Brett Anderson has been really good through the first half

Brett Anderson is an unlikely candidate to be the last man standing from the back end of the Dodgers rotation. By Owen Main

He was supposed to be the fifth starter. When the Dodgers took a flier on Brett Anderson prior to this season, they hoped he could stay healthy through most of the year, show some flashes of brilliance, and solidify the rotation as a guy who had a great supporting cast around him.

Then Hyun-jin Ryu got hurt. Then Twitter buddy Brandon McCarthy went down, and all of a sudden, Anderson became a the third best starter on a team expected to contend for a World Series this season.

When he was signed, I wrote a little about his wonderful Twitter feed. Now, things are getting a little more serious than that.

The baseball season is almost halfway through and Brett Anderson is still pitching — by all indications healthy and strong. While others have gone down around him, the lefty has lowered his ERA to 3.00 and been good for 2.0 WAR — on pace for about 4 for the season, if he can stay healthy.

His health remains a big if, but he doesn’t show any signs of slowing-down. He’s thrown at least seven innings in three of his past four starts — two of which were at least 113 pitches. Anderson has gone at least five innings in every start since the beginning of May, during which time he’s lowered his ERA by almost two and a half points. He’s quickly becoming a really reliable starter for a team that really needed him to be.

Last night, Anderson allowed just a single run over seven innings. The 27 year old struck out seven, walked just two, and threw “just” 95 pitches.

Whatever his performance for the rest of the season, and no matter what other starting pitchers the Dodgers manage to trade for, that at around the halfway mark of the season, Brett Anderson had performed WELL above what Dodger fans could have reasonably expected him to do.

Now about getting a little more starting pitching…