Bleacher Report's 2016 League Division Series Awards

Clayton Kershaw, closer.

Hey, why not? After a division series round where bullpens mattered more than ever, why not end it all with the best pitcher of our generation coming out of the bullpen to get the final two outs?

Kershaw did it, finishing off the Los Angeles Dodgers' 4-3 win over the Washington Nationals. Their matchup was the only division series to last the full five games.

Not that any of these series were easy.

In 10 of the 15 division series games, it was either tied in the ninth inning or the losing team had the tying run at the plate in the ninth. There were big home runs, four-run rallies and even a walk-off race to the plate on a throw to first base.

There was the emotion of David Ortiz's farewell, and we learned how to correctly spell Conor Gillaspie (don't let autocorrect tell you you're wrong).

If you watched to the end every night, you missed out on a lot of sleep, but you didn't miss any of the drama. And you probably feel a little like Kershaw did when it all ended well after midnight Friday morning.

"We're all exhausted after every game, even if you're sitting on the bench," he told Fox Sports' Jon Paul Morosi. "These games are such grinds that it's such a relieving feeling when they're over and you win."

It's over. The Dodgers won, and so did the Chicago Cubs, Cleveland Indians and Toronto Blue Jays.

There was plenty of excitement, plenty of stars and plenty to fill this year's edition of Bleacher Report's League Division Series Awards.

Best Team: Chicago Cubs

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They lost a game, whereas the Indians and Blue Jays didn't. However, that doesn't change what is more and more obvious: The Cubs have the most talented team in baseball this season.

The Cubs have a deep enough rotation that Jake Arrieta doesn't start until Game 3. They have a deep enough lineup to win a series while the guys batting first (Dexter Fowler), third (Anthony Rizzo) and fifth (Addison Russell) combined to bat .089. They have a closer in Aroldis Chapman who threw 13 pitches in the ninth inning of Game 4 and averaged 101 mph.

There's still no guarantee the Cubs win the World Series for the first time since 1908—the computers at FanGraphs put their chances at 29.1 percent—or even that they get there for the first time since 1945 (49.1 percent, per FanGraphs). I'm not making any new predictions, even though the team I said was going to win has already been eliminated.

I'm not saying the Cubs are going to win. I am saying they're the best team.

Best News: A Drought Will End

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You've heard all about the Cubs and the goat and the hundred-year curse. Maybe it's time to remember we need black-and-white pictures to document the last time the Indians won it all (1948, above).

No matter which two teams advance out of the league championship series that begin Friday night, the World Series will be heading places it hasn't been in about two decades—or more.

The San Francisco Giants (last championship: 2014) are out. The Boston Red Sox (last championship: 2013) are out. Even the Texas Rangers (no championships, but World Series in 2010 and 2011) are out.

We're left with the Blue Jays (last championship: 1993), the Dodgers (last championship: 1988) and the Indians (last championship: 1948).

And the Cubs and their 1908 thing. It'd be great if they ended that drought.

Or if any of those other teams ended theirs.

Best Trend: Aggressive Managing

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With his season on the line, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts pulled his starter in the third inning of a 1-0 game. He went to his closer with nine outs to go and replaced him with his ace starter for the final two outs.

When Roberts went to Kershaw in the ninth inning of Game 5, it was the 25th pitching change he'd made in the series. It was the 122nd pitching change made by the eight division series managers.

That's 122 pitching changes in 15 games. That's more than eight per game between the two teams!

That's postseason baseball in 2016.

It's hard to believe now that the postseason began with debates about why one of the best managers in baseball left his best-in-baseball closer on the sidelines in a must-win game. It's hard to believe the National League Wild Card Game the next night featured one starting pitcher who threw a complete game and another who went seven scoreless innings.

We're into an era where starting pitchers work fewer innings than ever and bullpens are more important than ever.

The old idea that everything is determined by your starting pitcher? It's just not true anymore, and the managers who react the best to it have the best chance of winning.

Of the 30 starting pitchers in these 15 games, 21 didn't finish the sixth inning (and 11 of those 21 teams still won). Half of them didn't even finish the fifth inning.

Indians manager Terry Francona (above) set the tone when he went to Andrew Miller with a 4-3 lead in the fifth inning of Game 1 against the Red Sox.

That change worked. Not all of them did. But this has already been a postseason where managers have understood the urgency of going all-out to win each game. It makes for long games, but it also makes for interesting games.

Best Game: Giants-Cubs, Game 3

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It didn't end until after 2:30 a.m. on the East Coast (7:30 a.m. in London, where my Cubs fan cousin listened to the final inning while walking to work). So if you missed it, that's understandable.

But if Game 3 of the Giants-Cubs series ever shows up on a TV near you, sit down and enjoy. Even Cubs fans can enjoy the 6-5, 13-inning loss, because their team came back to win the series in another great game the next night. Giants fans can enjoy it because it was the high point of another interesting (if ultimately unfulfilling) season.

The rest of us can just appreciate all the excitement and all the craziness, from Gillaspie's go-ahead triple off Chapman in the eighth to Kris Bryant's game-tying home run off Sergio Romo in the ninth to Joe Panik's walk-off double in the 13th.

It's already been a postseason filled with great games, with two rounds to come. But if we look back when it's over and this game was the best we saw, I, for one, won't feel disappointed.

Best Finish: Josh Donaldson's Series-Clinching Race for Home

We've seen walk-off home runs to win series (Bobby Thomson, Bill Mazeroski, Joe Carter, Magglio Ordonez). We've seen aggressive baserunning to tie a clinching game (Eric Hosmer last November).

But how many series have ended the way this Blue Jays-Rangers series did, with Josh Donaldson racing around third base and coming home while the Rangers tried but failed to turn a double play?

It went into the books as an error on Rangers second baseman Rougned Odor, because his throw pulled first baseman Mitch Moreland off the bag and convinced Donaldson to make his race to the plate. The Blue Jays won't mind given Odor's place in the regular-season brawl between the two teams this year.

Give Donaldson some credit, though, and remember that he finished the final game 3-for-5 and the division series sweep 7-for-13 with four runs scored and three driven in.

It won't keep the Blue Jays from showing endless replays of Carter's World Series-winning home run in 1993, but you can bet the Donaldson run will show up on highlight tapes north of the border for years to come.

And yes, I can remember at least two series that ended with a slide at home plate: Sid Bream in 1992 for the Atlanta Braves against the Pittsburgh Pirates, and Ken Griffey Jr. coming home at the Kingdome for the Seattle Mariners in 1995 against the New York Yankees.

Whatever happened to that guy?

Best Moment: David Ortiz

Ortiz had just one hit in nine at-bats in his final postseason series, and his Red Sox were swept in three games by an impressive Indians team. That won't change his place in the hearts of fans in New England or his many other fans around the world.

The love for Ortiz has been evident through his remarkable final season, but what happened at the end of the Red Sox's 4-3 Game 3 loss will be remembered as long as anything else that happened in any division series this year. After the Indians rightly celebrated their win, Ortiz returned to the field at Fenway Park. He walked to the mound, and the Fenway fans celebrated him.

Best Free-Agent Sales Pitch: Edwin Encarnacion

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These are division series awards, so technically we can't count Encarnacion's walk-off home run in the American League Wild Card Game (off a pitcher not named Zach Britton).

That's OK, because Encarnacion batted .417 in the three games against the Rangers and hit two more home runs (also off pitchers not named Zach Britton). His Game 2 homer off Yu Darvish came with the Blue Jays already leading 4-1. Two days later in Game 3, his first-inning home run off Colby Lewis put the Jays ahead, and his third-inning single drove in another run they would ultimately need.

Encarnacion's 42-homer, 127-RBI season already set him up for a big payday. His performance so far in the postseason has only given the Blue Jays and other potential suitors that much more to think about.

Best Weapon: Andrew Miller

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You could justify naming Miller the MVP of the division series (an award that doesn't officially exist, but one we'll give out shortly). You could justify naming Miller the division series Cy Young winner (another unofficial award we'll hand out soon).

We'll stick to calling him the best weapon, which is how TBS analyst Ron Darling referred to the Indians left-hander during the series against the Red Sox.

The Indians got Miller in a July 31 trade with the Yankees, and Terry Francona immediately understood his value. Because the Indians already had a good closer (Cody Allen), and because Miller is less a slave to ego than almost any player in the game, Francona was free to use him at any point of a game.

Miller's first big appearance after joining the Indians came in the sixth inning of a tie game. His first appearance in the postseason came in the fifth inning of Game 1 as the Indians held a one-run lead.

The Kansas City Royals showed the last two Octobers how a deep bullpen can shorten games, but the Indians have taken that theory to a new level with Miller.

"He's an elite pitcher," Francona said soon after Miller arrived in Cleveland. "But the idea you can leverage him made him very attractive."

It makes him the best weapon any team has right now.

Division Series Cy Young: Jon Lester

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Of the 30 pitchers who started the 15 division series games, all but two allowed at least one run.

Corey Kluber was outstanding for the Indians with seven scoreless innings in Game 2 against the Red Sox, but he pitched with a big lead. Jon Lester had no safety net, as his eight scoreless innings for the Cubs came in a 1-0 Game 1 win over the Giants.

No starter won two games in the division series. No starter even dominated two games without winning.

Lester only had to pitch once, but what he did set the tone for a series the Cubs won.

Division Series MVP: Javier Baez

Others had more hits, or even more home runs. But think about what Javier Baez did in four games for the Cubs against the Giants.

In Game 1, his eighth-inning home run off Johnny Cueto provided the lone run in a 1-0 Cubs win.

In Game 4, his ninth-inning single off Hunter Strickland capped a four-run rally and handed the Cubs their 6-5 clinching win.

Two game-winning hits in a player's final at-bat would be good in a 162-game season. In a four-game series, that's remarkable.

Baez also impressed with his defense at second base…and with his mouth.

After the Game 4 hit, he had this to say to reporters, including Steve Greenberg of the Chicago Sun-Times: "The last pitch was a fastball—you can't throw that pitch to me."