Clayton Kershaw's Prime Is Over. Let's Talk About It. | Baseball Bits

hey shout out to seat geek for sponsoring this video seat geek is the best place to buy tickets online use my promo code foolish for $20 off your first purchase on March 31st 2011 a 23 year old Clayton Kershaw took the mound on opening day against the defending champion San Francisco Giants the opposing starting pitcher psy young winner Tim Lincecum this was the day that everything changed Kershaw was coming off two very good seasons for a young pitcher having learned 375 innings and kept his er a under three between 2009 and 2010 but a new level of dominance was about to be unlocked he out dueled Lincecum to the tune of seven scoreless innings completely shutting down the World Series winners from a year prior this is the story of a seven year period where Clayton Kershaw simply decided that allowing runs is for suckers and Clayton Kershaw is no sucker what was different about 2011 Kershaw I hate to simplify things this much but there are two changes that are easy to point out number one was the development of his slider 2010 marked a significant uptick in usage and he used it even more in 2011 but the biggest change was not so much frequency of use as it was velocity in 2010 Kershaw average slider was thrown at just over 82 miles per hour but in the seven years following that he threw it harder and harder and harder 2011 marked a huge increase by bumping things up to 84 and a half miles per hour and by the end of his seven years in heaven he was averaging 89 miles per hour on what had become his strikeout pitch as Clayton Kershaw once said I will simply throw the ball harder to get more outs it's shocking that other pitchers haven't thought of this Kershaw struck out three batters in the first inning of that opening day start against the g-men the first strikeout was on a fastball but the next who came on his retooled slider in 2010 the strikeout distribution between his four seam and slider was fairly even with a slight advantage to the fastball in 2011 that sped up slider became a strikeout pitch recording 157 strikeouts on sliders alone the end result was that Kershaw went from good to unstoppable in two strike counts when we integrated the split o-p-s plus numbers where 100 is average for a hitter we can see that batsmen were far less effective against Kershaw on two strike counts than against the baseline pitcher the second change is obvious just from a glimpse of the stat sheet but 2011 marks the year Kershaw became a control freak he entered the league walking batters at a rate well above the league average but he dropped that to well below average and maintained it throughout the rest of his stretch of dominance why did he do that because walks lead 2 runs and runs are for suckers and Clayton Kershaw is not a sucker in 2011 Clayton Kershaw set career bests and pretty much every pitching stat imaginable he led the National League in ER a strikeouts and whip and that was enough to net his first career sighing award his career er a dropped to 288 and he picked up a pitching Triple Crown because you know why not why not do that his 2012 numbers are basically a repeat although he ended up as a scion runner-up to RA Dickey his career er a dropped to 279 2013 is where things started to get silly just as he did two years prior he opened things up against the defending champion Giants this time however seven scoreless wasn't enough so he tossed a four hit complete game shutout and because it was Clayton Kershaw's world at this point he took matters into his own hands by going yard in the eighth inning to give Los Angeles the lead the season stats are awe-inspiring this was Kershaw's first season with a sub to er a as you can imagine he won his second site Young Award and his career er a dropped yet again this time to to 6-0 my favorite Clayton Kershaw year was 2014 he missed a few weeks towards the beginning of the season and was only able to start 27 games after getting stretched out in May he massacred the league in June and July over those two months he started 11 games when every single one of them tossed 86 innings struck out a hundred and four batters while only walking eight and allowed nine runs the best of these starts came on June 18th when he no-hit the Colorado Rockies it would have been a perfect game if not for an errant throw from shortstop Hanley Ramirez this was Kershaw his finest and the league recognized it he won not just his third site young but also National League MVP and this was a pitcher who missed a month of time so through his age 26 season in 2014 Kershaw had won three siyoung Awards and MVP and had a 2 for 8 career er a for the sake of comparison that year's NL Rookie of the Year was Jacob degrom who is also 26 years old 2015 featured Kershaw embroiled and arguably the greatest scion race of all time he would end up finishing third behind Jake Arrieta and Zack Greinke of those three pitchers Kershaw was the only one to record a 300 strikeout season and so far 2015 remains the only season he has accomplished that feat don't worry he was also able to his career er a to 243 Kershaw missed two months in 2016 with back injury but he was still as effective as ever he became the first pitcher in all of baseball's history to throw at least 100 innings and strike out 10 batters per nine while walking less than one this was the same guy that struggled with location at times early in his career the most Clayton Kershaw is started that season came on May 1st against the Padres he tossed a complete game shutout strike out 14 and a whopping seventy five of his 101 pitches were recorded as strikes not only did he not walk anyone but he only had to deal with one three ball count the entire day oh and he also drove in the only run of the game because it was Clayton Kershaw's world baby we were just living in it anyways it was only a hundred and forty nine innings but it got him to top five in scion voting despite not being qualified to lead in any categories naturally his career ara dropped to two point three seven and then came 2017 back injuries limited him once again as he threw 175 innings in 27 starts he was limited to 27 starts this 2014 campaign as well but this time was a little different he's still averaged seven a third inning per start back in 2014 but he wasn't able to pitch his deep into games this time around another difficulty was an increase in homers he averaged is stunning point five homers per nine innings the previous six seasons but in 2017 that number ballooned to 1.2 per nine innings which was above the national league average yet the end result was still a terrific season and he was able to drop his career ara for the seventh and final time of the streak thus concluded a 17-year run of dominance from Clayton Kershaw so how did he stack up compared to the other great pitchers of his era [Music] in terms of Wins Above Replacement the top four pitchers in baseball during this historical run we're Kershaw Scherzer sale and verlet oh whoa wow I need to update that bad boy that's that's nightmare fuel thank goodness I'm a little better at the pixel art now with all due respect to guys like Price Hamels King Felix Frankie Kluber etc we're going to keep things simple and use these four pictures when you look at Wins Above Replacement it doesn't really matter whether you prefer FanGraphs or baseball-reference Kershaw has a sizable lead in both over this ban with the other three grouped together tightly let's look at how hitters fared against them admittedly the other three aces are a bit disadvantaged here having all played in the American League in this time frame still o ps+ is designed to level the playing field and Kershaw is 54 means he was unhittable and if you're not so advanced metric friendly that 200 batting average against should be just as eye-popping wins and losses are certainly a flawed stat but it shouldn't be a surprise that Kershaw wanted an extraordinary 74% of his decisions that would be like if a ballclub won a hundred and twenty games in the season or for the NFL team with about 12 and for every year without fail even though the quarterback of the coach just keep getting older and older and older and it never stops one of the most fun Kershaw stats to look at his complete game shutouts Kershaw had more than the rest of the field combined and that's part of what made him special during the seven-year period the ability to pitch deep into starts without giving up runs finally let's take a good hard look at er a which is especially key because as you should know by now allowing runs is for suckers this is really where you see the full degree of Kershaw's dominance in terms of run prevention Scherzer and Verlander are even defeated by more than one earned run per nine innings on average a two point ten ARA for a single season is ridiculous much less seven it shows that the other three pitchers were no match for Kershaw in this department so how does he stack up against the greatest pitchers in baseball history [Music] Koufax Gibson Seaver Clemens Maddox Martinez Johnson these six legendary hurlers had the strongest peaks I could find of any pitcher post integration Kershaw had a clear leg up on his peers but how about the legends who came before him looking strictly at baseball reference's Wins Above Replacement he finds himself sandwiched between Koufax and Gibson towards the bottom war is a cumulative stat meaning that Kershaw is relatively low number of innings pitched in some of these seasons comes back to buy them the only pitcher on this list who tossed fewer innings in their seven-year peak was Pedro Martinez so let's talk about the key statistic we have been looking at and that's just straight up earned run average there it is in terms of preventing earned runs Kershaw stands alone at the top now ARA isn't a perfect stat but it's telling in this case runs really are for suckers but you know where to be an even better stat to look at er A+ same rules as o PS Plus in this case we're adjusting for all sorts of factors like the ballparks and ear is that these pitchers played in Bob Gibson peaked during the height of baseball's second dead ball era where's Pedro Martinez was pitching in a terrifying AL East during the power heavy steroid era I mean seriously Pedro 213 er A+ calm down calm down Pedro Pedro there are children watching this sport but after that here's Kershaw sandwiched firmly between Greg Maddux and Randy Johnson since that generation of pitchers retired there has been a lot of criticism heaped upon this current generation of pitching talent they aren't going to win 300 games don't pitch deep enough etc hopefully this study of Clayton Kershaw will help those people understand the overall counting stats made dwindle but good pitching is good pitching don't believe me let's take a look at something else how about whip aka walks and hits over innings pitched it's basically just a stat that measures the rate a pitcher allows runners on base in the history of major league baseball only seven pitchers have had at least four consecutive seasons with 100 innings pitched and a whip below one we have pictures from all eras on this list like old timers Addie Joss and Mordecai three finger Brown who were born in the 19th century alongside Koufax and Pedro Martinez but there's someone else working on a streak right now and that's max scherzer could potentially have his fifth straight sub one whip if he can maintain his performance for the rest of the 2019 season if he gets to 5 he'll join the elitist of elite clubs the only two pitchers to pull off that feat Clayton Kershaw and Walter Johnson good pitching his timeless Clayton Kershaw is still an excellent pitcher in fact his worst seasons would be most pitchers best seasons he's still certainly capable of pitching in an all-star level as evidenced by his appearance in 2019 and he's still better than the vast majority of MLB starting pitchers but the 230 inning sub-2 er a seasons are certainly a thing of the past on top of this he may very well be the third best starting pitcher in his own rotation at the very moment behind the alarmingly good hyun-jin Ryu and wonderkid Walker Buehler there's no denying that chronic back injuries have taken a toll on his career he went on the disabled list early in 2014 with an upper back strain in 2016 a herniated disc caused him to miss several weeks Kershaw also missed time with various back injuries in both 2017 and 2018 in 2019 he missed most of spring training in the first couple weeks of the regular season with shoulder soreness the main way this has affected his pitching has been a rather steep decline in velocity on his fastball in 2015 his average fastball traveled at nearly 94 miles per hour fast forward to 2019 he has dropped over 3 ticks on that four seamer you can also correlate that to his strikeout rate as well as his hits allowed per nine innings he isn't the unhittable freak he used to be as for the future the best thing about Clayton Kershaw is that he has unfinished business and plenty of opportunities to do it think about it this guy had a Hall of Fame career before he turned 30 he won three sayang awards and an MVP what does he have left to play for October whether you agree with the narrative or not Kershaw struggles in the postseason have been a much-publicized part of his career not only does he have a significantly higher postseason er a than his regular season he has also struggled at preventing runs the deeper he gets into the playoffs that's not to say that his playoff efforts up in fruitless in 2017 the Cubs dreams of a repeat with six innings of one-run ball and Game five of the NLCS he then turned around and tossed a gem to win Game one of the World Series versus Houston but he still needs to get the monkey off his back thankfully this current Dodgers roster is built to give him plenty of opportunities to do just that will he make it happen I guess we'll just have to wait and see now if you want to catch a ball game with these great playoff race is heating up SeatGeek has you covered they're back baby see geek is an app that makes ticket buying ridiculously easy they rate each deal on a scale of one to ten and show you pictures from each vantage point so you'll know exactly what's your view of Clayton Kershaw will be like in Dodger Stadium you can order through your browser or if you're on mobile you can download the app right in my video's description so if you want to see your favorite teams in person and support the channel use my code foolish for $20 off your first purchase once again big shout out to see geek for sponsoring this episode of baseball bits [Music]

Channel: Foolish Baseball

Views: 672,817

Keywords: clayton kershaw, prime clayton kershaw, prime kershaw, peak clayton kershaw, peak kershaw, kershaw cy young, clayton kershaw mvp, 2014 clayton kershaw, clayton kershaw playoff struggles, clayton kershaw playoff chokes, clayton kershaw dodgers, pedro martinez, justin verlander, max scherzer, chris sale, best pitchers of the 2010s, baseball bits, foolish baseball, mlb, baseball, Clayton Kershaw's Prime Is Over. Let's Talk About It. | Baseball Bits, clayton kershaw slider

Id: 4ewAWEhRSPs

Length: 14min 10sec (850 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 25 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/BidoofTheGod]

Besides Kershaw’s rookie season, he’s never had an ERA above 3. That shit boggles my mind.

[u/JumboFister]

Lol Pedro Martinez with a 213 ERA+ over 7 years...what the fuck

[u/VStarffin]

Kershaw is 8-2 with a 2.84 ERA (5th in the NL) and a 5.7 K:BB ratio.

If he in his prime? No. But if this is what he looks like when he's not in his prime, he's not close to being done.

[u/DavidRFZ]

The 'peak' is over, but I think we're still seeing the 'prime'. That's a semantic point I guess.

He's still putting up rate stats which are quite good. This will look like a low-IP prime season after he retires.

'Past prime' is like Glavine-on-the-Mets or Maddux-returns-to-Cubs.

[u/Radical_Alpaca]

Holy shit pedro martinez

[u/natguy2016]

Kershaw is a Hall of Famer at this moment. Book it.

I am a Nationals fan Starting tomorrow, they face Ryu, Buehler, and Kershaw. Back to back to back. Realizing that Kershaw is the 3rd best of them at this moment? Yikes.

Pray for me fam.

[u/natguy2016]

Foolish Baseball posts such impressive content. Any of his videos are a must watch.

[u/izsaf]

That scherzer pixel art is terrifying

[u/DirkGman]

I say again, get this man his ring