{"id":864,"date":"2020-08-05T18:17:56","date_gmt":"2020-08-05T18:17:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/?p=864"},"modified":"2020-08-05T18:17:56","modified_gmt":"2020-08-05T18:17:56","slug":"why-clayton-kershaw-isnt-a-hall-of-famer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/?p=864","title":{"rendered":"Why Clayton Kershaw isn’t a Hall of Famer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Keep in mind that this article was written 2 days ago, not August 5th. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, yesterday, Kershaw made his season debut against the Arizona Diamondbacks. He had a solid outing, pitching 5 \u2154 innings and only allowing 3 hits and 0 runs. Additionally, he struck out 6 D-Backs hitters. All of this led to his first win of this strange season. Today, we aren\u2019t going to be talking about the present, we are going into the bigger picture. Is Clayton Kershaw really a Hall of Famer? Personally, I don\u2019t think he will be. Let me tell you why.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me, the first thing that I go to when breaking down his issues is probably his most famous one, his playoff struggles. If you take into account all of his wins, losses, and his ERA in the postseason, it\u2019s one of the worst ever. In 9 seasons in the playoffs, he is 9-11 with a 4.43 ERA. Then, if you break it down series by series, you can see why he folds under the postseason pressure. His career Division Series numbers are an average 5-4 with a 3.99 ERA. His career Championship Series numbers get a little worse, going 3-5 with a 4.61. Finally, when he\u2019s on the biggest stage in baseball, he crumbles like an eaten cookie that\u2019s fresh out of an oven. He\u2019s 1-2 with an eye-opening 5.40 ERA. I think it\u2019s safe to say that Kershaw gets scared under the most pressure-filled moments. Another thing that\u2019s scary, no ring on his finger. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kershaw has pretty much every single accolade a pitcher could ask for, even an MVP in 2014. Only 21 other pitchers in baseball history can say that and 11 of those pitchers, including Kershaw, won the Cy Young in the same year. However, the one thing that he doesn\u2019t have in his trophy case is a championship ring. For example, let\u2019s take a look at some of the great pitchers of the last 4 decades. Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, Steve Carlton, and CC Sabathia had a combined 6 World Series rings. Those names are either Hall of Famers or future Hall of Famers. It seems like all signs are pointing to the writers (the people who vote for the awards and the Hall of Fame after the season) waiting for a top pitcher to win a championship before they can allow him into the Hall. So far, Kershaw hasn\u2019t lived up to their standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some people could argue that his regular season prowess could put him in the Hall almost immediately, but as I mentioned earlier, it doesn\u2019t work like that. He has no ring and he\u2019s horrible when October rolls around. In order to be a Hall of Fame pitcher, you need to have those assets locked down. If Kershaw doesn’t have those things down by the end of his career, there will be no empty space begging for his plaque to fill it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources: baseball-reference.com, mlb.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Keep in mind that this article was written 2 days ago, not August 5th. So, yesterday, Kershaw made his season debut against the Arizona Diamondbacks. He had a solid outing, pitching 5 \u2154 innings and only allowing 3 hits and 0 runs. Additionally, he struck out 6 D-Backs hitters. All of this led to his … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,26,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","category-news","category-sports","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=864"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":866,"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864\/revisions\/866"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.houzzofballerzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}