Top 106 Baseball Players: #86 - Clayton Kershaw

Clayton Kershaw

Clayton Kershaw is the second active player to appear in my countdown, and the final active pitcher, and is also the youngest player in the countdown by about 5 years, and though he is probably only about halfway through his career, he has definitely done enough so far to deserve a spot on this list.

Kershaw reached the majors in early 2008, at age 20, and was the youngest player in the league for that entire season. He pitched pretty well in his second and third seasons, but he became the dominant superstar we all know in his 4th season, when he completely took the league by storm.

That year, Kershaw took home the pitching Triple Crown, leading the NL with 21 wins, a 2.28 ERA, and 248 strikeouts, and was awarded the Cy Young Award as well, becoming the youngest pitcher to earn the award in his lifetime.

The next season he was still the best pitcher in all of baseball, but his numbers were not quite as gaudy, so as a result he was not given the Cy Young he deserved. He still led all of baseball in ERA again, but slight dips elsewhere caused him to be voted runner-up.

The next year he led the league in strikeouts once again, while dropping his league-leading ERA even lower than he had before, finishing at 1.83, the lowest of any player since the year 2000. He won his second Cy Young that year, and even earned his first playoff victory, when he struck out 12 in 7 innings against Atlanta, before falling back to earth in the NLCS against Saint Louis.

Even after that amazing season, he found a way to improve again in 2014, improving in every single pitching category that is tracked. He led the league in ERA for the 4th straight year, the only pitcher ever to do that, and took home his 3rd Cy Young as well as the NL MVP, the first pitcher to win the award in 46 years.

In 2015, he set a career high and led the league with 301 strikeouts, but because his ERA "ballooned" to 2.13, he only came in 3rd in the Cy Young voting, though it was his 5th straight year in the top 3. Those 5 seasons represent one of the greatest 5-year pitching stretches in history.

Kershaw's weakness has always been the playoffs, where his career ERA is 4.35, nearly 2 runs higher than his regular season ERA of 2.37, which is the lowest of any pitcher in the past 100 years. He has had some great games in the playoffs, but doesn't seem to have the same consistency as usual in the postseason.

Kershaw has the best ERA, win percentage, WHIP, and number of shutouts among all active pitchers, and many of those numbers are also very high among all-time pitchers, including those from the dead-ball era. If he is able to maintain the same level of play for another decade, he would be one of the top 10 players of all time, and a couple of World Series wouldn't hurt either.