Kershaw's post-season performances puzzling
Dodgers ace is one of the all-time greatest, but he's known for his post-season clunkers
There is no greater mystery in sports than Clayton Kershaw.
And even though Kershaw's Los Angeles Dodgers are back in the World Series, giving him yet another big post-season stage on which to pitch, there is no chance the mystery will be solved.
Kershaw is one of greatest pitchers of this or any other generation. The statistical evidence from more than a decade of brilliance is overwhelming. To pick just one nugget: in 2020, at 32 years old and with some of the filthiness of his pitches lost to age, he still posted a 2.16 ERA while striking out 62 batters in 58 innings and walking just eight. That's EIGHT.
And yet he's done things like that before. In 2016, despite missing extended time on the disabled list, Kershaw struck out 172 batters over 21 starts and walked just 11. That's ELEVEN.
But, of course, he also kind of stinks in the post-season. The statistical evidence is again plain to see: his 4.31 ERA in the playoffs is almost two runs higher than his regular season ERA. The rate at which he allows home runs in the playoffs is double that of the regular season.
Images of Kershaw in a post-season dugout, staring off vacantly into the distance after another rough outing, have become as much a part of October baseball as cold nights and early sunsets.
For a while, the Kershaw story made for good sports radio banter or bar room talk, back when people could go to bars. Was there an explanation for why his regular season greatness didn't translate to the playoffs? Was it a product of randomness and small sample sizes? Was it a flaw in Kershaw's mental makeup, something that caused him to perform worse in high-pressure games? Was he, gasp, a choker?
As someone who doesn't like ascribing results to intangible factors when there might be a tangible explanation, I had a lot of time for the idea that Kershaw was sometimes a victim of his own success. He was Clayton Kershaw, and so managers left him on the mound to try to battle his way out of jams when mortal pitchers would have been hooked. But you can only watch a guy get shelled so many times before you grudgingly admit that a significant part of the problem has to do with Kershaw himself.
That doesn't make it any easier to explain. If there was something that caused him to be less effective in the post-season — fatigue, more pressure, better opposition — then Kershaw would presumably be susceptible to it on a consistent basis. This especially would be the case if he came undone at big moments, if he lost his confidence when the stakes were highest: you would expect some consistency in the choking.
Except Kershaw has built a post-season career with many excellent moments among the mediocre ones. In 2013, back in the playoffs for the first time in
four years and in a Cy Young season, he gave up a single run over seven innings and struck out 12 to open the NLDS.
He pitched 12 more innings without surrendering an earned run in those playoffs before getting drilled by St. Louis in Game 6 of the NLCS.
He had another three poor starts over the next two post-seasons — this was when the Kershaw playoff narrative became fully baked in the sports media kiln — but then the Dodgers won both of his starts in the 2016 NLDS, and he came in from the bullpen on barely a day's rest to close out Game 5 at Nationals Park.
How could someone who allegedly wilted on the sport's biggest stages enter a game with
a tired arm, in front of a braying opposing crowd, and do what Kershaw did?
He was great in his first start in the following NLCS, but then was dinged in his second start.
So it goes. Because the Dodgers have been so consistently good over the past several years, they keep going back to the playoffs, and Kershaw keeps filling up the resume, with good starts that bolster the argument that there's nothing wrong with his ability to perform in the playoffs, and then a clunker or two.
This season alone, he pitched a dazzling eight innings — no runs, 13 strikeouts — in the Wild Card Series, and won his only start in the NLDS, before getting lit up in the NLCS by the Atlanta Braves. It is positively baffling.
Whatever happens against Tampa Bay in the World Series, Kershaw has such a body of evidence by now that it won't change the larger point: He's a phenomenal talent who sometimes shows it in the playoffs, and often does not. Over 13 seasons in the big leagues, he has given up at least four earned runs about once in every seven regular-season starts. He's done that at a rate of once in every 2.5 starts in the playoffs.
And that's the thing about Clayton Kershaw, playoff enigma: He could absolutely shut down the Rays in his first start in the World Series. But even if he did, would you bet on him to do it again?