With Dodgers ace and future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw most likely down until after the All-Star break with right SI joint inflammation, the Dodgers needed someone to (try to) fill the void created by his thought-to-be-irreplaceable absence.

They got it.

Enter 32-year-old Dodgers left-hander Tyler Anderson.

All the Las Vegas, NV native and first-round draft pick in 2011 by the Colorado Rockies out of the University of Oregon in Eugene has done through his six starts is post a National League-best 5-0 record with a 3.30 ERA, for an MLB-best 1.000 winning percentage among eligible starters, while striking out 42 and walking only five in his thus far combined 43.2 innings pitched.

But wait, there’s more!

On Monday evening in our nation’s capital, the hard-throwing 6′-2″/220-pound lefty with a devastating change-up was perfect through five innings, finally allowing his first hit (of only five total) to National’s second baseman César Hernández with one out in the bottom of the sixth. But he escaped the inning unscathed with a perfectly executed step-and-throw 4-3 double play by Dodgers second baseman Hanser Alberto to future Hall of Fame first baseman Freddie Freeman.

“I was just trying to fill up the strike zone and get ahead,” Anderson said postgame. “Throw strikes and force guys to put the ball in play early.”

Anderson did exactly that with his devastating change-up, which he paired with his excellent fastball, to finish his 8.0 shutout innings with eight strikeouts and no walks on 101 total pitches, of which 77 were strikes.

“He just did a really good job of selling it,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of Anderson’s change-up. “It’s his best secondary pitch, and if he presents it as a strike and it looks like a fastball, and then it bottoms out. He has thrown it in any count, he was throwing the cutter up and in, and then he was throwing the fastball, too. So, it’s a pitch that, you know, he was just on-point today.”

“It was kind of a good match-up we got, and it was just kind of a feeling I could throw it for strikes,” Anderson said of the pitch. “My cutter wasn’t really that great, so I had to lean a little more on that.”

The Dodgers would go on to rout the Nationals by a score of 10-1, with Washington’s lone run coming on a RBI single by (wait for it…) Josh Bell off of Dodgers right-hander Phil Bickford with twos in the bottom of the ninth inning.

Make no mistake about it, Tyler Anderson is in the Dodgers’ starting rotation to stay.

Play Ball!

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