Kershaw, an LA great building on greatness

Clayton Kershaw made his first start of the season Sunday for the Dodgers. This short season, reduced further for Kershaw by a couple of starts because of back issues, got better as soon as he did. Kershaw threw 5 2/3 shutout innings against the D-backs with six strikeouts, no walks and 57 strikes on 81 pitches. And the Dodgers looked like the Dodgers again. He is one of those players; sometimes you forget just how great he is, and for how long he's been great.

There is a good conversation to be had about whether Kershaw, Justin Verlander or Max Scherzer is the best starting pitcher of this generation in baseball. Verlander came along first. Kershaw and Scherzer first pitched in the big leagues in the same season (2008), but Kershaw is the youngest of the three. Maybe one of the most remarkable stats associated with Kershaw’s extraordinary career is that he is still just 32 years old -- just three months older than Jacob DeGrom.

Kershaw has been the Sandy Koufax of this generation for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He has been great for the Dodgers longer than Koufax, but he is not greater. Nobody would ever say that, from Brooklyn all the way to downtown Los Angeles, where for the last six years of his career, Koufax looked like the best starting pitcher of all time. But as Kershaw begins his 13th Dodgers season, as he did against the D-backs, it is a good time to step back and take a good look at who he is and how much he has mattered -- and still matters.

When asked the other day what it was like to be back on the mound, Kershaw simply said this: “It was awesome.”

He is awesome. Kershaw's first year in the big leagues, the year he turned 20, he went 5-5 with a 4.26 ERA in 21 starts. Last year, he was 16-5 with a 3.03 ERA. In between, there was never a single season when his ERA was above 3.00. At a time when deGrom has won two straight National League Cy Young Awards -- first with a 1.70 ERA and last year with 2.43 -- it is worth remembering that Kershaw’s ERA for his entire career is 2.44. And it's also worth remembering that when he won his own back-to-back NL Cy Young Awards in 2013-14 -- the latter also serving as his NL MVP Award-winning season -- his earned run averages were 1.83 and 1.77 and his combined win-loss record was 37-12. (His first NL Cy Young Award came in '11.)

You know what those were? Koufax seasons for the Dodgers. The only thing that Kershaw has not yet done is pitch the Dodgers to a World Series title, something Koufax did twice in the 1960s, and something Verlander did for the Astros in 2017, and something Scherzer did last season for the Nationals. It is the only place where Kershaw’s record gets complicated, and it's made even more complicated because many Dodgers believe he -- and they -- had the '17 World Series stolen from them.

The game on which the Dodgers will always shine the brightest light is Game 5 of the 2017 World Series, when they believe the Astros knew what pitches Kershaw was about to throw on a night when he couldn’t hold a four-run lead, something he had almost always done for the Dodgers across his career. Houston finally won that game, 13-12, on a night at Minute Maid Park when the World Series turned their way. The next year, against the Red Sox, Kershaw was 0-2 in the Series, and the Red Sox won in five games. Last year, he gave up back-to-back home runs to Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto when pitching out of the bullpen in Game 5 of in the NL Division Series against the Nationals.

So in a world of sports obsessed with championship rings, Kershaw doesn’t yet have one. Verlander is 14-11 in his postseason career, Scherzer was 4-5 before going 3-0 last October and changing his own postseason resume forever. Kershaw is 9-11 in the postseason for his career with an ERA of 4.43.

It does not change a career of immense grace, a lifetime record of 170-74, the 2,470 strikeouts in 2,280 innings, the three NL Cy Young Awards, the five ERA titles, the one NL MVP Award or the no-hitter he threw in 2014, among others. If you watched him start his year against the D-backs with those shutout innings, it could have been any year for Clayton Kershaw. He continues to be a giant of his sport.

I asked Vin Scully on Monday if people truly appreciate Kershaw’s greatness.

“I think they love and appreciate him,” Scully said, "but Sandy Koufax casts a long shadow.”

I asked Kershaw’s manager Dave Roberts the exact same question.

“I’m not really sure,” Roberts said. “I hope they do, because he’s a once-a-generation-type pitcher and person.”

And still a Dodger. Probably a Dodger for life, the way Koufax was. Verlander changed teams. So did Scherzer. Kershaw is right where he started, at Dodger Stadium, every fifth day when healthy. A lot has changed there. Not him.