70. The Glory of Clayton Kershaw

Rest easy, Koufax fans, because Clayton Kershaw will never have the career Sandy had. Times change, and the game doesn’t permit any pitcher to put the stress on his arm that Koufax did, peaking with 150 starts and nearly 1,200 innings over his final four seasons.

But take note, Koufax fans: because the game has evolved, Kershaw’s career could, over the long haul, surpass Koufax’s. That’s right—surpass the greatest pitcher in Dodger history.

Before turning 25, Kershaw had amassed 974 strikeouts and a 2.79 ERA (138 ERA+) in 944 innings, compared with 683 strikeouts and a 4.10 ERA (100 ERA+) for Koufax. Now, Koufax was notoriously wild and inconsistent at the start of his career—but that’s what made Kershaw’s career potential so tantalizing entering the 2013 season. With that kind of head start, and with the Dodgers more careful with his arm than they were with Koufax’s, Kershaw had the chance to scale Everest.

It was the rare case of a top draft choice reaching his potential every step of the way. The best consequence of the Dodgers’ 91-loss season in 2005, Kershaw was snagged with the seventh overall pick in 2006, the Dodgers’ second-best draft position ever. Dubbed “The Minotaur” when he was in the minors because he practically seemed mythological, he made Vin Scully’s jaw drop 10 days before turning 20 in 2008 with a spring training “Public Enemy No. 1” curveball that froze Boston’s Sean Casey. Two months later, having dominated Double-A ball, Kershaw was called up to the big leagues.

In 2009, his first full major league season, Kershaw finished with a 2.79 ERA and led the league in fewest hits allowed per nine innings. The main skill missing at that point was a level of control that would allow him to go deeper into games, but he steadily improved, going from 4.8 walks per nine innings in ’09 to 3.6 in 2010.

Then, in 2011, came dominance, capped by a stretch run that Los Angeles, in its storied history of pitching, had hardly seen since Orel Hershiser and Fernando Valenzuela. In his final 15 starts, Kershaw went 13–1 with a 1.22 ERA, 110 strikeouts in 1102/3 innings—and, for good measure, only 21 walks. He finished the year 21–5 with a league-leading 2.28 ERA and 248 strikeouts (the pitcher’s Triple Crown) and an NL Cy Young Award at age 23.

The following season brought issues with plantar fasciitis and a hip impingement, yet Kershaw still led the majors in ERA for the second season in a row, as well as the NL in WHIP, before finishing second in the Cy Young balloting. For Dodger fans, the Kershaw standard became so high that it shocked them whenever Kershaw so much as gave up a run.

It didn’t hurt the Kershaw mystique that his personal bona fides seemed every bit as impeccable, from his competitive edge that forced managers to pry the ball from his hand even when he was hurting to the compassion he and his wife, Ellen, showed in their off-season missionary trips to Africa, helping to earn him the 2012 Roberto Clemente Award for humanitarian service. But the main thing was this: Kershaw was the pitcher you could hang your livelihood on. A pitcher who looked like living history.

Pitchers are notoriously fragile, and athletic mortality is always lurking around a corner. If any Dodger of this century is likely to prove immortal, however, it’s Clayton Kershaw.