Clayton Kershaw’s 3,000th K Opens Door to Immortal Club

LOS ANGELES—Major League Baseball doesn’t often get to experience milestone starting-pitching moments these days. But Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium offered one of them.

Down to the last possible moment, with pitch No. 100 of the game, Clayton Kershaw painted the outside corner with an 85-mph slider to Vinny Capra of the Chicago White Sox, becoming the 20th pitcher in history to record 3,000 strikeouts, and only the third pitcher to do it playing for the same team his entire career.

“It kind of backed up a little bit,” Kershaw said after the Dodgers came back from a two-run deficit in the ninth inning to defeat Chicago 5-4, on a Freddie Freeman walk-off base hit. “It sure wasn’t where it was supposed to be.”

Kershaw took 15 of the hitters he faced as far as two strikes but could only put three of them away, striking out Capra, the No. 9 hitter, on a 1-2 count to record MLB history.

“The White Sox made it very difficult on me,” he said. “I wasn’t very good tonight.”

Kershaw hadn’t thrown as many as 100 pitches in game since June 20, 2023, against the Los Angeles Angels in a win at Anaheim. The road since has been pocked with injuries and subsequent surgeries on his shoulder, foot and knee. It’s a miracle he’s still on the mound at 37 years old and in the middle of his 18th—and what could be his final—season, all with the Dodgers.

Manager Dave Roberts has heretofore been very careful with the left-hander, once pulling Kershaw out of an early-season perfect game after seven innings.

Wednesday night was both excruciating and sublime; two-strike pitches hit for fly outs brought audible groans from fans. It became obvious in the first inning that getting the three necessary strikeouts was not going to be easy. Kershaw threw 29 pitches to six batters, allowing a run. When Austin Slater tagged a slow, hanging slider into the left-field pavilion for a two-run, third-inning homer, the White Sox had a 3-2 advantage.

“My slider was terrible,” Kershaw said.

He followed that with a three-pitch swinging strikeout of Miguel Vargas for his first of the evening, giving fans some hope of 3,000. In the strictest sense, Kershaw said, his own agony matched the mood of the fans.

“I think it was palpable, if that’s the right word,” he said.

Kershaw had thrown 92 pitches through five innings, and his whiff of Lenyn Sosa to end the fifth put him one away. Roberts didn’t even think about pulling the pitcher.

“There was no discussion at all about it in the dugout,” Roberts said. “I just sent him back out there.”

The sellout crowd of 53,536 gave Kershaw a rousing ovation when he took the mound for the sixth. After strikeout 3,000, another ovation lasted six minutes as Kershaw jumped back out of the dugout for several curtain calls.

“That’s something I’ll always remember,” Kershaw said.

We’re in an age of baseball in which starting pitching has been nullified, replaced by openers. The White Sox illustrated this by using left-hander Brandon Eisert for the first inning only on Wednesday night.

The perfect game seems dead. So is the one-pitcher no-hitter, which has become as rare as a copper penny. Roberts is the only manager in history to lift three starters from perfect game attempts after seven innings, doing so in the name of pitch counts and avoiding injuries. This is not to mention the complete game—there have only been 18 so far this season. There were 28 in 2024, the lowest number in Major League history.

So, Kershaw’s rising to this occasion had a certain old-time feel to it.

“It was just one of those things that I felt I was going to give him every opportunity to do it at home,” Roberts said.

Walter Johnson and Bob Gibson are the only other pitchers in history to throw at least 3,000 strikeouts playing their entire careers for the same team. It happens about once every 50 years. Johnson had 3,509 in a career that ended with the Washington Senators in 1927. Bob Gibson had 3,117 before retiring from the St. Louis Cardinals in 1975. Half a century later, Kershaw has joined that duo.

“I’m super grateful to be on that list with all of them,” Kershaw said.

Fellow Dodger greats Don Drysdale (2,486) and Sandy Koufax (2,396) are not even close to Kershaw on that esteemed roster.

Among active pitchers, Chris Sale (2,528) and Gerrit Cole (2,251) are the closest to 3,000, but both have played for multiple teams.

Kershaw’s achievement is not going to happen again anytime soon, if ever, making his magical midsummer moment one to savor.