SAN FRANCISCO >> Sometimes it pays to listen to your boss.
Dodgers left-hander Alex Wood was named the National League’s Player of the Week after striking out 21 and allowing just seven hits and two walks over 11 innings in two winning starts last week. But that is just the most recent sparkle on a season that has seen Wood’s strikeout rate jump from a pedestrian 8.1 per nine innings over the first four years of his career – to an elite-level 12.1 this season. Wood has struck out 40 of the past 107 batters he has faced.