Clayton Kershaw joins 3,000-strikeout club: Should Dodgers great be on the Mount Rushmore of fantasy baseball starters?

When a seismic event happens like Clayton Kershaw recording his 3,000th strikeout, the first feeling I have is gratitude. We’ve been able to see every pitch of the run, if we so desired. We are all witnesses. That’s a glorious feature in the internet age.

And then you stop and think about how rare it is to see 3,000 strikeouts. Baseball is the sport where stats and history mean the most, and let’s note how exclusive some of these clubs are.

Kershaw is the 20th pitcher (and the fourth lefty) to whiff 3,000 batters. Compare that to these other MLB stat clubs:

The 3,000 Strikeout Club will go toe-to-toe with the Perfect Game Club, too. There have been 24 perfect games in MLB history. Let’s appreciate the rareness of Kershaw’s feat.

Yahoo Fantasy Baseball dates back to 1999. I wanted to figure out just where Kershaw would slot among the greatest pitchers during this Yahoo era. Would he be in the Mount Rushmore of fantasy starters? Or perhaps a little outside that club?

I called up the 100 best pitcher seasons by WAR, dating from 1999 to present, and here are the pitchers who came up the most:

• Pedro Martinez, 5 seasons

• Justin Verlander, 5 seasons

• Clayton Kershaw, 4 seasons

Kershaw’s cumulative ranks for the Yahoo Fantasy Baseball era (1999 to present), according to Baseball Reference:

• Pitcher WAR: 2nd (Verlander first)

• Strikeouts: 4th (Verlander, Scherzer, CC Sabathia)

• Shutouts: 2nd (Halladay first)

• ERA (100-start minimum): 2nd (an eyelash behind Jacob deGrom, 2.49 to 2.52)

• ERA+ (adjusted for seasons and ballparks): 3rd (Martinez first, deGrom second)

• WHIP (100-start minimum): 2nd (deGrom first)

• Quality Starts: 6th (Verlander first)

• Quality Start Percentage: 3rd (deGrom first)

(Two quick asides: Martinez was grossly robbed of at least one MVP, and Santana didn’t get a fair look as a plausible Hall of Famer. The first wrong can never be righted, but hopefully Santana will get more consideration down the road from the Veterans Committee.)

So if we’re selecting a Mount Rushmore of fantasy baseball starters for this period, Martinez, Johnson and Verlander are probably the first three locks. The fourth could reasonably be Kershaw, Scherzer or Halladay. If I extend this list to include the 200 best starting pitcher seasons of the era, Scherzer charts seven times, Kershaw six times, and Halladay six times. There is no perfect way to choose this stuff. You could pick Max, Doc or Clayton and I wouldn’t argue with you. We might have a fun conversation, though.

Kershaw’s peak between 2011 and 2014 was especially ridiculous. He led the majors in ERA all four seasons. He led the NL in WHIP all four of those seasons, too. There were two strikeout titles, three WAR titles, two seasons with 21 wins. He was the MVP in 2014, and the Cy Young Award winner three times.

The 2014 fantasy baseball season was especially memorable for me. I didn’t draft a starting pitcher in the Yahoo Friends & Family League that year (a 5×5 format), thinking I’d either punt starting pitching or get around to filling it later. By the middle of the year, I had added some pitching but still needed a frontman. I called up my buddy Dalton Del Don at the All-Star break and made my pitch — my star hitter (Miguel Cabrera) for his superstar pitcher (Clayton Kershaw). Miggy was coming off two MVP seasons of his own.

Cabrera was his usual dynamic self the rest of the way (.321/.379/.511, 11 homers, 34 RBI) but Kershaw was out of this world. The LA lefty won 11 of 13 starts, posted a 1.85 ERA and 0.99 WHIP, piled up 102 strikeouts in 87.1 innings. I not only won the league, I somehow collected the most wins by season’s end, despite not grabbing a starting pitcher on draft day.

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(Full disclosure, I tried a similar strategy this year. It’s failing miserably. Any strategy can work if you pick the right players, or collapse if you pick the wrong ones.)

The joy of peak Kershaw wasn’t just the numbers, of course. His art was just as good as his science. That glorious Summer of ’14 I felt like I had season tickets to Kershaw, with the incomparable Vin Scully still on the microphone. What an amazing mix, the elegant lefty and the elegant wordsmith.

Imagine knowing every five days that you had the most delicious steak waiting for you, or an unforgettable sunset, or the perfect concert. That’s how enormous those Kershaw starts felt to me. I’d schedule my entire week around them.

Kershaw wasn’t on top of his game Tuesday night, of course. A mediocre White Sox lineup dinged him for nine hits and four runs over his six innings. He didn’t get the signature strikeout until the end of the night. Had the milestone not been in play — and a road trip not looming next week — it’s likely Dave Roberts wouldn’t have allowed Kershaw to throw the 100 pitches needed. Kershaw hasn’t seen that pitch count since June of 2023.

But maybe Kershaw has one more fantasy kick in his age-37 season. Consider that his four starts before Tuesday night were excellent: four straight wins, 1.57 ERA, four walks, 21 strikeouts. They’re not exactly the vintage Kershaw starts of old — he lasted just five innings in two of those games — but the pitching-strapped Dodgers are delighted with these results. So are fantasy managers.

Whatever Kershaw does the remainder of his career, I’m already satiated. Those glory days of the early 2010s will never be forgotten. And heck, this might be the last 3000-Strikeout Man I’ll ever see. I don’t know if Chris Sale will get there — he’s at 2,528 and currently hurt. Gerrit Cole is also hurt and sitting at 2,251. Charlie Morton (2,124) had a nifty career but he’s 41 years old, he’s not making it. Ditto for Yu Darvish, who’s at 2,007.

Comps and lists and memory lane, it’s all fun. But sometimes you have to simplify things.

Clayton Edward Kershaw, one of one.