Clayton Kershaw becomes 20th pitcher to reach 3,000 strikeouts

New York Times

17 hours ago

Another sentence of Clayton Kershaw's eventual Hall of Fame plaque is now etched, as the longtime face of the Los Angeles Dodgers became the 20th pitcher, and just the fourth left-hander, to log 3,000 career strikeouts.
Kershaw, 37, joins Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer as active members of the exclusive club, accomplishing the feat Wednesday with his third strikeout of the night against the Chicago White Sox. He did so in the sixth, when Kershaw's final pitch of the night caught Vinny Capra looking on an 85 mph slider to etch his name in history.
Advertisement
'To finally get to — I guess ultimately the last box he needs to check for his future Hall of Fame career is that 3,000 strikeout threshold,' Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said last week. 'We're all waiting in anticipation.'
Now, the Cooperstown-bound Kershaw joins former teammates such as Scherzer and Greg Maddux and contemporaries such as Verlander and CC Sabathia in combining swing-and-miss stuff with longevity. Fewer pitchers have reached 3,000 strikeouts than have won 300 games (24), a testament to the consistency and dominance that Kershaw has charted in winning three Cy Youngs and an MVP over his 18 seasons in a Dodgers uniform.
The left-hander has authored some of the more dominant pitching stretches in recent memory, and found a way to last long enough to accumulate a number of strikeouts that may never be reached again. A little more than three years after passing Don Sutton for the most strikeouts in Dodgers franchise history (2,696), Kershaw has now joined him on the 3,000-strikeout list.
'When he was going good, he was so good at pitching on the inside corner and off the plate and he had enough of an angle to where the pitch that ended up being a ball or two inside appeared to be a strike,' said Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey, whose 120 career plate appearances are the most against Kershaw. 'So for me as much as anything I tried to split the plate in half, but he had a way of making it feel bigger than it was.'
Verlander, who reached the milestone in 2019 while with the Houston Astros, called his peer 'obviously one of the best starters of our generation.'
'It's a great accomplishment for a magical career,' said Gerrit Cole, one of the few active starters with a realistic shot of joining Kershaw with 3,000 one day.
'Sure-fire Hall of Famer, right?' Philadelphia Phillies ace Zack Wheeler said. 'That basically solidifies that.'
Advertisement
Still, this is not the same Kershaw whose fastball once popped in the mid-90s and whose curveball inspired nicknames from Vin Scully before he even made his big league debut. Kershaw now struggles to hit 90 mph, coming off shoulder, knee and toe surgeries over the past two winters as he strived for history. He remains effective all the same, even if it took him longer than he'd like to collect the 32 strikeouts he entered this season needing for 3,000.
'Maybe by September I'll get there, we'll see,' Kershaw joked last month. Still, he entered Thursday with a 3.03 ERA on the season.
'It's a lesson in life, certainly (for) our young pitchers who have considerably better stuff right now in their primes to then see Clayton go out there and do what he does — get outs, pitch with efficiency, not feeling his best and still takes the baseball,' Roberts said. 'You don't always have to feel perfect to be productive. I have a lot of respect for him.'
Kershaw joins Walter Johnson and Bob Gibson as the only players to reach the milestone while pitching for just one team.
The Athletic's Andrew Baggarly, Matt Gelb and Brendan Kuty contributed to this report.