El jugador de béisbol Clayton Kershaw

LOS ANGELES -- For those members of the Baseball Writers Association of America who plan to hold it against Clayton Kershaw that he is a starting pitcher when it comes to casting their National League MVP votes, let’s get this out of the way.

Kershaw would play every day if they let him.

“I’d love to if I could, but I just can’t quite hit enough,” he said.

The Los Angeles Dodgers don’t view Kershaw strictly as a starting pitcher, if that means anything. They view him as a fifth infielder on days he starts. He works hard at his fielding, even messing around at shortstop some days during batting practice.

Unlike most pitchers, he runs hard and aggressively when he can get on base. He sparked a two-run rally in the Dodgers’ 4-1 win over the Washington Nationals by aggressively (and, he later said, ill-advisedly) trying to go from first to third on Bryce Harper’s powerful arm.

He can hit pretty darn well for a pitcher (.173), too, if not quite well enough to play a position on days he’s not on the mound, like they do in college.

AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill

Clayton Kershaw for MVP? Three hits, eight K's and his 17th win against the NL-leading Nationals might help provide an answer.

“I just look at him as a baseball player. You love seeing him out there in the mound in whatever inning it was and he’s all dirty,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said. “You don’t see many guys like that.”

OK, so Kershaw has a few more of the intangibles than some people may realize, but intangibles shouldn’t win him the MVP award. What should win him the award is the fact he’s the most valuable player in his league.

This, despite almost impossible odds back in April. After missing six weeks with a bad back, he has played in 23 of the Dodgers’ 139 games, or 16 percent of them, and somehow he is still the league’s most-valuable player?

Consider, for a moment, the man viewed as his primary, if not only, competition. Giancarlo Stanton has slugged 34 home runs and driven in 99 runs while leading the league in slugging and total bases and getting on base at an impressive .401 rate. He is considered a good fielder but not great. He’s got a big arm, but doesn’t get to as many balls as some smaller, nimbler right fielders.

Oh, and he plays every day. That’s a big deal, right? He has missed just one of the Miami Marlins’ 137 games.

But is a player more valuable simply because his contributions are spread out over a season rather than concentrated in bursts of brilliance? Kershaw has exerted absolute control over the portion of the Dodgers’ schedule that he can control. The Dodgers are 19-4 in games Kershaw has started.

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