April 24, 2023

By Mark Whicker

Canadian Baseball Network

It took five days for Clayton Kershaw to get from 200 wins to 201. And some people worry about his velocity.

Kershaw is 35, written off more often than a political contribution, abused in the postseason, forgotten at times, forced to put his talents on short-term lease. He is again one of the best pitchers in the National League, and he is 4-1 with a 2.32 ERA in the (absurdly) early going. While the rest of the baseball world fantasizes over a Pittsburgh-Tampa Bay World Series, and while FOX sports executives check job-posting websites in fear of the same thing, Kershaw has kept the sputtering Dodgers tied for the lead in the National League West.

He has averaged just over six innings in his five starts. His WHIP of 0.871 would be his second-best ever, should he maintain it for a full season. No one anticipates that, of course, but Kershaw is striking out 9.3 batters per nine innings and has walked five overall.

And, of course he got that 200th win. It barely budged the general awareness, but someday 200 will be celebrated the way 300 once was. In fact, Cy Young’s 511 career wins seems no more inaccessible than the 300 barrier does today.

Kershaw’s 201st win broke a tie with Chuck Finley, Tim Wakefield, George Uhle and Jon Lester and placed him in a tie with Rube Marquard and Charlie Root. He is the fourth active pitcher to get there. The others are Justin Verlander (the leader, with 247), Max Scherzer and Zack Greinke. Adam Wainwright is at 195 and will likely get there in 2023, provided he regains health. After that it’s a wasteland. Cole Hamels is 39 and is at 163. Johnny Cueto is 37 and has 143.

Madison Bumgarner, recently designated for assignment after facing down Kershaw all those years, is 33 and has 134. The most plausible candidate for 200 is Gerrit Cole, who has 134 and is 32 and still occupying his prime.

Then you run into Lance Lynn (36 years old, 123), Charlie Morton (39 years old, 118), Chris Sale (34 years old, 115), Corey Kluber (37 years old, 113) and Stephen Strasburg (34, 113). You like Kershaw’s future better than any of theirs. The only pitcher who is younger than 30 and is in the top 35 among active pitchers in wins is Jose Berrios. He has 73.

It wasn’t so long ago that Greg Maddux, Roger Clemens, Steve Carlton, Tom Glavine and Randy Johnson hit the 300 mark. Kershaw won his first game when he was 20, in 2008. He was the Dodgers’ first round pick, the seventh overall, in 2006. So he was ushered into the big leagues quickly, before he had command of his secondary pitches or much control over his fastball. Yet the Dodgers put him right into the dishwasher with the sturdier bowls and glasses. He made 32 starts when he was 22 and, beginning the next season, went on a four-year binge. In each of those seasons he led the National League in ERA and WHIP and won 21 games twice. In three of those seasons, he won the Cy Young Award and was second the other time, and he was MVP in 2014.

Sure, they counted his pitches, but mostly they counted how many opposing hitters were spiking their helmets on the way back to the dugout. They did not bubble-wrap Kershaw, and maybe that’s why he has handled the jostling so well, or at least 201 times.

His body began letting him down in the late 2010s. Most of that was back pain, although he did suffer shoulder inflammation and elbow tendinitis. He couldn’t get insured to play in the World Baseball Classic, which might have been a disguised blessing. Last April, the Dodgers hooked him after seven innings in Minnesota when he seemed headed for his first perfect game, with 13 strikeouts and only 80 pitches. He did not seem upset.

Few pitchers have remade themselves as successfully. In April, Kershaw used his four-seam fastball only 38.6 percent of the time. He threw sliders at a 44.7 percent clip and practically eliminated his changeup. In 2013, there was never a month in which Kershaw used a four-seamer less than 56 percent of the time, and in April he hit 63.4 percent. He no longer scares hitters, but he does something even more diabolical: He makes them think.

The “wins” statistic has become heresy among those who not only believe that new, abstract stats are the new truth, but that the old ones should be thrown out, like a flip phone or a road atlas. Kyle Wright led the majors with 21 wins for the Braves last year and was never a serious Cy Young candidate. He got a lot of runs, you see, and that disqualifies him.

The truth is that no one has ever looked at the Ws as the ultimate judgment. Denny McLain won 31 games in 1968, but virtually all fans and media types knew that Bob Gibson and several others had better seasons.

The ERA and WHIP stats certainly tell more of the story. Pitchers are no longer trained, or any level, to work the ninth inning. Most are reprieved from facing the same hitter three times.

Twenty years ago, half of the 30 teams averaged over six innings per start. In 2022, none did, and Houston led baseball with 5.9. Twenty years ago, seven pitchers averaged seven or more innings per start, led by a 26-year-old Roy Halladay. Last year, only Sandy Alcantara did.

Not since 2016 have both Cy Young Award winners won 20 games (Scherzer and Rick Porcello). But no one has won 25 games since Bob Welch won 27 in 1990.

For those who would rather listen to the all-time strikeout king than to a Twinkie-gulping computer jockey who hasn’t seen the sun in six months, here’s how Nolan Ryan saw it. He thought a starting pitcher’s job was to out-perform, or at least outlast, the other starting pitcher. If you do that, you get a win and so does your team – and remember, Ryan was victimized by non-support in most of his major league stops and still won 300. And no printout can accurately measure how a team lifts itself up when it knows its best pitcher is dealing on that day (see Steve Carlton, 1972).

But maybe we’re looking at this all wrong. Maybe it’s better to look at the losses, or lack of them. Kershaw has pitched in 406 games, 403 of them starts, and has lost only 88 times. He hasn’t lost 10 games in a season since he lost exactly 10 in 2010. In his two 21-win seasons, he lost eight games total. His winning percentage is .696, which is first among active, fifth all-time, and first among pitchers who have at least 15 big-league seasons. Second, among modern pitchers, is Whitey Ford at .690, then Pedro Martinez at .687.

If you lose 15 games it doesn’t mean you’ve been awful. If you win 15 games, it doesn’t mean you’ve been dominant. But if you lose only 88 times since 2008, it does mean you’ve been consistently brilliant, especially since starters are responsible for the runners that relievers allow to score. Those 7-0 deficits after three innings, the ones that exhaust your bullpen and leave you with no chance? Kershaw doesn’t have those. For longer than almost any other pitcher working today, Kershaw and his presence have meant that the Dodgers take the field with a headstart.

Kershaw also passed another bar this week. In beating the Cubs on Sunday, he pushed his career WHIP down to 0.9996. (That’s walks and hits, per innings pitched – baserunners, to keep it simple). Only Addie Joss and Jacob deGrom have a lower career WHIP in baseball history. Of those who have pitched over 2,500 innings, Kershaw is No. 1, followed by Martinez (1.0544), Christy Mathewson (1.0581) and Walter Johnson (1.0612).

In other words, Kershaw has kept a higher percentage of people off base for longer than anyone else who has ever pitched.

Someone will hit 800 home runs, and someone will hit safely in 57 consecutive games, before the next pitcher wins 300 games in the majors. It is hoped that the next 200-game winner will be honoured more spectacularly than Kershaw was. Is 200 the new 300? Hard to say. What we do know is that the new Kershaw is pretty much the same.