So, remember earlier in the year when Clayton Kershaw was done, or whatever the hell the narrative was? Over his first nine starts this year, Kershaw had an unacceptable (for him, at least) 4.32 ERA with 73 strikeouts and 16 walks in 58 1/3 innings.
The good news for Dodgers fans is that the struggles were really limited to the first third of Kershaw’s season. In his last 18 starts, Kershaw has looked like his usual dominant self. He’s thrown 126 2/3 innings, finishing six innings in every start and notching quality starts in 16 of his 18 outings. His ERA over that period of time? Just 1.26, as Kershaw has allowed more than one run in just one start over the last two months. He’s also struck out 178 and walked only 18 over those 18 starts.
Hell, in his last ten starts, he’s struck out 104 and walked just seven. Six pitchers have walked at least seven players in a *game* this season – Kershaw’s done that in his last ten starts *combined*.
Even with that rough start to the year, Kershaw’s statistics for the season as a whole are stellar. His 194 innings pitched lead the National League. He lowered his ERA to 2.18 on Wednesday night, creeping even closer to second-place Jake Arrieta (2.11). His ERA predictors crush the rest of the league, as his 2.02 FIP and 2.05 xFIP are well-ahead of Arrieta’s second-best 2.50 and 2.74 marks. Kershaw also sailed past Chris Sale for the MLB lead in strikeouts with 251, and his 7.38 strikeout to walk ratio trails only Max Scherzer.
Kershaw will likely have five or six starts left in the regular season for the Dodgers. His 251 strikeouts are already a career high, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility for him to become the first pitcher since the Johnson/Martinez/Schilling era of strikeout dominance to notch 300 in a single season. He’s 42 innings pitched away from a career-high. His 2.18 ERA isn’t sub-2.00 like his 2013 and 2014 seasons, and it would clearly take a strong performance down the stretch for his ERA to drop that far (four runs in 36 innings would put him exactly at 2.00 for the season).
I almost feel like we’re taking Kershaw for granted. Yesterday when writing up the Cy Young candidates in each league, I deemed Arrieta the favorite over Kershaw and Zack Greinke. But the standards for Kershaw have been set so high – his ERA is “only” 2.18 instead of 1.83 or 1.77. His record is “only” 12-6 instead of 21-3. This is a guy who leads the NL in innings pitched, leads baseball in strikeouts, is third in baseball in ERA, and is second in baseball in strikeout to walk ratio…and we’re kicking around the idea of him having a down year?
Since Kershaw won his first Cy Young award in 2011, he’s posted four of the six seven fWAR seasons among all pitchers – including his 2015. Hell, even if you roll the beginning point back to 2005, when Kershaw was still in high school, four of the top 11 seasons by a pitcher in baseball can be attributed to Kershaw. When all of the dust has settled on Kershaw’s 2015, we could be looking at a year that ends up better than his 2013, better than his 2014, and up there with the greatest seasons of all-time by a pitcher.
