The speed is down, but Kershaw's mileage is fine

He got his 3,000th strikeout last week and, even though he's 37, seems more durable than his Dodger rotation teammates.

Clayton Kershaw

It wasn’t quite the tortoise versus the hare, since not even Ninja turtles travel at 88 mph. More like a butterfly against a B-2. Somehow Clayton Kershaw, 37, and Jacob Misiorowski, 23, wound up in the same place.

Both starting pitchers were gone after six innings Tuesday in Milwaukee. Kershaw pushed his career total to 3,003 strikeouts, getting three against the Brewers. Misiorowski, 6-foot-7 and a human rock concert waiting to happen, struck out 12. He was leading 2-1 when the bullpens took over, and the Brewers beat the Dodgers, 3-1. They’ve won 17 of their past 25, and the Dodgers have lost their past five. Few people predicted that either thing would happen at any part of the season. Fewer thought Kersh and The Miz would be involved.

Misiorowski is a rookie who has struck out 33 in his first 25 innings, and has given up 12 hits. After Shohei Ohtani took him to the bridge Tuesday night, Misiorowski did not give up a run. Kershaw’s MRIs nearly outnumbered his starts in 2024. He was coming off shoulder surgery and didn’t pitch unti late July, then had a bone spur on a toe, injured his meniscus and pitched only seven times. He had the toe and the knee fixed surgically over the winter, but the Dodgers tried to protect themselves by signing Blake Snell. The rotational plan was Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Dustin May and Roki Sasaki. Anything Kershaw could provide, besides mentorship, would be found money.

That plan went into the trash with the bloody gauze. So far, the Dodgers have used 35 pitchers. They have used 16 starting pitchers. Kershaw has started ten games, is 4-1 and has been the Dodgers’ comforter. On June 14 he gave San Francisco only three hits in seven innings. And on July 2, knowing he only had one hitter left, Kershaw struck out Vinny Capra of the White Sox. The Dodgers won that one in the bottom of the ninth, and Kershaw became the 20th pitcher to strike out three grand. Tough week for Capra, since he got sent down afterward, but at least he’s got a name. Kershaw is the third active pitcher to get there, after Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer, and he’s nearly 500 strikeouts ahead of Chris Sale, the next guy.

Nolan Ryan, the alltime strikeout leader now and forever, was proudest of the fact that he rode out of the game on the same turbo stuff that he rode in on. There was only one of him, of course. In 2010 Kershaw was using four-seam fastballs over 70 percent of the time. Now it’s usually under 40 percent, as he leans on the slider. He also threw that fastball in the mid-90s when he was a kid. Now it’s in the high 80s, not much faster than the slider.

But as Greg Maddux always said, movement and location are more reliable than aimless velocity. Kershaw’s 6.4 strikeout rate, per nine innings, is the lowest of his career. Ten years ago he led the league with 11.6. But he still knows where all three of his pitches are going, and he still owns that arrhythmic delivery that a generation of major league hitters has failed to pick up. If he stays out of the operating room, he probably could keep doing this for a while.

But while Verlander and Scherzer have spent their dotage in whatever city would accept them, Kershaw has remained a Dodger for life. He has dropped a few verbal head fakes over the years about pitching for Texas, 15 miles away from his boyhood home, and every winter there’s at least a little contract drama. But he’s still here, even though he’s been dismissed by most everyone, including himself.

Kershaw was the Game 1 starter in the 2024 Division Series. He faced eight hitters. He got one of them out. Six scored. Four had extra-base hits. Arizona won, 11-2, and swept the series. Kershaw said he was “embarrassed and disappointed” and that he was victimized by “just bad pitching, nothing physical.” It was hard to argue that Kershaw wasn’t ready for the hammock. Then, a couple of weeks later he had that shoulder operation.

Obviously Kershaw wasn’t interested in leaving the sport at rock bottom. It would have been the equivalent of Tom Brady getting savaged by the Cowboys and deciding to say goodbye, or Roger Staubach completing his final pass to guard Herbert Scott. And, in the long view, there was little reason to leave. Kershaw was an All-Star in 2023, when he went 13-5 with a 1.063 WHIP, and also in 2022.

As inspiring as this has been, let’s remember that the Dodgers define failure as anything short of playing the final game of a baseball season and winning it. Whether Kershaw will be sharp enough to meet that standard and win playoff games is not an answerable question. Glasnow is returning to the mound on Wednesday in Milwaukee. Snell is probably looking at a late July re-launch. Maybe the Dodgers will resort to their “false starter” strategem, in which someone works the first inning and Justin Wrobleski comes in to pitch as long as he can. Wrobleski had five consecutive outings of four innings or more, and became an official sensation in Kansas City on June 29, when he worked six innings with no runs, three hits and 83 pitches. Then Houston lit him up on July 5.
It’s still possible that Snell and Glasnow will turn out fine, and Yamamoto will rediscover his consistency, and that Ohtani will be properly stretched out by October, and that all this huffing and puffing will be forgotten by then. It’s more likely that Kershaw will find a way to get involved in the postseason, as he usually has, for good or ill. What’s certain is that Kershaw will not be looking back, what with Jacob Misiorecki gaining on him.