Under The Knife 9/22/25
Public Enemy Number One
Clayton Kershaw retires as more than a Hall of Famer. He exits the game as one of the most complete pitchers in the history of baseball, someone who combined dominance, consistency, adaptability, and longevity in ways that few have. His career ERA, still hovering at a scarcely believable 2.54, is the lowest of any pitcher in the modern era with significant innings. He passed 3,000 strikeouts, joined the small club of left handers with more than 200 wins, and finished with over 80 bWAR. That last number is the shorthand, the tidy way to express a career that was not just long but meaningful. WAR rewards time on the mound and Kershaw carved out enough to push himself into the top 70 players of all time, placing him among inner circle pitchers, and with his final season resurgence in 2025, he reminded everyone that his greatness was not just confined to the prime years when he piled up Cy Youngs.
For a long time, Kershaw’s numbers tracked almost perfectly with Sandy Koufax’s. The comparison was natural. Both were lefty Dodgers aces. Both owned summers where hitters looked helpless. Both suffered injuries that limited what they could do at times. The split came in duration. Koufax, pitching in an era just before Frank Jobe thought up his miracle, was finished by age-30 with just under 50 WAR. Kershaw, pitching in an era where surgery and training extended careers, pushed past 80.
If Koufax had today’s sports medicine, it is possible that his career would have looked more like Kershaw’s, stretched into a second act where the peak brilliance settled into durable excellence. Instead, Koufax burned hot and brief. Kershaw may not have quite touched those four years where Koufax was baseball’s sun, but his sustained dominance over a decade plus is what separates him. In many ways, Kershaw is what Koufax could have been, the vision of that kind of talent given time, treatment, and chance.
Ranking Kershaw in context means lining him up against the best left handers of all time. Warren Spahn leads in volume, with 363 wins, 100 WAR, and a body of work defined by resilience. Randy Johnson towers as the strikeout god, with five Cy Youngs and 10.6 K/9 in an era that was not as forgiving to pitchers. Lefty Grove dominated the 1930s with a 148 ERA+ and nine ERA titles. Steve Carlton, Tom Glavine, Whitey Ford, Eddie Plank, and Carl Hubbell all belong in the discussion.
By WAR, Kershaw is behind Spahn, Johnson, Grove, and Carlton. He stands with Hubbell and Ford. But add the ERA title streak, the MVP, the strikeout crown, the way he held the Dodgers together through October after October, and his case grows. Among left handers he sits in the top five, perhaps top three if you prioritize efficiency and peak adjusted for era. He has a real argument to stand next to Johnson and Spahn as the greatest lefties ever.
That puts him in elite company overall. Among pitchers of any kind, his WAR places him behind the long accumulation monsters like Cy Young, Walter Johnson, and Greg Maddux. He trails Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, Tom Seaver, and Pedro Martínez, but the gap is not as large as it seems. ERA+ shows his run prevention as some of the best ever. His win percentage, over .700, puts him in the same space as Whitey Ford, one of the few pitchers to combine consistent excellence with a winning environment. He does not quite reach the top ten of all time pitchers, but he is solidly in the top twenty five, and perhaps top fifteen if you care about peak more than accumulation. In an era where innings have shrunk and managers pull aces before the third time through the order, the fact that Kershaw still accumulated this much WAR makes the case stronger.
It may feel odd that we have seen so many of the best pitchers of all time in this recent generation. Verlander, Scherzer, Greinke, and Kershaw all pitched at Hall of Fame levels for over a decade, often overlapping in the same league. Before that it was Maddux, Clemens, Johnson, and Pedro. What has changed is medicine and the way baseball uses pitchers. Starters no longer carry the 300 inning loads of Spahn or Grove, but they pitch more efficiently and teams protect their arms. That allows more peaks to shine longer. It is not crazy that we have seen this many greats clustered together. It is a product of evolution. The game has given us a chance to see greatness extended and in Kershaw’s case, to see a career that mirrors what Koufax might have been had he been born in 1988 instead of 1935.
Kershaw’s retirement does not close the door on his legend. It freezes the numbers and lets them breathe. In five years when the Hall calls, the debate will not be whether he gets in, but how high we should rank him among the game’s immortals. He is not Koufax, but he is the answer to the question of what Koufax could have been, and in many ways, that is the greater gift.
Gratefully, let’s get to the injuries:
SHOHEI OHTANI, DH/P LAD (no injury)
Shohei Ohtani as a playoff reliever is one of those ideas that seems drawn from Hollywood. The image of him jogging from the bullpen, the crowd rising, and the flashbacks to the World Baseball Classic where he froze Mike Trout on a slider to clinch gold for Japan, is irresistible. The Dodgers know it too, to the point where Dave Roberts had to address it. It is far more likely that Ohtani heads to the playoffs in the conventional role of a starter, maybe paired in a tandem with Roki Sasaki (who should be activated late this week, though Ohtani starts Tuesday and won’t again for the rest of the regular season.) But the reliever card will always be sitting in the deck, tempting, dramatic, and complicated.
The complications begin with the simple fact that Ohtani is not a traditional two-way player anymore. He is no longer playing outfield, no longer throwing between games in the way a regular pitcher does. Asking him to warm up as a reliever isn’t just a matter of standing and loosening the arm. He has a carefully calibrated recovery plan. He hasn’t managed his workload around the quick up-downs and rapid fire stress relievers face. His body is conditioned for routine, not chaos, and relief work is all chaos. You call, you throw, you enter. That rhythm, so different from a start, risks undoing the protections the Dodgers have built around him.
Add in the positional question. If he comes in to close, what happens if the game goes past the ninth? To keep his bat in the game, Dave Roberts might be tempted to shift him to a corner outfield spot, but Ohtani hasn’t played the field in years. The running, the reads, the risk of collision or a dive on repaired elbows is the nightmare scenario. If he pitches and is removed, the team risks losing him entirely from the lineup. The roster gymnastics are daunting.
Yet the temptation lingers. If it is Game 7 of a World Series, if the bullpen is spent, if the script demands something unforgettable, could the Dodgers resist? There’s a shade of Kirk Gibson’s moment there. Ohtani has already proven he can summon that moment on the biggest stage. The WBC was no accident. He thrives on history. A rational team keeps him away from that fire. Baseball has never been entirely rational. If things get nutty and the season is balanced on one pitch, don’t rule out Ohtani walking in from the pen again.
Hit the Undertaker’s music as Ohtani walks in and the crowd goes wild (as do network execs.)
YORDAN ALVAREZ, DH/OF HOU (sprained ankle)
Joe Espada says that Yordan Alvarez is “getting better” and that’s likely the case. Ankle sprains, even severe ones, aren’t fatal and are seldom permanent. However, these don’t just suddenly get better and even braced, there’s a function and pain issue that Alvarez or any person will have to get past. Braces are effective, but not magical, though I’ve already invoked the spirit of Kirk Gibson for a possible return.
However, with the Cleveland Guardians suddenly ahead in the standings after getting swept by the Mariners, every game not only counts but counts even more. Alvarez is eligible to come back on the 26th for that final series with the Angels and it’s hard to imagine that things will be fully decided by then. However, Yordan Alvarez himself said on Sunday that he wouldn’t be joining the team on their road trip, leaving his immediate future in the hands of the rest of the team.
Alvarez is still getting active treatments and is off the crutches, though still in a boot. He’s not swinging or doing any sort of twisting activities, he’s certainly not running, but I don’t think cardio is going to be any sort of barrier to his return. If he’s out for this week, what about the next for the Wild Card round if they’re there? That sounds iffy as well and might just symbolize how one little misstep can throw off an entire season.
Oh, as for rumors there’s more here - a high ankle sprain or a fracture - a trusted source insists neither is true, nor did the mechanism of injury suggest it. Sometimes extreme inversions like what he had are nothing, though those are often chronically lax ones like Steph Curry or Leonard Fournette’s famous playoff “sprain.”
There’s three (count them) playoff-altering pitcher injuries, a bunch of reliever issues, and two pitchers that aren’t going to make the playoffs. All that is behind the paywall. It’s the playoffs. Which reminds me, who won their fantasy leagues or came out ahead on the year because you subscribed to UTK?