Los Angeles — While hurling his first couple of years as a big league pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, a still raw Clayton Kershaw was on the mind of their manager at the time, Yankees legendary manager Joe Torre, in the form of Sandy Koufax.
I bet a lot of people laughed a Joe. Others said that the comparison was not fair at all.
The first time he said such comment was back in Spring Training 2008, Kershaw’s rookie year. He wasn’t even on the 25-man roster yet.
We are in August 2019 already. Maybe that image inside Torre’s head proved to be very right ahead of time.
Comparisons to Koufax follow Kershaw: The first time Dodgers manager Joe Torre saw Clayton Kershaw pitch in a g.. http://bit.ly/QwPIz
— MLB News (@mlbpickspro) October 8, 2009
Clayton Kershaw passes legend Sandy Koufax in the win column
With his 166th win Tuesday night, August 20th, Kershaw passed the southpaw Dodger legend Sandy Koufax to take sole possession of the 5th place all-time for pitching wins in Dodgers history.
He pitched 6 innings, allowed 6 hits, 3 runs (all via home runs with the bases empty), with 3 base on balls and 6 strikeouts.
Definitely not Kershaw-like, but still got the job done getting the decision on the 16 to 3 Dodgers rout of the Blue Jays.
His record for the year increased to 13-2, with a 2.71 ERA, 147 strikeouts through 143 innings.
It was his 22 second game of the season, all of them seeing the lefty navigating through at least 6 full frames.
Sure, his 2019 started a little late, but Clayton Kershaw is 22-for-22 when it comes to pitching 6+ IP this season.
Only Justin Verlander and Zack Greinke (23 each) have more such starts this year, but neither of them have done it consecutively or in 100% of their outings.
— Jason Catania (@JayCat11) August 21, 2019
For now, he’s 67 wins away from Don Sutton, the all-time leader in wins for the Dodgers franchise with 233.
Maybe Torre was being fair eleven years ago
For Kershaw, it took 58 games and 91 innings less than Koufax to reach 165 wins in his last outing.
He also passed Sandy in strikeouts against the Padres around 2 and a half weeks ago.
Lets get crazy with it… Congrats to Clayton Kershaw on passing Sandy Koufax in strikeouts with 2397 of them. Here’s an animation of every K in his @mlb career so far pic.twitter.com/In2inygDKi
— Daren Willman (@darenw) August 2, 2019
The 31 year old, alike Koufax, he’s a 3-time Cy Young Award and 5-time ERA Title winner.
And unlike the Hall of Famer Koufax, Kershaw has won an MVP and an extra mention to the All-Star game (8 to Koufax’s 7) in the same number of seasons, 12 to be exact.
Clayton Kershaw and Sandy Koufax, two all-time greats
If you ask me, that’s Koufax territory.
We should be pretty convinced they look alike, just like Torre was reminded of a bit more than a decade ago.
Right now, from their production to the results, two all-time greats on their own rights.
Sandy Koufax giving Curveball advice [Thumb usage] to Clayton Kershaw (Feb 2010). “Do not push…your thumb gets in the way of a curveball” pic.twitter.com/nxh85kNOew
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) January 6, 2017
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