Dodgers 3, Giants 2: Brett Anderson Gets Paid (More)

In games that no longer matter, sometimes individual performances still do, and Brett Anderson‘s start this afternoon was a nice one to witness in today’s 3-2 Dodgers victory over the Giants.

In his last nine starts coming into today, Anderson had a 5.51 ERA and generally looked like he was running out of gas right before the games would really start to matter. Fortunately, today he managed to reverse that trend a bit and earn himself a bunch of money in the process.

Anderson shut down the Giants, going 7.2 innings on 92 pitches, walking none and allowing just four hits. Anderson only stuck out three, which continues his trend of not missing bats, but he induced a ton of weak contact and the defense behind him played lights out.

Of course, in the bottom of the eighth inning, Anderson eventually gave up a couple runs. And why? Because of a squibber that Howie Kendrick couldn’t get to in time and then threw into the dugout. Then two groundballs and a fliner that fell in front of Andre Ethier later, and the Giants had their first runs, and that type of stuff was a lot more in line with Anderson’s recent performance than anything else.

In any case, Anderson still got to 180 innings (180.1, to be exact), and that secured him another $400,000 on the season. Given that the Dodgers lost their #3 and #4 starters for the year very early on and could’ve been really doomed at that point, Anderson’s durability and performance has earned him at least that much.