One of the players who demonstrates the proverb that “form is temporary but class is forever” in baseball is Clayton Kershaw (35‧ LA Dodgers). Kershaw, now in his mid-30s, can’t throw as fast and sharp as he used to. However, he is still active as a top-notch pitcher in the major leagues by adding skill to his classy ball.
Kershaw is 3-1 with a 2.52 earned run average, throwing 25 innings in his first 4 games this season as well. Now, fewer people expect Cy Young or MVP from Kershaw. He struggles to pitch 200 innings as he used to. However, if you put down those expectations and just pay attention to ‘starting pitcher Kershaw’, it’s never a bad performance.
He also built a golden pagoda. On April 19, in a match against the New York Mets held at Dodger Stadium, his home stadium, he won his third win of the season with메이저놀이터 3 hits and 9 strikeouts in 7 innings and no runs. It was also Kershaw’s 200th career victory since his major league debut in 2008.
In fact, the great achievement of 200 wins in total could have been achieved on the road or in a not-so-good pitch, but superstars were different. He was applauded by the fans at home, and left a highlight film with good results and a roar with a strikeout at the last minute.
Kershaw became the fourth active player to reach the 200-win mark. In modern baseball, he belongs to the axis of stepping on the 200th win at a young age. The third active player is Max Scherzer (39, New York Mets), who has a career record of 203 wins. Scherzer reached the 200-win mark last year at the age of 38. It’s unknown when Kershaw will retire from active play, but he’s still more than three years ahead of Scherzer when it comes to capturing 200 wins.
The active player is Justin Verlander (40, New York Mets) with 244 wins, and the second is Jack Greinke (40, Kansas City) with 223 wins. Verlander reached the 200-win milestone in 2018 when he was 35 years old and Greinke in 2019 when he was 36 years old. However, their multiplier addition is a bit slow. One has no appearances in the season at all, and one does not receive support from the other line and is only accumulating bad luck.
Verlander, who returned from elbow surgery and showed off his strength by winning 18 games last year, has yet to make his Mets debut due to inflammation in the area between his right elbow and shoulder this season. He is confident that the player continues to improve, but it is not yet known when he will make his first appearance. He’s only holding it until early May or so. Even when he returns, he will have to be closely supervised for the time being. The number of wins for the pitcher with the most wins in his career still stands at 244 wins.
Greinke, who showed off his competitiveness with brain pitching despite his speed much lower than his prime, appeared in 4 games of the season but suffered only 3 losses. Of course, the earned run average (4.03) is not good, but there were days when he did not win even after pitching that he deserved to be a winning pitcher. In the opening game, he lost the game with 2 runs in 5⅓ innings, and against Toronto on the 6th, he became the losing pitcher even with 6 innings and 1 run. He threw 5 or more innings in each game and conceded 1 to 4 runs, but 2 to 3 wins were possible if he was with a team with a strong hitting or was lucky.
Verlander, Greinke, and Scherzer don’t have many active players left. In fact, Greinke considered retiring after last season. He only signed a one-year contract this year. Verlander and Scherzer have two years left on their contracts. I don’t know what will happen after that. If Kershaw is determined to stay active into his 40s like they did, and smooth the downhill curve as it does now, the final multiplier ranking between these four could be quite different.