Amid the 15 concurrent games that took place for the final day of the 2025 MLB regular season last night, and the multiple pennant/Wild Card questions that still had to be answered, it should not be forgotten that perhaps the greatest pitcher of the last generation of National League baseball appeared for the final time.
Having announced the day prior to his final home start that the 2025 season would be his last, Los Angeles Dodgers mainstay Clayton Kershaw took the mound for the final team in an illustrious career that will no doubt see him enter Cooperstown at the first attempt. Taking the mound for the 451st and last start of his career, Kershaw held the Seattle Mariners – and potential MVP winner Cal Raleigh –Â scoreless over 5.1 innings, in what would ultimately prove to be a 5-1 final day victory.
The 0.1 inning was deliberate, as it allowed for a curtain call. After striking out Eugenio Suarez to open the top of the sixth, on a customary Kershaw slider, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts sent out first baseman Freddie Freeman to signal that was the end of the night for Kershaw, and with it, the end of his career. And of course, it would end with a K.
At His Best, He Was The Best
Suarez would be the 3,052nd and final strikeout of Kershaw’s career, recording one strike on each of his three pitches. It was back in early July when Kershaw logged his 3,000th punch-out of his career, putting him into the esteemed company of just 19 other players in the history of the sport.
Drafted seventh overall in the 2006 MLB Draft out of Highland Park High School in Texas by the Dodgers, Kershaw made his major league debut in 2008 at just 20 years old. 17 years later, he hangs up his cleats having never played for any other franchise – nor, it would appear, ever wanting to.
Kershaw quickly established himself as a dominant force. By 2011, he had already won the National League’s Cy Young Award, posting a 21-5 record with a 2.28 ERA and 248 strikeouts. It marked the beginning of his run as being arguably the premier pitcher in the whole of baseball – before 2017, Kershaw had won two more Cy Young Awards (2013 and 2014) and finished in the top five in voting every year but one. In 2014, he further added the National League MVP Award after going 21â3 with a 1.77 ERA, becoming the first pitcher to win NL MVP since 1968.
Kershaw’s Automatic Spot In The Hall
Known for his devastating curveball, pinpoint control, and consistency, Kershaw has led the league in ERA five times and strikeouts three times. When injuries and the inevitability of the ageing process began to affect his workload and take some of the sting out of his pitches in the latter part of his career, he nevertheless remained effective whenever healthy, adapting his repertoire as his velocity declined.
The knock against Kershaw for several years was his postseason record, where struggles in October contrasted with his regular-season dominance. However, Kershaw erased that narrative in 2020, when he played a crucial role in leading the Dodgers to their first World Series championship since 1988, taking the win in both Games One and Five.
Kershaw ends his career with a r̩sum̩ that includes 223 wins, a career 2.53 ERA among the best in modern history, and a nigh-on guaranteed place in the Hall of Fame. His combination of peak dominance, longevity, and (eventual) team success solidified his place as one of the most important pitchers in baseball history, and a cornerstone of the storied Dodgers franchise. His first-ever Major League at-bat resulted into a strikeout of Stephen Schumacher on a fastball, his last-ever Major League at-bat resulted in a strikeout of Eugenio Suarez on a slider Рand in between, 3,050 others could not touch him either.
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