Skewed Narrative – Kershaw in the Postseason

“Clayton Kershaw isn’t good in the Postseason”. I’ve heard this said numerous times over the past 5-6 years. It’s bothered me because that conclusion can only be reached by focusing only on the box scores. Now, I don’t think everyone who has said that takes that approach, but once a narrative is out there with some semblance of data, then it gets parroted repeatedly. My issue is that I think this is far from the truth about Kershaw. Let’s take a quick look at the data:

Starts: 22

Undeniable Very Good to Excellent Performances: 9 (41%)

Here’s a quick rundown of those games

• 7 innings, 1 R, 12 K’s (Win)
• 6 innings, 0 ER, 6 K’s (No Decision)
• 6 innings, 0 ER, 5 K’s (Loss – 1-0)
• 7 innings, 1 R, 8 K’s (Win)
• 7 innings, 0 R, 6 K’s (Win)
• 6 innings, 1 R, 5 K’s (Win)
• 7 innings, 1 R, 11 K’s (Win)
• 8 innings, 0 R, 3 K’s (Win)
• 7 innings, 1 R, 9 K’s (Win)

So clearly he’s not a complete dud. But what would people think if the list looked like this:

Undeniable Very Good to Excellent Performances: 15 (68%)

• 7 innings, 1 R, 12 K’s (Win)
• 6 innings, 0 ER, 6 K’s (No Decision)
• 6 innings, 0 ER, 5 K’s (Loss – 1-0)
• 7 innings, 1 R, 8 K’s (Win)
• 7 innings, 0 R, 6 K’s (Win)
• 6 innings, 1 R, 5 K’s (Win)
• 7 innings, 1 R, 11 K’s (Win)
• 8 innings, 0 R, 3 K’s (Win)
• 7 innings, 1 R, 9 K’s (Win)
• 6 innings, 1 R, 4 K’s
• 6 innings, 1 R, 8 K’s
• 6 innings, 0 R, 9 K’s
• 6 innings, 1 R, 11 K’s
• 6 innings, 2 R, 10 K’s
• 6 innings, 2 R, 7 K’s

All of these performances happened as well. The issue is that 6 times, he ran out of gas in the 7th. My issue is that, once there’s a pattern it is incumbent on the manager(s) to begin to react accordingly. Over 1/4 (27%) of his “less than stellar” starts that people will point to as support of the “Kershaw isn’t good” narrative, are games where he was excellent, but was left in too long.

Now on top of the Very Good to Excellent Performances, there were also 2 that were Decent performances that led to victories:

• 5 innings, 3 R, 7 K’s (Win)
• 5 innings, 2 R, 4 K’s (No Decision – Team win)

This gets us up to 77% of his career postseason starts that virtually any team would take in a heartbeat. Hardly seems like a guy who can’t pitch in the postseason. In truth, he’s had 5 starts where he was a dud. What’s interesting about that is that if you look at John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, & Greg Maddux, they had 16 dud starts combined, which is roughly 5 per person. That’s right on par with how I believe Kershaw has really pitched. Just as a side note, here are the team records when those 4 pitchers started games in the postseason:

• Smoltz (17-10)
• Glavine (18-17)
• Maddux (13-17)
• Kershaw (13-9)

I know that Kershaw is not perfect and his postseason numbers are not equal to his regular season numbers. That’s to be expected when playing the best teams in all of baseball. But even disregarding the competition factor, I believe that the narrative regarding his postseason struggles is significantly skewed and should be corrected.

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Categories: Baseball