Hyun-jin Ryu had a May for the ages

When Bryan Murphy, our glorious overload here at McCovey Cove Chronicles Dot Com, decided to implement a daily feature on news from around Major League Baseball, he didn’t exactly think it through

The Giants are dismal, he noted. Write about baseball teams that aren’t miserable. Seems like a solid idea.

Except one of the teams that is most decidedly not-miserable is the Los Angeles Dodgers, and as such, there’s a lot of material for them in this space. Look, I don’t like it either, but they’re not going to magically disappear if we ignore them.

So let’s talk about Hyun-jin Ryu, who is quietly having a month for the record books. How can one quietly have the type of month that Ryu just had? Well, playing alongside Cody Bellinger - who has literally already accrued more value (via Fangraphs WAR) through May than Brandon Belt has in any season - tends to bury you below the lede.

But Ryu has been nothing short of fantastic this month. He’s been beyond fantastic. He’s been . . . /checks thesaurus . . . unimaginable, exceptional, and . . . my goodness all the synonyms for “extraordinary” are . . . . /checks thesaurus again . . . remarkably boring. But you get the point.

Ryu made six starts in May. Here’s what how he did in each:

May 1: 8 innings, 4 hits, 0 walks, 6 strikeouts, 1 earned run
May 7: 9 innings, 4 hits, 0 walks, 6 strikeouts, 0 earned runs
May 12: 8 innings, 1 hit, 1 walk, 9 strikeouts, 0 earned runs
May 19: 7 innings, 5 hits, 1 walk, 5 strikeouts, 0 earned runs
May 25: 6 innings, 10 hits, 0 walks, 3 strikeouts, 2 earned runs
May 30: 7.2 innings, 4 hits, 1 walk, 7 strikeouts, 0 earned runs

Yes, Giants fans, those numbers are indeed legal. Rare, but legal.

Put it all together, and here was Ryu’s line for May: 6 games, 45.2 innings, 28 hits, 3 walks, 36 strikeouts, 3 earned runs.

Opposing batters hit .177/.191/.222 against him, and his ERA was 0.59.

If there’s any solace for Giants fans, it’s that only one of those six games was a loss for the Dodgers - and that loss came against San Francisco.

Ryu may come back to earth eventually, but he may not. While his May was better than his April (and better than just about all recorded months in MLB history), he’s 11 starts into the season and has yet to allow three runs in a start, earned or otherwise.

Must be nice.