consider what the right move is this offseason in terms of his contract status with the team.

The scoring was minimal, like you’d expect from a game featuring Madison Bumgarner and Zack, Adrian Gonzalez drove in the first run of the game, singling to left field, scoring Jose Peraza who’s OPS is .820 very early in his Dodger career. Not to mention his double play in the 8th to get Luis Avilan out of a mini jam, him outperforming Hector Olivera for the rest of the season would be quite the development.

But on the offensive side of the ball, the real winner was Joc Pederson

He’s had a ROUGH time this summer -reminder that he was an all star game starter-, and it’d be okay to question what his role going down the stretch would be, and hell even his projection for next season, but right now, he needs to have a big September because like nobody else is even healthy enough to play CF, that dinger brought him to 24 on the season, and he’s got a 123 wRC+ despite only having 86 (!) hits on the season.

Kenley Jansen closed things out with a clean 9th for his 28th save and the Dodgers take a 5.5 game lead with Clayton Kershaw pitching against Mike Leake tomorrow (fun!), the team has won 7 of 8 games (or 2 in a row since the world ended with Jake Arrieta‘s no hitter).

The Dodgers magic number is 26.

Soon dot gif.