Clayton Kershaw

The Dodgers have done it with an incredible variety of players.

Different starting star pitchers, whether it was Clayton Kershaw morphing into Yoshinobu Yamamoto, whether it is the, the best player on your team being Corey Seager or Cody Bellinger, to Mookie Betts to Shohei Ohtani, that that line has continued to move.

The manager has changed.

When this whole thing started, Don Mattingly was the manager of the Dodgers.

Tanana.

Cy Young, Mike Mussina, Mike Lowell, Jim Bunning, Zack Greinke, Clayton Kershaw, John Smoltz, C.C. Sabathia, Curt Schilling, Bob Gibson, Pedro Martinez, Fergie Jenkins, Phil Niekro, Greg Maddux, Walter Johnson, Gaylord Perry, Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, Don Sutton, Tom Seaver, Bert Blyleven, Steve Carlton, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, Nolan Ryan.

We did it.

We got there.

I will say this, though, in this job now, when it doesn't go well, every manager is scrutinized.

You know, I used Clayton Kershaw in a big spot against the Nationals one year, and that was a gut move.

It wasn't analytics, and I was crushed for that.

And there's other things that...

But I think that when you have superstars and no one said it better than Kobe, where I was at his last game, he said, the dream is the journey.

And it's like, where now you get players that they don't want to work, they're super talented, but the dream is, you know, at seven o'clock where they can try to show out and it's like, no, you're missing the boat, you know, because Then you're riding the up-downs of a season where it's like focus on getting better each day, playing to win a baseball game.

And honestly, from Shohei to Freddie to Mookie to Will Smith to Clayton Kershaw, who I had, that's what it was about.

It was about the process and the practice.

He is a future Hall of Hall of Fame manager for what he has done as a Dodger skipper.

And to think about it, I think Jose alluded to it, with different groups of guys and different groups of players over a course of years, whether it's his first few years as Dodger manager to the middle years, to the final last couple years where you saw an aging Clayton Kershaw and the transition really begin with the exit of Justin Turner and that group and, you know, to see Jock Peterson and that whole group of 17, 18, 19, the 20 World Series, you know, morph into the Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts era of Dodgers baseball and the additions of, you know, Teoscar Hernandez and the evolution of Max Muncy when he came.

I mean, it's just, it's fun to see the, the evolvement of this Dodgers team over the last decade.

I mean, it's been more than a decade, but just the last decade and what Dave Roberts has been able to do, you know, molding this team.

It feels like for them, back injuries are oftentimes more of the worst case scenario than the best case scenario.

A guy like Clayton Kershaw throughout his career was burned by back injuries.

And then with Shohei Otani, I would put him as the most concerning of these four.

Is it a high level of concern? No, but it's concerning enough that he won't pitch again this season.

So like, you also see them incorporating them into those things.

You've got Clayton Kershaw doing that sometimes too.

So I like, it's just something I think we forget about that aspect of their life that they're splitting like these different hats that they wear and, and, and they're sacrificing time with their family for that.

But, um, All that to say, so a couple feel-good things.

But I did a quick comparison.

I wanted to see, like, let's look at Cam Schlittler's season thus far and Clayton Kershaw's 2014 Cy Young MVP ERA title all-star season.

That's 2014.

It did open my eyes a little bit.

It's been the age-old debate.

Like, can a dude win the MVP on a team that is bad? I'm not sitting here and saying that, but this has been a special year.

And it is eye-opening when you put it up against Clayton Kershaw's year.

We're watching something really special with Clem Schlittler that, honestly, you're not really expecting until you dive deep under the hood because he just goes out there and delivers consistency.

He kind of begun losing interest in some of the social events and sports.

He would attend Highland Park High School, which if you have spent any time watching a Matt Stafford game or a Clayton Kershaw game for the last 15 years, there's never been a game that either one of them either played in or pitched in where they haven't mentioned that both of them played at Highland Park High School in Dallas, Texas together.

Well, it's Kershaw, it's Stafford, and it's Hinkley.

It went to Highland Park.