Has Clayton Kershaw fallen victim to his own success? The Dodgers ace is having a historic season and while people are noticing, shouldn’t the man with a minuscule 1.67 ERA be glorified more so than he has?
The 26-year-old is putting together the most dominant season the majors has seen in nearly 20 years but because he’s coming off his second Cy Young season, one in which he posted a ridiculous 1.83 ERA, Kershaw’s dominance has become assumed.
The back-to-back-to-back NL ERA champion hasn’t posted a mark worse than 2.91 since his 2008 rookie season and may finish with the big league’s best ERA since Greg Maddux was embarrassing hitters in 1994 and 1995. Kershaw’s ERA hasn’t topped 2.00 since Independence Day and has given up more than three runs just once in 2014 (7-run debacle in Arizona on May 17th).
Furthermore, the guy has failed to complete seven innings exactly zero times since a 5-inning job on June 8th and has racked up numerous spotless starts, with eight outings of no earned runs this season. Kershaw has nine more starts with one earned run allowed and averages over 7 1/3 innings per start (24 starts in 2014).
As if that remarkable consistency isn’t enough, he has six double-digit strikeout games (more than multiple teams have combined) and seven additional 9-strikeout dandies.
Entering Wednesday’s games, Kershaw holds a whopping .56 lead for the NL ERA crown over Johnny Cueto and a .42 MLB lead over Chris Sale. He also leads the bigs in WHIP (0.82), WAR for all players (7.6) and earned runs allowed for pitchers with 140-plus innings (33). A fifth-place spot on walks surrendered (27) amongst pitchers with 140-plus innings is equally impressive
Does anyone realize how much Clayton Kershaw is dominating? He is easily trending toward becoming the best pitcher of the 21st century, if not there already, but due to a few factors such as the Derek Jeter love tour and late west coast games for the eastern seaboard, Clayton Kershaw’s monster 2014 season is not receiving as much attention as it should.
Did I mention the dude has a no-no as well? Must’ve slipped down the never-ending list of accolades.
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Photo Courtesy: US Presswire
