Los Angeles Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw just announced that he's set to retire at the end of the 2025 MLB season. This means that he'll make one more start at Dodger Stadium, potentially one more on the road in Arizona or Seattle, and then who knows what? He might make the postseason roster, and he might not. His start on Friday might very well be the last of his Hall of Fame career.
No matter what goes down on Friday, Kershaw will end his career as one of the greatest starting pitchers in MLB history. He's a three-time Cy Young award winner, has an MVP award, has won a Triple Crown, has won a Gold Glove, is a five-time ERA champion, and has 11 All-Star appearances. He's even won a pair of World Series rings. He's done it all.
While Kershaw is undoubtedly one of, if not the greatest pitcher of his generation, and is a two-time World Series champion, he leaves a complicated postseason legacy to say the least. He's known by many as a playoff choker, but is that fair?
For more news and rumors, check out MLB Insider Robert Murray’s work on The Baseball Insiders podcast, subscribe to The Moonshot, our weekly MLB newsletter, and join the discord to get the inside scoop during the MLB season.
Why MLB fans see Clayton Kershaw as a postseason choker
The stats really speak for themselves, here. Kershaw has a 4.49 ERA in 39 postseason appearances, 32 of which are starts. That ERA is nearly two full runs higher than his regular-season mark of 2.54. It makes sense for Kershaw's postseason ERA to be higher than his regular-season mark, considering the quality of competition he faces in October, but a two-run difference is stark. Kershaw has essentially gone from a dominant ace in the regular season to a No. 5 starter at best in October. It's simply been unacceptable.
In that lens, it makes total sense for fans to formulate the opinion that he's a playoff choker. I mean, he's allowed five or more runs in seven of his 32 postseason starts, or roughly 22 percent. That's an astonishing number for a guy who is supposed to be the greatest pitcher of his generation.
He couldn't even get out of the first inning of what could very well be his last ever postseason start. He allowed six runs in what turned out to be an ugly loss against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
This is something Kershaw must own. He simply did not get the job done on numerous occasions in October. With that being said, I do believe that a couple of these clunkers weren't entirely his fault.
Clayton Kershaw was often asked to do too much in the postseason
I get it, this is Clayton Kershaw we're talking about here. It's understandable for the Dodgers to want to lean heavily on him, the best pitcher on the planet, to get as many outs as possible in the postseason. With that being said, there were times that I felt like they asked him to do a bit too much.
The 2014 NLDS really comes to mind in that regard. In Game 1, Kershaw allowed two runs through six innings, and the Dodgers held a 6-2 lead. Rather than turning to their bullpen, Don Mattingly tried to squeeze one more inning out of him, and all hell broke loose. Not only did Kershaw start the seventh, but he faced seven batters, five of whom recorded hits. The last batter he faced, Matt Carpenter, drilled a three-run double to give the Cardinals a 7-6 lead. Pedro Baez then issued a walk to the first batter he faced in relief and followed that up by surrendering a three-run homer to Matt Holliday. What was a 6-2 lead turned into a 10-6 deficit in the span of one inning.
Later in that same series, Kershaw, on three days' rest, had completed six shutout innings against the Cardinals on the road. Rather than turn to their bullpen with a 2-0 lead in the seventh with Kershaw on short rest, the southpaw went back out there for the seventh. Back-to-back singles from Holliday and Jhonny Peralta brought Matt Adams up to the plate as the go-ahead run, and sure enough, he launched a three-run homer to give St. Louis the lead. They'd win the series-clinching game by a 3-2 final score.
I could get behind starting Kershaw in the seventh in Game 1, but why did Mattingly wait for things to unravel completely? I mean, Kershaw wound up throwing 110 pitches, and about 15 too many. The same thing could be said about Game 4. I understand sticking with a dominant Kershaw, but why was he still in after giving up back-to-back singles with no margin for error? Did Mattingly not think Kershaw could've been tired, having pitched on short rest?
Kershaw gets blamed heavily for both of these starts. Sure, he didn't get the job done when called upon, but are we sure he should've been pushed as hard as he was to begin with? Decisions like these turned great starts into awful ones when looking at the box scores, and I wouldn't blame Kershaw fully for that.
Clayton Kershaw had some postseason gems worth discussing
For all of the bad starts he had, Kershaw had some unbelievable showings, too, and those constantly get brushed aside.
For example, in Game 1 of the 2017 World Series, Kershaw delivered seven innings of one-run ball against the Houston Astros, leading the Dodgers to a win. Later in that series, Kershaw delivered four scoreless innings in relief in Game 7 on short rest to keep the Dodgers in the game. They lost that game and the series, but Kershaw was unbelievable in those two games specifically.
A couple of years prior, Kershaw kept the Dodgers' season alive by delivering seven innings of one-run ball against the New York Mets. The only run he allowed was on the strength of a home run by Daniel Murphy, a player nobody could get out that postseason. The Dodgers lost that series, so again, Kershaw's great moment got overlooked.
Overall, Kershaw has seven postseason starts in which he's gone at least seven innings and allowed one run or fewer. He has two outings in which he's completed eight scoreless innings. The clunkers always pop more than the gems, but Kershaw has tuned in some truly special performances, some of which have come in timely fashion for the Dodgers.
Clayton Kershaw deserves more postseason respect than he gets
To be clear, Kershaw is far from a playoff riser. In fact, I'd say he's the opposite of that. He was far better in the regular season than he was in the playoffs. With that being said, would I call him a playoff choker? Not really.
As mentioned above, some of his clunkers were because the Dodgers were pushing him very hard. The overall ERA is not good, but what would it have been had Mattingly and Dave Roberts not relied on him as much as they did? He also had some incredible performances that playoff chokers just wouldn't ever dream of having.
I think his postseason legacy is a complicated one. He wasn't quite as bad as his numbers suggest, but he also wasn't the Kershaw we saw in the regular season most often. He shouldn't be seen as a playoff superstar, but he shouldn't be talked about as badly as he has been for his postseason blemishes, and his postseason resume certainly shouldn't overlook what he's done in the regular season.
It would've been nice if Kershaw did more in the postseason, but he was better in October than he's been given credit for, and is still arguably the greatest pitcher of his generation.