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Clayton Kershaw won all five of his starts with a 1.88 ERA in August, while not being pushed deeper into games. He was pulled after six innings with 74 and 76 pitches, and only pitched five innings on Tuesday against the Reds at only 72 pitches, having retired his final 14 batters faced. The extenuating circumstances there include being on four days rest instead of five, and both Kershaw and manager Dave Roberts noting after the game that Kershaw had nowhere near his best stuff during that start.

Still, the results have been great in season 18 for Kershaw, who is 9-2 with a 3.06 ERA in his 17 starts. And most importantly, given how the last two years ended, Kershaw is healthy. Sonja Chen of MLB.com wrote about Kershaw’s last month:

“It was a good August,” Kershaw said. “Physically, everything feels good. I think everything changes from start to start sometimes. But overall it was great. The team got a lot of wins, which was great. Fun to be a part of it this time of year.”

Kendall George is up to 86 stolen bases on the season, with eight games remaining in High-A Great Lakes season. The outfielder was among 10 hitters profiled by Geoff Pontes at Baseball America for standout performances in August:

Though he has bottom-of-the-scale power and is unlikely to ever hit 10 home runs in a season, he figures to consistently hit for a high average, get on base and put pressure on opposing defenders with his 80-grade speed. George’s plus bat-to-ball skills, advanced approach, speed and outfield defense could make him the best among his archetypal contemporaries in the major leagues like Chandler Simpson and Victor Scott.

Hannah Keyser wrote at The Bandwagon newsletter about how all dozen teams currently in playoff position have odds of at least 90 percent to make the postseason.

“This seems, in a word, bad. There’s more than 400 games left in the regular season. You could skip them all, Rip Van Winkle your way to October, and not miss a beat,” she wrote. “The expanded postseason, which was supposed to give more fanbases a rooting interest down to the wire has, this year at least, done the opposite.“

Old friend Andre Jackson has a 2.31 ERA in 21 starts with Yokohama this year, his second in Japan. On Friday he also hit the first home run by a pitcher in the league this season. It was Jackson’s first home run since hitting two for the Kelowna Falcons in British Columbia in the West Coast League, a collegiate summer as a 19-year-old in 2015 in between his freshman and sophomore seasons at the University of Utah.