Clayton Kershaw and Pedro Martinez’s careers were virtually identical
Pedro doing what he did in the steroid era will always give him the edge but both first ballot HOF
In the steroid era in the AL East. I’ll say it till I die, absolutely robbed of an MVP and maybe two.
Prime Pedro absolutely deserved an MVP
99-01 Pedro was the greatest pitcher of all time.
He didn’t have the longevity of others but I’d take his peak over anyone
1999 game 5 ALDS. I never felt more dread watching a pitcher warm up in the bullpen.
Is this what it felt like watching Yamamoto warm up in the bullpen for Guardians fans?
Not quite.. we were close to trading for Pedro before he went to Boston.
The supposed trade we refused that would’ve sent Jaret Wright out for Pedro haunts me to this day.
Troy O’Leary!
WAYYYYY BACK!
I remember Fox zooming in on him in the dugout in about the second inning and showing he was wearing his spikes, which was notable because he wasn’t supposed to be available. As someone who absolutely hates the Red Sox (and at the time, Pedro, whom I now absolutely LOVE), I was so pissed, I knew he was going to come out there and do exactly what he did. Same year he struck out five hall of famers to open the all star game at his own park (and yes, I know McGwire and Sosa are not actually HOF guys but they have HOF stats).
Pretty sure that was on short rest too. That offense you had in ‘99 was a monster, I think the only one since like 1950 to score 1000 runs.
Even crazier than that. He pitched 4 scoreless innings in game 1 then got pulled with an injury. We didn’t think he would return for the series, then he came out in an elimination game and pitched 6 innings in relief.
I was going to say I don’t remember Kershaw having near as dominant of a run that pedro had for a couple years. But Kershaw was also automatic for so long.
He pitched 13 complete games in 97 while still having a 1.90 ERA. Averaged nearly 8 IP per start.
And playing all his home games at Fenway too!
Fuck George A. King III and La Velle E. Neal III.
Pudge Rodriguez might be the most fraudulent MVP since Joe Gordon won in 1942. He wasn’t even voted team MVP by the DFW BBWAA contingency; they voted for Rafael Palmeiro.
King said he never voted for pitchers for MVP, despite having given David Wells an MVP vote the previous year. Fucking hypocrites.
Absolutely.
1999 should have been him followed by Jeter. Nomar coulda won if he didn’t miss 25 games. Pudge had a great year but it doesn’t wow me like the other 3.
2000 was crazy. 7 players above 1.000 OPS. Top 4 players all hit above .315 with 40+HR and 130+RBI. Best offensive player shoulda been ARod. Pedro just clears everyone with 11.7 WAR!
Pedro’s ERA being nearly two runs lower than Clemens’s who was second in ERA in the AL is forever my favourite “this is how insane Pedro Martinez was” stat.
Who were the big roiders in the AL east at the time? Brady Anderson? Canseco as a Yankee/Ray? All the all time goat roiders were in the NL. I guess he faced A-Rod but that was towards the end of his Red Sox run.
Don’t disrespect Rafael Palmiero like that
It wasn’t necessarily just guys who had giant breakout Anderson-like years. For example, the Blue Jays in 2000 had guys hitting 7th and 8th in Jose Cruz Jr. and Brad Fullmer who both hit more than 30 HRs, on a team that had two other guys, Delgado and Batista, who hit 40 HRs. The Yankees, who they played I think 19 times, didn’t have a 40HR guy but did have a team that altogether hit .280, which is insane. I am pretty sure that was the era of the unbalanced schedule, so between the Blue Jays, Yankees, and O’s who had Albert Belle and late stage but still dangerous Cal Ripken, Pedro would have statistically started something like 12 games against those teams (every fifth game out of 60). Throw in the Indians (Ramirez, Thome, Alomar), in a series where Pedro absolutely cemented his legend, your random A’s team (4 guys I think with 25 HRs) and the Mariners (A Rod, Buhner, Edgar), and the AL in general was terrifying.
I miss when teams didn’t carry three guys who hit .206 as starters.
Sincerely, a Yankee fan tired of watching 12 - 15 automatic outs per game.
Pedro’s peak was better too. Not that Kershaw’s wasn’t superb as well, just Pedro’s was better. Kershaw, despite all the injuries, stayed very good longer than Pedro which leveled things out a bit for the career stats.
He also was elite in the playoffs, which charitably i’ll just say Kershaw was …not
Kershaw has 3 rings; 2 of those he was a glorified bench coach, 1 was the COVID season, people who want to add 1 because of the Asterisks live your truth, but to me the playoffs are a big black mark on his career. Dodgers couldve won more in the 2010s if he wasn’t hot garbage in the playoffs most of his career
Kershaw was ice cold in 2017 post season run until the Astros
ice cold could mean two very different things here lol
World Series game 1 at Dodger Stadium he pitched 7 innings with 11 strikeouts and a single solo HR allowed. Game 5 at the juice box went differently.
Honestly I’m mad the Astros won after cheating, but more mad that my favorite player finally had the chance to get that playoff monkey off his back, and pitched well in the playoffs up until game 5.
To save everyone the hassle: “They didn’t cheat in the playoffs!” “Every team was doing it!”
That’s all bullshit and on some level I know you know that.
Don’t forget that Kershaw also pitched 4 scoreless innings in Game 7 of the 2017 World Series, further showing that the problem really was the Astros cheating at home. Also boo to the poster trying to discredit 2020: that ring was harder to win with no home field advantage, an extra playoff round, and all teams at full strength. Finally, Kershaw was not a “glorified bench coach” in 2025, we wouldn’t have made the playoffs at all without his 11-2 3.3 ERA regular season.
Yeah, trust me, his pitching wasn’t why we shit the bed most postseasons
I mean that’s valid for 2017 but there several years before, during his prime, where he didnt play up to his potential. I love Kershaw, and its okay to just accept it for what it is. Doesnt make him any less special to us fans.
Yeah, when the Cubs were against Kershaw in the 2016 playoffs in a do-or-die game, I was legit not as terrified as I should be because I was thinking “It’s Kershaw. He might choke.”
And he did.
Hall of Famer. One of the best to ever do it. But he’s not perfect. Then again, who is?
Sometimes he was just left out to die. Game 1 of the 2014 NLDS comes to mind
Didn’t the Yankees and famously chant “Whose your daddy” to Pedro because he was 1-4 against them In the playoffs? He pitched very well in the 04 playoffs to break the curse, but I wouldn’t go as far to call him “elite in the playoffs.”
Not to argue. Just a cool bit of baseball lore.
They chanted “Who’s your daddy” because he said “I tip my cap and call the Yankees my daddy” in a postgame interview.
Found the clip here.
Yea I agree. He was good, though. 6-4, 3.46 ERA (3.61 FIP) in 96 innings. Basically half a season of the Mets version of Pedro.
Yeah I feel like this post is sort of dismissive of what makes both of them great in a way? Obviously the post isn’t discrediting either in any way but it also doesn’t shed light on why they were both uniquely incredible. Kershaw had incredible high level longevity that almost nobody in the modern game can match. Meanwhile Pedro had a peak that was unlike anything I think we may ever see again. A 291 ERA+ in 2000 in 217 IP is beyond absurd, and the only higher individual season ERA+ years were all basically before the end of WW2. Kershaw was an unquestioned ace of the game for 15+ years and Pedro had a couple of the best pitching seasons in the history of the sport back to back. Their career counting stats and even rate numbers looking similar I think does both a bit of a disservice in appreciating just how special each one was
Kershaw had excellent pitching coaches he listened to as his ability diminished due to injuries and he stayed effective as a result. Honeycutt and Prior just know how to pitch.
Pedro also had a shoulder injury that is just no longer common, because of changes in the way that pitchers train. Smoltz and Mark Mulder had it too, but you almost never see it anymore. It hurt the careers of a lot of greats.
But era+ accounts for that. And their era+ is identical
I don’t think there’s a wrong answer between either of them. You just pick your favorite guy
Pedro’s peak was better. His 2000 season is arguably the greatest pitching season of all time.
2000 Pedro Martinez being 18th on the single season ERA+ leaderboard is why I have a love hate relationship with how they implemented Negro League stats into Baseball Reference. Yes they should be viewed as major leagues. But the guy at the top of the leaderboard, Robert Keyes, has 28 IP on record that season
Eh, I hate it. Love that they’re including the Negro Leagues form a historical perspective, but statistically they were incredibly weak leagues and only clutter historical data.
It would be like if we decide to include NCAA football football stats with NFL. Just dilutes the data with inconsistent dat
They can and should organize the data like the NBA/ABA stats on basketball reference. Give people the option to include or exclude them in the all time rankings.
Not only were the leagues much weaker, they also played significantly fewer games, so all rate stats were completely broken by this change. Combining them how they did was just a bad decision.
I’m suprised there’s not an IP minimum
Everyone knows its absurd to include the stats in this way. Those players can get their due and be honored without engaging in absurdist, performative acts like lumping in the 28 IP season with 2000 Pedro.
imo this doesn’t have to do with including Negro League stats so much as just applying the qualified season filter. the ERA leaderboard (as opposed to ERA+) has this note
For recent years, leaders need 1 IP per team game played.
but it also includes Keyes’ 1944 so I don’t know what’s up with that
I love how different his 1999 and 2000 seasons were yet both were 10+ WAR. In 1999 you had the insane 23-4 W-L record with the great-but-unremarkable 2+ ERA, but then he has a 1.39 FIP and 13 K/9 and somehow only allowed 9 HR despite pitching to the 1999 AL East all year, then the next year he has a pedestrian 18-6 record and the FIP goes up to 2.17 with K and HR regression, but it’s worth a 1.74 ERA and a 50 point ERA+ boost
“Great-but-unremarkable 2+ ERA” that was the 9th best ERA+ season of all time for 200+ innings, and the 4th best post-Year of the Pitcher in 1968 (behind only himself in 2000 and 2 Maddux seasons)
In September 1999 Pedro pitched in NY and had 17 Ks 1H CG they won 3-1
I was watching that game! The only hit was a solo HR to chili Davis
He also had some bizarre single game performances that I feel we’ll never see again:
June 3, 1995 vs. the Padres - 9 perfect innings, gave up a hit in the 10th and got pulled for the closer, but still won.
April 13, 1994 vs. the Reds - had a perfect game through 8.1, but then hits Reggie Sanders with a pitch. Sanders charges the mound, tackles Pedro — who ends up at the bottom of a pile — and benches clear. Pedro stays in and finishes the 8th, but gives up a single in the 9th and leaves up two with a man on. Gets a ND due to a blown save.
He had a similar game to the latter with the Red Sox! August 29, 2000 vs. the Devil Rays - Hit the very first batter he faced, Gerald Williams, with a pitch; Williams charged the mound, benches cleared, Williams got ejected. Pedro then retired the next 24 batters he faced, lost the no-hitter on a single to lead off the ninth, and retired the next three batters for a 1-hit shutout.
Which is why I was actually surprised that Pedro had more games played than Kersh, albeit not by many. Yeah he had a fantastic peak but he also had a lot of not that.
I didn’t realize until reading this post, apparently Pedro was a reliever in his rookie year? Pitched 65 games in 1993 according to Baseball Reference. That accounts for the difference.
Dodgers traded him for Delino Deshields because they didn’t think his body type would hold up to being an MLB pitcher.
One of the worst trades in history
Incredible 7 year stretch from 97-03.
2.20 ERA (213 ERA+) over 1408 innings.
57.3 WAR.
Yeah, I think the fact that Kershaw’s ERA is almost half a point lower and yet they still have the same ERA+ really shows how different the environment was. Both were absolutely dominant.
I’d say there’s a few things in Pedro’s favor, especially from 99-01 that I do not know how can ever be captured by stats:
- pitching in the loaded AL East during the steroid era, compared to the NL West facing pitchers.
- Having the pressure of the Red Sox fan base and the amount of negativity surrounding the franchise compared to the Yankees
- Pedro had so much pressure as the ace of that team. The rest of the team was very mediocre and he had SO MUCH on his shoulders to go out and win every game.
ERA+ is literally an era adjustment (no pun intended). Pedro’s ERA was .040 (edit: should say 0.4) higher, but ERA+ says that is the same accounting for era.
Pedro had a 7 year peak with an ERA+ of 213. Kershaw’s highest ERA+ in a full season was 197 (with one partial season where he had a 237). So, Pedro had a 7 year stretch with a better ERA+ than Kershaw’s best full season.
The reason their overall ERA+ is the same because Kershaw was better than Pedro in his early 20s and his mid 30s. Pedro started his career slower and declined worse at the end, which evened things out. But, this vastly different shape to their careers illustrates that you have to look at more than just the stats they finished with.
If someone values a dominant peak, they would prefer Pedro. If someone values overall career consistency, they would prefer Kershaw.
Also, Kershaw’s peak was great, it just wasn’t Pedro.
No one was Pedro imo
It wasn’t just hitters who were doing insane amounts of drugs though.
Assuming that Pedro was clean, his ERA+ was affected by people like Clemens who were roided to the gills.
ERA+ era adjusts so that is baked in and ranks them identically despite Kershaw’s significantly lower ERA
When the aliens come, I want 2001 Pedro pitching.
Wow Kershaw no saves. Are we sure he should be in hall of fame talks?
What a bum
No, he ain’t no Bum. Bum has a World Series save.
Im so glad Mad Bum found baseball to pour his psychotic energy into.
It was that or braining hobos with a claw hammer.
Or dirt biking/ATV
Because of course
And cattle roping
Also..only 1 home run. That’s only 1 more than I have.
His only career home run came on opening day 2013 against the Giants, and it was the go-ahead run. He also pitched a CGSO that day: https://youtu.be/5CWx0VLbPYE
Shohei who?
No idea who this Shohei guy you’re referring to is, but I gotta admit: going yard in the same game you pitched a CSGO in is impressive af.
Imagine a pitcher throws a perfect game AND hits for the cycle in the same game
Will Shohei ever do it? Probably not. Will he do it in his next start? Maybe.
CSGO
hmm
I read this as “he pitched in CSGO” lol
Omg me too… I was like what’s counter strike gotta do with this
I always read it as CSGO lol
Straight center too. That wasn’t some cheap 1⁄30 porch job.
I miss the pre-universal DH days
He had a playoff save to close out the nationals in 2016.
Also Brewers NLCS in ‘18. Those don’t count here?
Postseason stats generally aren’t counted in career stats. That would be unfair to players who play on teams who suck
Ah yes. The Mike Trout rule.
That really sucks for Trout but does seem fair overall.
Which makes me wonder - who’s a good example of a postseason-performing god, yet his stats aren’t included in Stathead?
Different sport but Danny Amendola has some crazy postseason stats and while ill always say he could have been great without injuries his career was mediocre otherwise.
Brady really juiced a lot of those dudes’ careers with postseason glory. Ironically Welker gets underrated anymore I feel because lack of rings.
I agree with the Welker take completely hes a dude who on any other team is getting serious HoF talk. I do think Amendola was just good and was saved for the playoffs most years because of how injury prone he was. He was really good per game on the Rams before going to the Pats.
Went to kershaws church for redemption
No saves 🤣
Thats how Pedro got his 3 extra WAR.
John Smoltz is rolling over in his bed right now!
Pedro really should have gotten mvp at least once and really should have both 1999 and 2000.
As a Yankee fan I agree. Pedro was a force of nature.
I don’t even know how to describe just how intimidating prime Pedro was.
What still amazes me to this day is that Pedro is 5’ 10” and weighed 175 in his career. That’s basically my size. I’m a goddamn librarian, he could throw 98 and then throw a 12-6 curve and the nastiest chanegup of all time, all to juice-up monsters.
He was so beyond comprehension.
I bet his grasp of the Dewey decimal system is tenuous at best though.
I can fix him.
Being a Giants fan aside, I want to give Pedro the obvious edge over Kershaw because he dominated at the peak of the steroid era.
I once heard someone describe it perfectly.
“Hearing Pedro was starting was like hearing Mo was coming in for the save.”
I’m from Boston, and got to watch a bunch of his starts during that peak, and it was fucking magical.
if pitchers are gonna get MVPs, the fact 1999⁄00 Pedro and 1985 Gooden didn’t win makes that whole thing moot
What does this even mean? Are you saying that we shouldn’t bother voting well now, because voters made bad decisions 20+ years ago?
Like do you also think we shouldn’t bother giving the CY to starters, because some deserving starters lost out to closers in the 80’s, which “makes the whole thing moot”?
The weirdness around pitcher mvps is bad enough that I wouldn’t mind modifying the awards to be explicitly pitcher only and hitter only. (Shohei can do whatever he wants).
I will not abide this Willie McGee erasure
Strongly disagree. Past mistakes does not mean you should keep making those mistakes.
Objectively a pitcher should be winning MVP every few years and should be one of the finalists in most years. A pitcher has led the NL in bWAR in four of the last eight seasons.
In general, pitchers only win MVP when there are no position players with any real argument. That wasn’t the case in ‘99/‘00 AL
Pedro got the most first place votes in 1999. Pudge won it with a .914 OPS, which due to era was only a 125 OPS+, that’s like if Shea Langeliers somehow won MVP last season.
And if they wanted to give it to a hitter, Pudge wasn’t even the most deserving. His own teammate had a higher OPS than him, Manny Ramirez had a 1.105 OPS and led MLB in RBI’s on a 97 win team and Derek Jeter was also a better hitter than Pudge at a premium position on the best team in MLB.
It wasn’t that Pudge was producing those offensive numbers he was doing it while also being the best defensive catcher in the league.
Right so 1999 had several candidates with good cases rather than no candidates with good arguments. I’m making no statement about who should have won, I’m just making a descriptive statement about when pitchers end up winning.
some of the greatest SP seasons of all time. There was years where the best 2 pitchers were Pedro and Johnson- and the next group could barely hold a candle to them (kevin Brown, Schilling, Mussina, ect)
How many Don Zimmer’s did Kershaw toss to the ground?
How much WAR is that worth?
At least two Vietnams.
WAR, huh, yeah, what is it good for?
Absolutely nothing!
Ole!
My favorite part, is if I leave this visible, Pedro keeps throwing him to the ground! It’s been playing on my background for, roughly, 22 years, 6 months 10 days, 3 hours, 12 minutes, and 59- nope, make that 13 minutes!
It’s is absolutely gorgeous on infinite cycle.
Zimm was actually a cool dude, just a stand in the for the folly of hubris.
Zimmer himself said he deserved it.
I rememeber watching that live. It was glorious. Though I really do feel bad for Zimmer in retrospect because he made a fool of himself and he knew it.
I honestly thought Pedro handled that as well as could have possibly been expected (ignore my flair). You’ve got a crazed septuagenarian charging at you with his enormous bald head leading the way. Pedro stepped out of the way but Zimmer would still have run into him so he grabbed that big dome and flung him to the ground. No real harm done. No punches thrown.
In my view he didn’t even fling him. He just adjusted Zimmer’s own momentum and honestly kind of guided him gently to the ground without any added force.
Onto the fluffiest of grass known to man. Laying on a top-tier baseball field is heaven.
I have been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to lie down on Fenway’s grass. No luxury bed in the world can match it.
It’s a buck list item of mine to do so. I did at Polar Park and it was awesome!
No, you’re completely right regardless of flair. It’s not like Pedro threw him down and then started putting the boots to him. Just because Zimmer was old doesn’t mean Pedro should have let him bull rush him.
The whole thing shouldn’t have happened, but it did and it was handled the best way it could have been.
I will never forget that broadcast tho. The announcers were so blatantly anti Pedro, announcing it like it was the WWE or some shit. I remember watching it like gtfoh dude charged him!
Oh god, I forgot how bad the booth was talking about it. You would’ve thought Pedro threw a puppy he stole from an orphan off a cliff or something.
Even the pitch Manny got hot about, dude yells “It wasn’t even close!” Yea ok motherfucker you stand in after what happened the last inning and see a Roger Clemens fastball head high and inside. Manny knew what was up. Clemens just missed his shot.
Look at us…
Asking the important questions
Hey, I’m sure if given the opportunity Kershaw would’ve slam dunked Zimmer into the ground
God damn I remember watching that live lol.
Kershaw’s career era is lower than many Cy Young seasons.
His career WHIP is also the 5th lowest all time
Isn’t 3 championships? 2020 2024 2025? Am I missing something
Baseball reference only counts titles for players who were on the postseason roster at some point, and Kershaw was on the IL in 2024.
You mean that running around shirtless during the championship celebration doesn’t count for baseball reference?
Nope, gotta keep the shirt on. It’s precedent.
So that’s why Altuve didn’t want his shirt ripped off.
Some sites don’t include if the player wasn’t on the playoffs roster. He was mostly injured in 2024, definitely didn’t play in postseason. Im sure Dodgers still have him a ring in 2024.
Yeah Dodgers give rings if you have a single appearance as a player throughout the season.
Dodgers give rings to the entire organization, including minor league staff.
This is pretty standard stuff
Probably because he didn’t play in the 2024 playoffs
Their career totals were nearly identical. This doesn’t say anything about how they got there, which is a very different claim.
Yeah, Pedro peaked quite a bit higher. He had 5 full seasons with an ERA+ above 200, including a 291, while Kershaw’s full season high was 197, along with one season where made 21 starts with a 237 ERA+. Of course, the flip side is Pedro took a bit longer to become elite early in his career and then after his prime the decline was clearly worse than Kershaw’s.
Pedro didn’t have an ERA+ above 125 as a starter until age 25 (where he broke out big time with a 219), while Kershaw had four such seasons before age 25, including two over 150. (Then, at then end of their careers, Pedro’s decline was slightly worse. Pedro post age 33: 78 IP per season with a 94 ERA+. Kershaw post age 33: 100 IP per season with a 147 ERA+.
So, yeah. Same stats in the end, but Kershaw had a much better early 20s and a slightly better mid 30s, while Pedro’s prime was much better.
Baseball has become too stats and analytics-driven, and it leads people to consume the sport through numbers rather than… actual consumption of the sport. Like you alluded to, Kershaw and Pedro had very different careers. The totals being similar is simply a coincidence.
Meh, I think looking at, for example, Pedro’s 5 best season’s compared to Kershaw’s 5 best seasons is being even more analytic driven while also still telling the story better.
It’s not about too much analytics. It’s about too much LAZY analytics.
Prime Pedro was the most dominant pitcher I’ve ever seen.
I have to agree. For me only Randy was at that level but Pedro was out of this world, literally greatest peak ever.
How many old men did Kershaw toss to the ground though?
Not enough
Seriously, he should have body checked Frank McCourt for the fans at least once.
It’s crazy they have a similar amount of innings but Pedro started about 40 fewer games
yeah iirc Kershaw was a hyped 1st rounder SP prospect with a direct ticket to the rotation at age 20, but Pedro less so and had to start in the bullpen and prove himself
His first full season, he was used almost exclusively as a reliever. 65 games, only 2 starts.
He did pretty well with a 2.61 ERA/146 ERA+, but the Dodgers went all in on their rotation of Hershiser, Candiotti, Ramon Martinez, Kevin Gross, & Pedro Astacio, with Pedro as a long reliever.
Pedro did give up walks at a pretty high rate, but had better metrics (hits/9, HR/9, K/9, WHIP, FIP) than basically all of them, although mostly those weren’t tracked to the same extent as now.
Honestly, with how important pitcher wins & ERA were back then, & how only Astacio had a winning record among the starters, I’m surprised they didn’t give Pedro more starts. As a sign of his comparative effectiveness, despite having half the innings, he had a higher WAR (3.0) than either Hershiser (2.7) or Gross (1.4). Again, WAR wasn’t tracked then, but you could still tell he was doing better than them. And they ended up with a .500 record, so clearly, they weren’t setting the world on fire.
But they kept the exact same starting rotation through 1994 & instead shipped Pedro to Montreal in exchange for Delino Deshields, & were on-track for another .500 finish when the strike happened.
Ow
It’s really not that crazy. Pedro averaged 6.2 IP a start, Kershaw 6.1
Is it? Pedro appeared in 20 more games total, so this is pretty close to what you’d expect, without even accounting for differences in era.
Not even close, bud.
Pedro with 3 saves, Kershaw with 0.
Checkmate, atheists.
Thanks Obama
Pedro was a little guy at 5’9” doing what he did in the middle of the steroid era that Selig pretended wasn’t happening, and he was robbed of MVP by a voter who left him off his ballot entirely saying pitchers have the cy young lmao he lost to Pudge Rodriguez a cheater
Kershaw was a great pitcher but Pedro was something else
Baseball writers are some of the biggest wienies to walk the earth
I’d take Pedro Martinez everyday and twice on Sunday if my life depended on that pitcher winning a game.
Pedro to start and only Mariano in the bullpen. Guaranteed win.
Sign me up
Pedro was a tank when it mattered. In his 14 playoff starts, he didn’t make it through 6 innings just twice.
I also think there’s something to be said about having to face Division opponents again in the playoffs. The more you see a pitcher, the more the advantage switches to the hitter. 6 of Pedro’s 12 playoff appearances from 1999-2004 were against the Yankees. Just 3 of Kershaw’s total postseason appearances were against Divisional opponents.
Both hall of famers for sure.
The image says that Kershaw isn’t in the hall of fame. It’s *right there*… ^/s
Both great but Pedro’s 7-ish year peak was so so unbelievably gross.
In the middle of the steroid era no less…
I got to see him make a couple starts in those years. Undoubtedly the best pitcher I’ve ever personally seen.
On paper. In reality very different.
Kershaw was a bit more consistent throughout his career, but Pedro had a better peak. Kershaw’s best season was with an ERA+ of 237. Pedro beat that in both 1999 and 2000, topping off at 291 ERA+ in 2000. Pedro also has 3 seasons with a WAR of 9.0 or more (1997, 1999, 2000), while Kershaw topped off at 8.1 in 2013.
I think people who missed Pedro’s prime will never understand how unhittable he was. You had to see it to believe it.
Edit: As an Expos’ fan, I’d also like to point out that Pedro went 17-8 with a team that was 59-72 when he wasn’t pitching. 1997 is often forgotten in his peak years but I personally think it was his most impressive season.
A recent first ballot hall of fame pitcher never had a single best SEASON ERA lower than Kershaw’s CAREER ERA.
Levels.
Imagine if the injury troubles didn’t hit Kershaw hard in his last near-decade of pitching. His numbers would’ve looked even crazier.
once that first back injury hit it never stopped he end up missing time every single year after that it was super unfortunate
This doesn’t include playoffs, does it? How do their playoff stats compare?
What NFL player was Pedro friends with growing up tho? /s
The real difference is the shape of their peaks. Kershaw’s was about 9 years of coinsistent dominance in his 20s. Pedro’s was a 7 year peak with a way higher 2 year peak where he pitched the greatest seasons of all time. Sadly both pitchers couldn’t sustain it past 33.
Is it weird to say that Kershaw is underrated? He is the greatest dodger of all time easily and in the conversation for top 10 pitchers of all time. I’m having a hard time deciding if his career is better than Verlander’s.
Why does it say 2 Chips? He won 2020, 2024, & 2025
Looks like they’re going by listing as a player on the actual WS roster, and Kersh was injured for the 24 series.
And yet somehow I trust giving the ball to Pedro way more than Kershaw with the season on the line.
Both are obvious first ballot HoFers but Pedro’s peak is unmatched. Kershaw may actually be the better overall pitcher though.
Kershaw’s 4.6 postseason ERA is a little tough to overlook imo. I don’t see the argument for him being the better overall pitcher.
Grady Little sticking with Pedro in NY when he was clearly gassed is seen as one of the all time mismanagements of a pitcher in a playoff game… But now imagine that year after year after year with Kershaw. Being left in an inning too long. Or a batter too long. Pitching on short and shorter rest. Pedro probably had that dawg in him a little more than Kershaw and was probably more durable, but I think Kershaw was mismanaged to his detriment…. But i would agree that if they were to pitch head to head 100 times Pedro comes out on top. I hate playing the what ifs but I will always wonder what Kershaws career would’ve looked like without the back injuries
Pedro’s peak was higher, with slightly more WAR & K’s. But both are HoF’ers. Incredible pitchers!
It’s wild that Martinez 00 wasn’t an MVP season given that it’s the most dominant performance by a starter ever and not just by a little.
The exact same ERA+ with such a massive amount of innings pitched is easily the most insane part of this comparison for me.
Pedro was the most dominant pitcher I’ve ever seen. He’ll always have the edge in my book.
Where is the “being childhood friends of first overall pick, Super Bowl winning quarterbacks” row?
Pedro tossed Zimmer to the ground. He’s automatically better
The identical ERA+ is wild.
Both dodger legends
Careers, sure. Peak? No way.
