After the final regular season start of Clayton Kershaw’s storied career, the crowd was left with the warm and fuzzies.
On Sept. 28, not long after announcing his retirement, the longtime Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher took the mound at Dodger Stadium to open one last game, and he did not disappoint. In true Kershaw form, he gave up no runs and just four hits in 5.1 innings, striking out seven, including his final batter to lead off the top of the sixth.
Manager Dave Roberts then enlisted the help of first baseman Freddie Freeman in removing Kershaw to a standing ovation. A fitting tribute to a Hall of Famer who is on the short list of the best pitchers in the 21st Century.
At least, from April through September. But the elephant in the room had one more October surprise left for Kershaw, before he makes his walk to Cooperstown.
Clayton Kershaw Wrote Another Chapter in His Unfortunate Playoff History
On Wednesday night, in Game 3 of the NL Division Series, Kershaw was put in to start the seventh inning against the Phillies, who led 3-1. Kershaw escaped his first frame unscathed, despite a hit and a few walks, but Philadelphia tagged him in the eighth and put the game out of reach, scoring five runs, four of them earned, on five hits, including a pair of homers. It took a great running catch into the wall by center fielder Justin Dean to get the final out for Kershaw, who walked off the field at Dodger Stadium for possibly the last time, with the home team trailing 8-1 and the crowd stunned into silence.
“It just wasn’t a fun inning,” the 37-year-old left-hander lamented after the game.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t Kershaw’s first “un-fun” inning in his playoff career. In fact, for a guy with such impeccable, first-ballot numbers in his regular season starts, it’s pretty crazy how different they look during postseason play.
In his 18 seasons, the No. 7 pick from the 2006 draft compiled an overall record in non-playoff games of 223-96, with a 2.53 ERA. With a legendary curveball and highly effective slider, Kershaw posted 3052 strikeouts in 2855.1 innings.
Kershaw is a three-time Cy Young Award winner, who arguably could have won more. Beginning with his sophomore season in 2009, Kershaw went 10 consecutive seasons with an ERA below 3.00, including one ridiculous stretch of four years where Kershaw’s ERA finished under 2.00 three separate times.
In the October spotlight, however, Kershaw’s numbers look kinda scary.
Clayton Kershaw’s Postseason Numbers Contradict His Regular Season Brilliance
The Dodgers reached the postseason 13 times during Kershaw’s career. In all, Kershaw has appeared in 40 playoff games, 32 of them starts, encompassing 196.1 innings. That’s about a season’s worth of work, and in those games, Kershaw is 13-13 with a 4.63 ERA.
That would easily be the worst season of Kershaw’s career.
But somewhat notably, Kershaw’s WHIP of 1.15 would not be his worst. It wouldn’t really be that far off from his career WHIP of 1.02.
So if Kershaw is not allowing a stark increase in hits and walks, how to explain the stark increase in runs? Perhaps it’s a tendency to allow hits – some of them traveling a long way – in bunches.
In eight of Kershaw’s 32 postseason starts – 25 percent – he has allowed at least three runs, sometimes more, in a single inning, and often it’s the long ball that does him in. Kershaw allowed 235 home runs in his regular season career, an average of one every 12-plus innings; in postseason games, he has given up 32 of them, or one every six-plus innings. During playoff time, when offense as it such a premium, those kinds of outbursts, particularly against a hurler of Kershaw’s importance for his team, can be a huge emotional lift to the opposition.
Even during his peak stretch, Kershaw was not immune to the postseason misery. Kershaw won two of his Cy Young Awards in 2013 and 2014, but in playoff clashes against the St. Louis Cardinals following both of those seasons, he dropped three starts, all of them in a soul-crushing manner that added several layers to the long October history between those two hallowed franchises.
Such moments will not be enough to keep Kershaw out of the Hall of Fame, nor should they be. An 11-time All-Star, Kershaw was one of the more dominant pitchers in MLB for a long time.
But out of every pitcher from the last 25 years, would Kershaw be the choice to start in a must-win playoff game?
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