Clayton Kershaw has been one of baseball’s best for almost two decades. The Los Angeles Dodgers lefty has been a ten-time All-Star and three-time Cy Young Award winner in his 16 Major League seasons to date, and was the winning pitcher in both Game One and Game Five of the Dodgers’ 2020 World Series victory. He has all of the accolades that a great of the game requires.
Now, he is right on the cusp of doing something so very, very few have done before.
In the 149-year history of Major League Baseball, there have been only 19 pitchers that have passed the hallowed 3,000 strikeout mark. According to Baseball Almanac, since 1876 and the first year of the National League, there have been a total of 20,889 Major League ballplayers throughout history, approximately half of whom have been pitchers. And of those circa. 11,000, a mere 19 – less than 0.2% of them – have logged greater than 3,000 Ks.
Within a month, more than likely, Kershaw will make it 20.
Kershaw Stands Only 29 Short Of History
As things stand, Kershaw has 2,971 career strikeouts, and the only thing stopping him passing the 3,000 mark already this season has been his health.
Kershaw missed the first two months of this season, on the injured list while recovering from his off-season surgery for a torn meniscus in his left knee, as well as a further operation on his toe. He only came off the disabled list last week, and struggled in his first start back, allowing five runs on five hits against three walks and only two strikeouts in four innings of work against the Los Angeles Angels.
Bad luck has also played a part. Kershaw’s most recent outing – a 7-5 victory over the New York Mets, involving a memorable weird play in the third inning that caught everyone unaware – was ended after two innings due to a rain delay, after which the veteran 37-year-old Kershaw did not retake the field. He was however able to record one more strikeout in those two innings, creeping him ever-closer to history.
Baseball’s Most Esteemed Company
Before he joins the 3,000 strikeout club, Kershaw will first pass his former Dodgers teammate, Zach Greinke. Without ever officially retiring, Greinke’s career seems to have ended at the end of the 2023 season with him tantalisingly close to the threshold, recording 2,979 strikeouts across his 20 Major League seasons.
Thereafter, only two other active players are in the club. Justin Verlander, currently with the San Francisco Giants, and Max Scherzer, currently with the Toronto Blue Jays, have 3,457 and 3,408 career punch-outs respectively at the time of writing good for 10th and 11th on the all-time list.
Given his age and the fact that injuries are starting to pile up, it seems unlikely that Kershaw will get quite that far up the list. Yet the club he is about to join contains nothing but names of the greats. Among them are the like of Nolan Ryan. Randy Johnson. Roger Clemens. Walter Johnson. Greg Maddux. Bob Gibson. Pedro Martinez. And soon, possibly within his next four or five starts, Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Baseball’s two great thresholds are 3,000 strikeouts for pitchers, and 3,000 hits for batters. Yet it bears a mention that the latter is more common than the former. 33 hitters in MLB history have recorded that many hits, the most recent being Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers back in 2022.
No current active hitter is close to breaking through, however, and making it 34. For now, and for a while still to come, the only name to watch out for on the guest list to baseball’s two elitest membership clubs is that of Dodgers great, Clayton Kershaw.
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