I Have No Clue What to Think About Clayton Kershaw

Jorden

This is something I’ve thought for a long time, but I’ve never been really able to externalize what I was thinking. I have no clue what to think about Clayton Kershaw. It’s the title of the blog. And it won’t be a long blog, because there’s really not much to say. I could quote statistics and instances and videos and breakdowns of Kershaw to prove his dominance. And then I could follow it up with all those same things to prove why there’s a Playoff Kershaw.

But I’m not going to do that. Because we (or at least the people reading this blog who have followed baseball passively) know the narrative. Clayton Kershaw just can’t get it done in the playoff. I’m going to ignore 2020, because it’s difficult how to conceptualize how that fits into the narrative, or any player’s legacy (other than Justin Turner who gave his teammates COVID in an all-time scumbag move).

Kershaw is a Hall of Famer. Undoubtedly so. Kershaw is a player that high school coaches will bring up in pitching camps and in film study sessions. They will breakdown his mechanics. They will stand in front a projector and evangelize his pinpoint locationing of deceptive sliders. And in those sessions those same coaches won’t mention every subpar performance that Kershaw had in the NLDS or the NLCS. Because it won’t be relevant to them. They will speak to his greatness and how that pitching Mount Rushmore probably isn’t complete without his bust.

And maybe I have no room to talk. I’m an Astros fan, and the Astros supposedly ruined the 2017 Dodgers’ playoff run because of cheating (never mind the fact that there was no cheating during the playoffs). But there’s something to be said about flatlining in the playoffs versus the regular season. Sure, during the regular season you want to win. There’s a drive; that’s how a guy like Kershaw becomes a professional athlete. But the playoffs are so different. The pressure is different. The games are different. So that has to factor into his legacy, right?

I know that every other blog about this subject is going to be full of analysis and statistics that delve deep into the psyche and legacy of Kershaw. But I’m not going to do that. Because I genuinely cannot figure out what I think when it comes to Kershaw. I’m feeling vaguely depressed about the entire situation. We are watching a Greek comedy unfold, because no one dies, but no one is happy. Bob Costas even had a Shakespeare-esque last line for Kershaw:

And to continue with the antiquity metaphors, maybe Kershaw is the Sisyphus of baseball in a way no one else will ever be. You could compare to Mike Trout, but he made his decision by staying with the Angels. Kershaw hasn’t made a decision that placed his struggles in a neat box that allows me to skip over this blog by giving me an easy out (“Mike Trout made his decision, and therefore I cannot expound.”).

Clayton Kershaw’s boulder is the playoffs, and he will continually push his boulder up the hill the entire regular season. And then when the playoffs begin that same pitching boulder will roll all the way down the mountain, only for him to start rolling that southpaw boulder almost to the top of that immortal hill. Only for some nonsensical shelling to occur by a team whose relevance faded in 2001.

Next year, he’ll probably be a Texas Ranger, where every announcer will make it a point on every broadcast to remind the view that Matthew Stafford and Kershaw went to school in the area. And even then I still won’t know what to think, because I’ll only want to remember the great pitching. But like Peyton Manning, you can never forget all those playoff failures (last SB doesn’t count that was all Von Miller).

Sure, the rest of the playoffs are still left. Hey maybe Kershaw will throw a perfect game yet. But it won’t change the narrative. And it won’t change the playoff legacy. And I will still be lost on what I think of Kershaw.