The likes of Clayton Kershaw, Rich Hill, Walker Buehler, Kenta Maeda, and Cy Young candidate Hyun-Jin Ryu have been sparkling for the Los Angeles Dodgers, helping push the California franchise into first place in the National League West division. Sporting a healthy 9.5 game lead over the second-place Colorado Rockies, not even having lost 19 games yet shows the type of domination this team has displayed so far this year.

Carried by their starting rotation, this team looks to be unstoppable so far. Hampered by some injuries, including having to get through some time with Kershaw on the shelf, the Dodgers look to not have missed a beat after getting to the World Series, even with having had their ass handed to them at the hands of the Boston Red Sox.

Since April 25 this season, the Dodgers starting rotation has led the league in ERA (2.78), winning percentage (.771), shutouts (7), WHIP (1.03) and strikeout to walk ratio (5.10), which are all impressive feats for one whole unit.

Buehler seemed to be the breakout star that helped carry this team last season, and while his 2019 season is solid, he has not been that leader that this team was able to count on last year. Ryu has stepped into that role and flourished, making so much progress that he seems to be in the lead for the NL Cy Young award at this point in the season.

Making 11 starts, the lefty has eight wins against only one loss and is sporting a beautifully-low 1.48 ERA across 73 solid innings. For Los Angeles, he has been the solid piece in their rotation that they needed to be a constant factor every fifth day.

Having thrown 69 strikeouts and only walked five, Ryu is wearing the ‘ace’ moniker this season, which is the culmination of his development as an MLB pitcher, having debuted all the way back in 2013 with these same Dodgers.

Diving deeper into his stat line, Ryu is on pace to have career highs in the percentage of strikes thrown, average pitches per inning and the average of pitches per plate appearance, which all help keep his pitch counts low in games and keep his arm fresh for the longevity of the season, which is an area that Dodger pitchers have had issues with the past few seasons.

Ryu is also allowing the lowest BABIP in his career up to this point, as well as lowest OBP, slugging percentage and hits allowed per nine innings. While this is a smaller sample size only across 11 games, the fact that these numbers are as low as they are and are on pace to set career bests says something about the type of season that Ryu is having.

The rest of the NL is hoping that their starting rotation falls off a bit, because if they keep putting up outrageous numbers like they are, then the rest of the league will have a very difficult putting the ball in play, much less plating runs, when it comes down to be time for the playoffs.