Baseball Prospectus

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Preseason Long-Term Forecast (Beyond the 2019 Projections)

Comparable Players (Similarity Index 60)

Rank	Score	Name	Year	Run Average	Trend
1	78	Roger Clemens	1994	3.22
2	78	CC Sabathia	2012	4.01
3	76	Brandon Webb	2010	0.00	DNP
4	73	Roy Halladay	2008	3.22
5	72	Max Lanier	1947	0.00	DNP
6	72	Johnny Cueto	2017	4.70
7	72	Justin Verlander	2014	4.98
8	71	Lefty Gomez	1940	6.59
9	70	Erik Bedard	2010	0.00	DNP
10	70	Carl Hubbell	1934	2.56
11	69	Jake Arrieta	2017	4.38
12	69	David Price	2017	3.62
13	69	Greg Maddux	1997	2.24
14	68	C.J. Wilson	2012	4.54
15	67	Don Sutton	1976	3.30
16	67	Mike Garcia	1955	4.27
17	67	Roy Oswalt	2009	4.12
18	67	Sandy Koufax	1967	0.00	DNP
19	66	Felix Hernandez	2017	4.78
20	66	Harry Brecheen	1946	2.80
21	65	A.J. Burnett	2008	4.43
22	65	Sean Marshall	2014	9.00
23	64	Adam Wainwright	2013	3.09
24	63	Carlos Carrasco	2018	3.66
25	63	Jose Rijo	1996	0.00	DNP
26	63	John Lackey	2010	4.77
27	63	Cliff Lee	2010	3.56
28	62	Ben Sheets	2010	4.90
29	62	George Pipgras	1931	4.90
30	62	Wade Davis	2017	2.45
31	62	Johan Santana	2010	3.03
32	62	Pedro Martinez	2003	2.51
33	61	Tex Hughson	1947	4.35
34	61	Scot Shields	2007	4.32
35	61	Justin Duchscherer	2009	0.00	DNP
36	60	Lefty Grove	1931	2.62
37	60	Mark Melancon	2016	2.02
38	59	Phil Niekro	1970	4.86
39	59	Wilcy Moore	1928	6.54
40	59	Francisco Cordero	2006	3.82
41	58	Anibal Sanchez	2015	5.10
42	58	Warren Spahn	1952	3.26
43	58	Corey Kluber	2017	2.47
44	58	B.J. Ryan	2007	14.54
45	58	Johnny Sain	1949	5.73
46	57	Ryan Madson	2012	0.00	DNP
47	57	Jonathan Papelbon	2012	2.83
48	57	Bobby Jenks	2012	0.00	DNP
49	57	Jake Westbrook	2009	0.00	DNP
50	57	Chad Qualls	2010	8.54
51	57	Gio Gonzalez	2017	3.09
52	57	Tanner Roark	2018	4.49
53	57	Tim Hudson	2007	3.49
54	56	Joe Nathan	2006	1.58
55	56	Urban Shocker	1922	3.40
56	56	Bret Saberhagen	1995	4.59
57	56	Clay Buchholz	2016	5.17
58	56	David Phelps	2018	0.00	DNP
59	56	Doug Fister	2015	4.89
60	56	Tony Watson	2016	3.33
61	56	Bill Hands	1971	4.16
62	55	Whitey Ford	1960	3.50
63	55	Charlie Root	1930	5.54
64	55	Peter Moylan	2010	3.39
65	55	Ted Higuera	1989	3.72
66	54	Sparky Lyle	1976	2.86
67	54	Tyson Ross	2018	4.39
68	54	Guy Morton	1924	8.76
69	54	Tom Seaver	1976	2.76
70	54	Alexi Ogando	2015	3.99
71	54	Jake Peavy	2012	3.62
72	54	Bob Veale	1967	4.13
73	54	John Smoltz	1998	3.11
74	54	Robb Nen	2001	3.24
75	53	Keith Foulke	2004	2.39
76	53	Joe Dobson	1948	4.55
77	53	Mark Buehrle	2010	4.49
78	53	Bob Gibson	1967	3.18
79	53	Kevin Gregg	2009	4.98
80	53	Orel Hershiser	1990	4.26
81	53	Kelvim Escobar	2007	3.63
82	53	Jeff Fassero	1994	3.50
83	53	Ryan Dempster	2008	3.27
84	53	Gaylord Perry	1970	3.78
85	53	J.R. Richard	1981	0.00	DNP
86	53	Larry Jackson	1962	4.32	DNP
87	53	Michael Gonzalez	2009	3.39
88	52	Red Ruffing	1936	3.90
89	52	Pedro Feliciano	2008	4.05
90	52	Mort Cooper	1944	2.50
91	52	Jordan Zimmermann	2017	6.24
92	52	Mariano Rivera	2001	2.68
93	52	Jered Weaver	2014	3.67
94	52	Cy Blanton	1940	5.06
95	52	George Uhle	1930	4.15
96	52	Darren O'Day	2014	1.83
97	52	Lance Lynn	2018	5.00
98	52	Pat Malone	1934	3.72
99	52	Heath Bell	2009	2.71
100	51	Adam Ottavino	2017	5.06

BP Annual Player Comments

Year		Comment
2019		Due to publishing agreements, the 2019 player comments and team essays are only available in the Baseball Prospectus 2019 book (available in hardcopy, and soon e-book and Kindle).
2018		There isn't much left to say about Kershaw's brilliant performance. For a seventh straight year he put up one of the five best seasons of any National League pitcher, as told by Cy Young voters. And that'd likely be seven straight top-three finishes if he'd just stayed healthy in 2016. But therein lies the rub: For the third time in four years Kershaw missed time with injury, and most alarmingly it was a second straight back issue. With over 2,000 total big-league innings on the odometer, any carpool of consecutive foundational injuries blares reggaeton alarms out the windows as it cruises by—especially since he's owed another nine guaranteed figures. The big Texan rebounded to dominate for most of his first World Series run, though the sting of a lost four-run lead in pivotal swing Game 5 leaves another mark. He'll shuffle into his third decade still in search of an elusive ring to tie off a résumé that tells the tale of one of the greatest pitching runs the game has ever seen.
2017		It's easy to be at a loss for words when it comes to Kershaw because it is hard to describe an athlete, a man buried under mountains of accomplishment that are in turn emtombed under a crush of expectations, which have been subsumed by praise. He's a Russian Nesting Doll of achievement, operating on the peripheries of what we consider humanly possible. Kershaw debuted as a full-time starter in 2009 and has pitched at a Cy Young level from that point on, garnering three awards and amassing more black ink than a tattoo parlor in the process. He ascended a staircase built on the astonished giggles of Vin Scully describing "public enemy number one," shedding the lofty comparisons draped on him as a top prospect and emerging into his own light. He is one of the historic greats, operating in real time. What once took on an ethereal quality looks far more recognizable these days. Not the results, goodness no, those are still pristine, but rather the process. His curveball, which once arced so effortlessly towards the heavens before snapping down and alighting in the catcher's glove, now rises furiously and descends with purpose, driven hard by the force of gravity to which it had previously seemed immune. Where he once seemed to glide, Kershaw grinds, with remarkable effectiveness. Staggeringly, the more mortal he looks the more godly his performance becomes, with 2016 representing a career-best ERA, albeit in limited innings. To quote Robert O'Connell "[Kershaw] is, principally, a worker." In this way it is easier to relate to him, to recognize ourselves in him, but perhaps just a better, more competent version of ourselves. Which might be why it is so tempting for managers to lean on him longer than necessary come playoff time. It's not that Kershaw can't pitch in the playoffs (4.55 ERA), but rather because he appears so often to be limitless that he is extended well beyond what would be asked of others. This is not to excuse his playoff performance so much as to ascertain a reason. Some would have you believe there's an allergy to the big stage, an aversion to the later innings. Reason would tell you he has his breaking points, distant though they may be, and he's pushed both to and past them in the biggest moments. A most human trait indeed. Perhaps then, we can celebrate Kershaw The Man for making the spectacular become routine, rather than knock Kershaw The Narrative for his humanity.
2016		You know how everyone freaked out about how good Zack Greinke was last season? Kershaw was still better. People forget that, because Kershaw's dominance has become... mundane isn't right, but perhaps expected? Taken for granted, at least. He took his MVP- and Cy Young-winning 2014 campaign and basically hit Ctrl-C Ctrl-V, posting a matching 2.16 DRA while throwing more innings and striking out a higher percentage of those who dared oppose him. Kershaw was quite good in the postseason as well, which still feels worthy of note even though the narrative that he melts in October should've been put to bed in 2013. It's hard to imagine anything but injury slowing Kershaw down, and as the lanky lefty deals in his prime years we simply have the good fortune of watching one of the greatest pitching careers of all time. He's already more than a third of the way to Roger Clemens' career PWARP, yet Kershaw won't turn 30 until 2018.
2015		What can be said about Kershaw that hasn't already been said about bacon, sex and baseball? He's the best, and he proved it with an historic 2014 campaign. He threw a no-hitter and won his third Cy Young in four years along with his first MVP (and the Dodgers' first since 1988). It was the first time a pitcher had won an MVP Award in the NL since 1968. His no-hitter, according to Game Score, was the second-best nine-inning start ever, just behind Kerry Wood's 20-strikeout, should-have-been-a-perfect-game performance in 1998. Kershaw was always a good prospect (he was drafted seventh overall) and had All-Star upside, but when he added a slider to his repertoire, he made the leap from merely very good to historically great. The comparisons to Sandy Koufax look less absurd by the day, and it's worth noting that Kershaw turned the corner and became Clayton Kershaw two years younger than Koufax did. Here's hoping modern medicine means we get 15 more years.
2014		A year ago you could have found a debate over the best pitcher in baseball, but not any more. Kershaw won his third consecutive ERA title (and second ERA+ title), and became the first starter to drop under the hard deck of 2.00 since Clemens in 2005, which suggests the terrifying possibility that he's only getting better. Even scarier: He spent much of the year without a functioning changeup, throwing only a dozen over a two-month stretch after the All-Star break. Instead, his cliff-diving curveball took a more prominent role, holding batters to a .095 average with no extra-base hits in more than 400 pitches. It's not hard to imagine yet another leap forward from Kershaw should he ever really master the changeup; he enters spring training just 25 years old, after all.
2013		Kershaw rolled another Clayton Kershaw season off the assembly line, and were it not for a drop in offensive support (4.0 runs per game) and the narrative arc of R.A. Dickey, he probably would have claimed a second straight Cy Young Award. As it was, he still led the league in ERA and came within one strikeout of the league lead as well. He'd have captured that title for sure—as well as the innings one—were it not for late-season right hip impingement that limited him to one start from September 12 through 27. The good news is that he closed the season strong, with a pair of eight-inning starts, and didn't need surgery for what was initially feared to be a torn acetabular labrum. Kershaw still has one more year of club control after the coming year, when he'll earn $11 million. With the cost of long-term contracts only rising—along with the Dodgers' payroll—the team would do well to lock him up before another market-setting deal comes along.
2012		At the ripe old age of 23, Kershaw put it all together, winning not only the Pitchers Triple Crown but the NL Cy Young award. The key—aside from the best offensive support of his career, a modest 4.5 runs per game—was the continued improvement of his slider. According to the PITCHf/x data at Texasleaguers.com, Kershaw's use of the pitch rose from 19.6 percent in 2010 to 24.6 percent in 2011, while the combined percentage of strikes on whiffs and fouls rose from 33.2 percent in 2010 to 40.8 percent in 2011, helping him get ahead of hitters more often and making them chase more pitches out of the zone. While there's certainly reason for the Dodgers to lock him up long term à la Matt Kemp, that's the next owner's job given that this past winter marked Kershaw's first year of arbitration eligibility.
2011		In just his second full season, Kershaw took another large step toward fulfilling his destiny as a major-league ace. Continuing the shift away from his curveball as the primary accompaniment to his mid-90s fastball, he increasingly relied on his slider, which shares the same release point and early flight path as its knee-buckling sibling but generates almost three times as many swings and misses and about 50 percent more fouls. The switch helped Kershaw cut the previous year's unintentional walk rate by 44 percent while still whiffing more than one hitter per inning; the combination of improved efficiency and maturity allowed him to trim his pitches per inning by seven percent and average one more inning per start. He would rank fourth in the league in strikeout and hit rate, seventh in home run rate, and ninth in ERA, all without cracking the game's top 25 in Pitcher Abuse Points. It is staggering to realize that Kershaw is roughly four years younger than Tim Lincecum, Ubaldo Jimenez, Josh Johnson, and Cole Hamels. Dude's gonna earn some hardware sooner or later.
2010		Kershaw took a major step towards elite status in 2009, posting the NL's lowest hit rate, second-lowest homer rate, and fifth-highest strikeout rate. A key was the incorporation of a slider into his already-impressive arsenal of a mid-90s fastball, knee-buckling curve, and changeup. The two off-speed pitches share the same release point and early flight path, making them difficult for the hitter to distinguish from one another until too late; the new pitch produced significantly more strikes via swings-and-misses as well as fouls than its big-bending sibling. Kershaw's numbers from the point of introducing it on June 4 are eye-popping: 2.04 ERA, 10.2 K/9, 2.3 K/BB, 0.2 HR/9. Walks are still an issue, particularly as they run up his already-limited pitch counts, but he's a bona fide ace in the making.
2009		Ranked fifth on our prospect list last year, Kershaw generated tremendous buzz from the outset of spring training; a YouTube clip of Vin Scully declaring his knee-buckling strike-three curveball “Public Enemy Number One” drew half a million visitors in just a few days. Kershaw debuted on May 25 and initially scuffled, putting up a 33/24 K/BB ratio in 38 2/3 innings over eight starts before returning to Jacksonville in early July. Recalled three weeks later, he exhibited improved control—a 67/28 K/BB ratio in 69 innings—and his poise impressed observers as much as his stuff did. The Dodgers carefully monitored his workload all year, and if the final numbers didn’t dazzle, they were great for a 20-year-old. There’s no reason to get off this bandwagon; as the Dodgers have shown with Billingsley, they know how to handle a prized pitching prospect as well as any team.
2008		Ladies and gentlemen, start your superlatives. Picked seventh overall in the 2006 draft, this Dallas native stepped to the fore as the top pitching prospect in the minors last year by manhandling the Midwest League thanks to a combination of size and stuff that scouts have called "once in a generation," comparing him to Scott Kazmir, but bigger and with cleaner mechanics. Though Kershaw did pitch poorly in a few A-ball starts, he skipped all the way to Double-A in August and while the results were uneven, the teenager continued to missed plenty of bats. That'll happen when you have a 93- to 95-mph fastball that can touch 97, a plus curveball, and a rapidly improving changeup. A true number-one starter in the making, Kershaw will start the year in Double-A Jacksonville, and his performance, not his age, will dictate his timetable.
2007		With the seventh pick in the 2006 draft, Logan White had the run of the entire prep ranks, and he chose this lefty. Kershaw`s clean mechanics and excellent command of a 92 to 94 MPH fastball and a plus curveball draw raves. He made mincemeat out of GCL hitters, and may have the highest ceiling of any Dodger pitching prospect; our own Kevin Goldstein rated him as the number-two southpaw starter in the minors back in August.

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PITCHf/x Pitcher Profile

A Collaboration between BrooksBaseball.net and Baseball Prospectus - Pitch classifications provided by Pitch Info LLC

Clayton Kershaw has thrown 44,437 pitches that have been tracked by the PITCHf/x system between 2008 and 2024, all of them occuring in Spring Training. In 2024, he has relied primarily on his Slider (86mph) and Fourseam Fastball (90mph), also mixing in a Curve (72mph) and Splitter (84mph). He also rarely throws a Sinker (90mph).