Clayton Kershaw puts an end to a career that lasted 18 MLB seasons, 11 Head of the Stars, three Cy Young prices, two World Series titles, a gold glove, a Roberto Clemente prize and, in particular, a single team.
Los Angeles Dodgers announced that their SouthPaw will retire at the end of the 2025 season on ThursdayAnd there is no doubt that Kershaw will enter the temple of fame during his first ballot in five years. He will have a dodgers cap on his plate. No dodgers player will again bear the No. 22.
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The status of Kershaw as one of the greatest players of his generation is unassailable, but a question that remains is where it ranks among the greats of all the Dodgers, one of the most historic franchises in the MLB.
The answer to this question depends on how you define grandeur.
By some figures, Clayton Kershaw is the best launcher of all time
By zooming throughout Kershaw’s professional career, there are ways to say that it is not only the best Dodger of all time, but the best launcher of all time.
ERA? His 2.54 brand career is the best since the Deadball era which ended in 1920 (min. 2,000 rounds). Using ERA + to adapt to the era, it is the best of all time, just ahead of Pedro Martinez.
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WHIP? His 1.02 brand career is the best since the Deadball era (min. 2,000 rounds).
Kershaw has been launched for years in the full season, which may not remember how good he was in the first half of his career. With a precise fast ball, a deceptive cursor and a curve ball in a loop, he kept the unbalanced strikers as well as any launcher in the history of baseball.
This continued when Kershaw’s speed has faded and injuries have somewhat kept her away from the mound. Taken through a Manche lens for the Channel, he really doesn’t improve him.
Kershaw is also the leader of all time of dodgers in victories above the replacement (such as calculated by baseball reference) and stick withdrawals. He helped supervise a club transformation during his career, from literal bankruptcy to an innumerable other fans demand a salary ceiling.
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We can appreciate all of this.
However, we can also enjoy Sandy Koufax, the player who, with Jackie Robinson, considered the biggest Dodger before the start of Kershaw.
Let’s talk about the playoffs, and Sandy Koufax
One of the wilder things about Kershaw is that he is only the second left -handed launcher who has spent his entire career with the Dodgers and was about to rewrite records, only for injuries to set an obstacle to things.
Except in the case of Koufax, “the shock absorber” says it lightly.
The Kershaw bonus could have been incredible, but Koufax undoubtedly reached the top of all the peaks among the launchers in the 1960s. And unfortunately for the case of Kershaw, this is the point where we will raise the performance of the playoffs.
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Throughout his career, Kershaw was a division player for many because he published some of the best figures in the history of baseball, while walking on Rake after Rake in the playoffs. For some, the problems of Kershaw’s qualifiers have invalidated his argument as the best game launcher. Others pointed out how frequency Kershaw was pushed in departures to short-relief and to go just a round that he should have. He finally found a redemption in the Dodgers race in 2020, but the end result is an MPM of 4.49 in the games that counted more.
Perhaps some of these arguments are unfair. But here is the thing: no one should do any of these qualifications for Koufax.
At a time when the eliminatory series was the World Series, Koufax displayed an MPM of 0.95 in four different series. He won the victory in two full games in a New York Yankees scanning in 1963, then engraved his name in the history of baseball in 1965 when he refused to play in match 1 on Yom Kippour, then returned and launched in three games. He took the defeat in Match 2 with, Hasp, one deserved in six heats, then launched bleaching in matches 5 and 7, the latter in two days of rest. Throughout his arm was disintegrated by traumatic arthritis.
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Perhaps Koufax would have seen more difficulties in the playoffs, which was cruel for so much, but any player of his time would probably have expected the same thing from him.
The problem of Kershaw’s playoffs should not keep it out of the fame. This should not prevent anyone from talking about him in silent tones. But when it comes to deciding “size”, it seems justified to mention.
Koufax may have lost half a career in a state of arms, but what remains almost tailor-made to counter Kershaw. He won as many Cy Young and MVP prices, with two other triple crowns, three others without strikes (including a perfect game), two other titles of the time and, of course, an after-season assessment that made fans rather than defensive. He is not even so far behind in counting statistics, because Kershaw will finish with only about 500 rounds – less than two seasons for Koufax – than a guy who had to retire after his 30 -year season.
Clayton Kershaw will be remembered
We are talking about two different eras with Kershaw and Koufax, but this is in a way with the debates of magnitude. It is not only a question of knowing who had the best statistics, and Koufax could have had the best statistics anyway, especially when we consider that his first years were mediocre because he entered the big leagues two years after having started to launch.
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Koufax played at a time when baseball was a different sport in the bigger world. He was one of the biggest celebrities in America and had a lasting cultural impact with his refusal of Yom Kippour, especially in the Jewish community. It is difficult to see a baseball player reaching a similar status in America today (although Shohei Ohtani does it in Japan).
And if the size concerns the impact on statistics, there is Robinson, who broke the colored barrier, helped win the world’s first series of Dodgers in 1955 and was one of the best two best MLB basic players, even in a vacuum. If you mean that he is the biggest dodger of all time, no one should disagree with you.
Talking about all of this is unfair to Kershaw, who has certainly had an impact on today’s game. It turns out that it is part of one of the worst teams possible for having made an argument of goat.
In the end, Kershaw We can remember from the point of view of his time rather than his team. His decline illustrated a change of baseball this century, starting launchers who could launch 200 rounds each year for trips to the injured list being a possibility. It is a testimony of Kershaw that he remained effective even after this transition, with a quick bullet on average 98 MPH this season.
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Neither Kershaw nor Koufax will sweat, that they have helped dodgers more than the other. They clearly did both.
