Kershaw and the Dodgers are facing two big questions about the future, one of them short-term and relatively benign, the other long-term and loaded with big-picture implications for both athlete and team.
The Dodgers are confident Clayton Kershaw can return to dominant form. By Dave Sheinin Dave Sheinin National baseball writer Email Bio Follow March 18 at 11:33 AM GLENDALE, Ariz. — Nothing drives home the fleeting nature of athletic greatness quite like the ace pitcher entering the autumn of his career. Clayton Kershaw turns 31 on Tuesday, a year older than Sandy Koufax was when he threw his final big league pitch, the same age Pedro Martinez was when he had his last transcendent season.
But it is the long-term question that hovers most profoundly over the 2019 Dodgers, as they attempt to get back to the World Series for third year in a row, and this time bring home the title: What sort of pitcher will Kershaw be for them going forward? And a corollary: Can he ever get back to being the brilliant and dominant Kershaw of old?
He learned to adapt as time and back injuries robbed his fastball of a couple of ticks, from an average of 94.4 mph when he broke into the majors in 2008 to 92.8 mph in 2017, a year in which, at age 29, he went 18-4 with a 2.31 ERA and finished runner-up to Max Scherzer for the National League Cy Young.
“It gives me a chance to prove a lot of people wrong,” Kershaw told reporters after signing the extension. “I think [in 2018] — maybe rightfully so — there’s been a lot of people saying I’m in decline, or I’m not going to be as good as I once was. I’m looking forward to proving a lot of people wrong with that.”
It is easy to speculate now, in hindsight, that Kershaw overdid it this winter — that in an effort to regain his lost velocity and return to his dominant form, he pushed his body beyond its limitations at this point in his career. But Kershaw, who has been keeping a low profile with the media this spring, was not made available for this story, and Dodgers officials were hesitant to draw a line between Kershaw’s rigorous offseason program and his shoulder problems this spring.
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