Chapman_is_Gone said:
bonsallbear said:
Kershaw Becomes third youngest to 2500 strikeouts in ML history. > Better than most.
Wow, what a d*** you must be in real life. You know this thread annoys multiple Cal fans, who either dislike the Dodgers, dislike the Giants, or don't want to have to wade past a baseball thread every day when looking for Cal information, yet you continue to have a conversation practically with yourself so that the thread remains toward the top of the board.
F*** you.
After 4400+ posts, if you doesn't like the thread, um, ignore it. There are many threads on this board I just don't care about. It isn't always apparent from the thread title. It isn't like you have to "wade" past this thread. It is one thread among many. If it is at the top, just say to yourself, "Stupid Dodgers fans and GIants fans still going at it after 8 years." Or put it out of your mind. It seems a little late for admin to put it in OT after 8 years.
And in any event, no matter what Kershaw does in his regular season career, and he certainly has had a Hall of Fame regular season career, he's got a lot of work to do in order to be as good a post-season pitcher as Ryan Vogelsong. He'll have to improve a LOT on his best post-season to have as good a post-season as Vogelsong's best. Has Kershaw ever been the best pitcher in a single post-season? Um, no, never, not even close. Ryan Vogelsong was easily the best pitcher in the 2012 post-season. A 1.09 ERA for a single post-season. Not a ton of guys to do that with over 20 innings in a post-season, but a fair number, a bunch of guys who don't choke in the post-season (like Matt Cain, and his 0.00 ERA in the 2010 post-season). Vogelsong was not as stellar in the 2014 post-season, but still, the team was 3-0 in his starts.
And want to know why Vogelsong was able to get a second World Series ring in 2014? Because in the 2014 post-season, Clayton Kershaw sucked. As a regular season team, the Dodgers were a lot better than either the GIants or the Cardinals, but Kershaw just plain sucked in his two games against the Cardinals (7.82 ERA, blowing one big lead and blowing another lead by giving up a homer to Matt Adams, Kershaw just doesn't give up homers against lefties except when he is pitching with both hands around his neck like the post-season choker he usually is). If Kershaw weren't a post-season choker, the Dodgers would have beaten both the Giants and the Cardinals to get to the World Series. But thanks to the post-season choker, the Giants got a third Worlds Series in five years, and Vogelsong got to have a 7-0 record in post-season games he started.
You'd think a guy like Kershaw could, at least once in the last 7 years, when he was one of the best pitchers in the game during the regular season, put a team on his back like, say, Bumgarner in 2014, and get them to a Series title. Sure, you can't expect a guy to do that every year. But Kershaw got 7 chances over the last 7 years to do that, and came up big ZERO times. And in 2014, he didn't need to put the team on his back, he just needed to avoid choking. But that wasn't going to happen.
Maybe now that we're in a fake season, Kershaw can do something different in the post-season. Historically, the Dodgers are good at winning the series in a fake season (see 1981), so hey, there's hope.
