I won’t spoil anything about the final episode of Mad Men for readers who have yet to watch it, but I will say I’m a little upset we’ll never find out what happened to Lane’s Mets pennant. With that out of the way, on to baseball and what a weekend it was.

STORY LINES AND NEWS CYCLE EPHEMERA

The weekend was full of milestones as Clayton Kershaw recorded his 100th win and Adrian Beltre and Miguel Cabrera reached the 400 home run plateau over the weekend. On Friday, Beltre got the green light on a 3-0 pitch against Bruce Chen, who was DFA’d over the weekend, and crushed it to center.

Cabrera also also hit his 400th home run to center and the pitcher, Tyler Lyons, would also find himself removed from the active roster by the end of the weekend.

Clayton Kershaw recorded his 100th career win when the Dodgers polished off the Rockies 6-4. For the record, Kershaw has recorded as many wins as Zane Smith but not as many as Shawn Estes.

On Friday afternoon, the Cubs won in the bottom of the 12th inning by essentially replaying the bottom of the 10th inning except, this time, instead of Gregory Polanco catching Matt Szczur’s shallow fly ball and throwing Castro out at the plate to end the inning, this happened and the game ended:

Also on Friday, Hafpor Julius Bjornsson, otherwise know to Game of Thrones fans as The Mountain, played baseball for the first time before a Phillies game. Later in the weekend, the man known to Mets fans as Thor recorded his first career victory, in a 5-1 victory over the Brewers. Giancarlo Stanton hit 3 home runs over the weekend, but the most notable was this 478 ft. bomb that was scooped up by a fan on the run.

The biggest non-headline for the weekend came on Sunday, though, as Shelby Miller recorded 26 outs without allowing a hit until Justin Bour stepped to the plate in the bottom of the ninth.

Miller allowed a follow-up single to Dee Gordon before retiring Martin Prado to complete the game. After the game, Marlins manager Mike Redmond was dismissed as was bench coach Rob Leary. A replacement will be named today and it appears that Dan Jennings will leave his post as general manager to take the reigns in the dugout. Mike Berger is expected to move to the general manager position.

dan jennings is indeed the next marlins manager, according to sources.

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) May 18, 2015

TWEETS WE LIKED

can’t decide if headline is meta, tautology or redundant pic.twitter.com/CqFtCP4nsi

— Sam Miller (@SamMillerBP) May 16, 2015

Bryce Harper leads the National League in games, plate appearances, runs, home runs, walks, slugging percentage and OPS.

— Craig Calcaterra (@craigcalcaterra) May 18, 2015

Marlins front office had no idea who to hire so they played nose goes and Dan Jennings was left sitting there like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ guess it’s me

— Cespedes Family BBQ (@CespedesBBQ) May 18, 2015

ARTICLES WE LIKED

Tim Livingston, the director of broadcasting for the Sonoma Stompers, sat down with Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller to discuss their work so far with the Stompers and to preview what’s to come.

Banished to the Pen’s Andrew Patrick examined a baseball’s “Raison D’être”. You should read this.

On Sunday, Banished to the Pen’s baron of podcasts, Ryan Sullivan, talked to Mike Ferrin about many baseball things but, in particular, the legacy of the Up & In podcast.

Eugene Freeman anaylzed the similarities and differences between the 1987 collusion case brought against MLB owners and Barry Bonds’ new collusion case.

Over at the Hardball Times, John Paschal covered the return of Josh Hamilton.

Federal Baseball summarized Bryce Harper’s amazing series against the Padres.

TODAY’S BEST PITCHING MATCHUPS

Corey Kluber (CLE, 4.27) vs. Chris Sale (CHW, 5.09) (8:10 ET)

Kluber has pitched far better than his ERA would suggest this season and, following his dominant 18 K performance in his last start, his ERA is starting to align with his peripheral stats (2.52 FIP, 29.2% SO% vs. 5% BB%). While Chris Sale’s predictive stats also suggest he’s performed better than his ERA (3.55 FIP, 24.7/7.3 SO%/BB%) they are far less stellar than his career averages. Sale has thrown his slider far less than last season, possibly as a means of preservation, but was able to strike out 11 Brewers in his last start so we should probably continue not to freak out over good pitcher’s stats halfway through the 2nd month of the season.

John Lackey (STL, 3.22) vs. Matt Harvey (NYM, 2.31)

The Mets couldn’t have picked a better pitcher to open their series against the NL leading Cardinals. The Mets enter the week just a half game ahead of the Nationals for first place in the NL East. Harvey has been nearly as dominant to open the season as he was prior to Tommy John surgery, striking out over 25% of hitters he faces while walking less than 4%. Lackey continues to be an effective starter for the Cardinals but, let’s face it, we’d watch Matt Harvey pitch against any team.