With budding superstar Paul Skenes in town, I muse on Clayton Kershaw’s likely-to-never-again-be-duplicated legacy
First Pitch: 1:10 PM CT
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Radio: TIBN
Know Thine Enemy: Bucs Dugout
You’re probably wondering why this gamethread intro features a picture of Clayton Kershaw while the Minnesota Twins are hosting the Pittsburgh Pirates. Well, it felt like the right time—in a series where we got a close-up look at young phenom Paul Skenes—to muse on how we’ll likely never see the likes of Kershaw’s 3,000-strikeout career again in MLB.
Hurlers like Kershaw, Justin Verlander, & Max Scherzer represent the end of an era for MLB pitching. I won’t wax poetic, but pitchers simply are no longer utilized under the “go as long as possible every four days” philosophy. Analytics reveal that the third time through the order is Kryptonite for starters, so managers have triggers that make Sparky Anderson’s “Captain Hook” nickname quaint. As such, racking up enough innings to reach milestone achievements in wins or strikeouts is extremely difficult under modern SP utilization.
The next closest whiffers to Kershaw? The aforementioned Verlander & Scherzer, plus Chris Sale, are all around 2500 K’s, followed by Gerrit Cole at about 2200 punchouts. Based on age, performance, and utilization trends, I’d classify their opportunities to reach 3K strikeouts as “very outside chance”.
Photo by Matthew Grimes Jr./Atlanta Braves/Getty Images
What Kershaw has done in his 2008-2025 career—all with the Los Angeles Dodgers—is truly remarkable for any baseball era:
- 3 Cy Young Awards (2011, 2013, 2014), 2 2nd-place Cy Young finishes (2012, 2017), & 1 MVP Award (2014).
- That 2014 season? Utterly astounding: 21-3, 1.77 ERA, 198.1 IP, 6 CG, 2 SHO, 1 No-Hitter, 0.857 WHIP, 7/71 K/BB. Sandy Koufax-esque numbers.
Photo by Victor Decolongon/Getty Images
- Kershaw’s peak (2010-2016) was bananas: 131-51 (.720 WP), 2.20 ERA, 207 IP average, 25 CG, 15 SHO, 171 ERA+, 0.946 WHIP.
- Clayton’s career marks don’t drastically differ: 216-95, 2.52 ERA, 155 ERA+, 1.01 WHIP to go along with the 3,000 K’s.
Any way you slice it, Kershaw was THE dominant starting pitcher of the 2010s. Back injuries in 2018+ sapped many starts from his resume, but the raw production when atop the bump has not dipped all that much. Even this age-37 season: 3.38 ERA, 120 ERA+ in 50.2 IP.
Photo by Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
I’ll never forget freezing my fingertips off (38 degrees at game-start with an 18 MPH wind) at Target Field on April 13, 2022 while Kershaw was in short sleeves mowing down Twins batters: 7 IP, 0 H, 0 BB, 13 K. Were it not for the bitter cold and it being his first start of the season, he likely would have no-hit or perfecto’d our Twins even at that late-career stage.
One can argue about pitcher usage trends until the end of time. Is it better to ride an ace for as long as possible—or follow the raw data and foster fresh arms the 3rd & 4th times through a batting order? That’s a topic for an entirely new post. But suffice it to say, the next crop of seasoned starting pitchers—Sale, Cole, Zack Wheeler, Sonny Gray, Nathan Eovaldi, Max Fried, & Jacob deGrom, to name a few—are simply not going to have stats that look anything like Kershaw (or Verlander or Scherzer).
Photo by Michael Mooney/MLB Photos via Getty Images
I was happy to see Kershaw selected to the upcoming All-Star Game as Commissioner Rob Manfred’s “Legend Pick”. It is right for the sport of baseball to celebrate his achievements next to younger pitcher stars like Skenes or Tarik Skubal. Imagine, say, Byron Buxton taking some hacks off Kershaw in Atlanta—that would be an All-Star moment to remember!
Today, the Twins will look to take down another solid starter—Mitch Keller—to secure the sweep over the Pittsburgh Pirates and hit the Break at .500.
