Kershaw remains ‘best pitcher on the planet’
After slow start, Dodgers’ ace on track for third straight Cy Young Award
On July 7, the initial National League all-star roster, pieced together by player vote and San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy, decreed Clayton Kershaw unworthy of selection.
The reigning Cy Young winner and MVP, sitting at 5-6 with a 3.08 ERA, was told he didn’t belong among the best players in baseball. Teammates were incredulous.
“He’s the best pitcher on the planet,” Dodgers catcher A.J. Ellis said.
Kershaw claimed he had no expectations either way, and that he took no slight.
On Wednesday night, with Bochy in the other dugout, Kershaw continued to both underscore the absurdity of the initial snub and suggest that it had, in fact, royally ticked him off. Kershaw struck out 15 Giants in a 132-pitch complete game, another chunk of forceful evidence that Kershaw holds the title Ellis bestowed upon him in July.
In 10 starts since the first allstar rosters were revealed, Kershaw has gone 7-0 with a 0.90 ERA while striking out 104 of the 290 batters he’s faced over 80 innings. His season ERA has shrunk to 2.18, and with a month remaining in the regular campaign, he has already set a new career-high with 251 strikeouts. He leads all pitchers — and all players aside from Bryce Harper and Josh Donaldson — with 7.2 wins above replacement, per FanGraphs.com.
Kershaw, who eventually made the all-star team as an injury replacement, has yielded zero or one runs in nine of the 10 starts since he didn’t make the original roster.
Kershaw is steaming toward his third straight Cy Young award, an honour that seemed to be slipping from his grasp for the first half of the season. Coming off his massive workload from the 2013 and 2014 seasons, he didn’t record an out past the seventh inning until June 6. He surrendered 11 homers in his first 17 starts, two more than he allowed all of the 2014 season. He was still great, but he wasn’t Kershaw.
He is again Kershaw, the best pitcher on the planet, the most dangerous weapon in the sport.
He has surpassed Max Scherzer and joined teammate Zack Greinke, who sports a microscopic 1.59 ERA, at the head of the NL Cy Young race. The only things that would prevent Kershaw from another trophy would be Greinke’s excellence or a blatant show of voter fatigue. Kershaw could become the first pitcher since Randy Johnson in 2002 to win three straight Cy Youngs, a run made more impressive by his win in 2011 and runner-up finish to R.A. Dickey in 2012.
The amazing thing about Kershaw’s recent dominance is that he’s showing signs of improvement.
He started toying with a cutter in the second half of the season, which he can bend over the outside corner to right-handed batters, and the results have been devastating.
Wednesday night, Kershaw induced 35 swing-and-misses from the Giants, the most of any pitcher in a single start in 10 years. Kershaw has recorded 466 whiffs this season, already 37 more than in 2013, his previous career best. His 11.6 strikeouts per nine innings outpace his previous career-high by nearly a full strikeout.
Think about this sentence: Clayton Kershaw is getting harder to hit. The best, somehow, is getting better.