Sandy Koufax attended the World Series in Los Angeles last weekend, but he did not throw out a ceremonial first pitch; in retirement, he has mostly eschewed center stage, politely and graciously maintaining his privacy. But he loves being around the game, enjoys his conversations with players, and before Game 3 he quietly made his way down a corridor underneath the stands at Dodger Stadium. In jeans and a dress shirt, the Hall of Famer settled into a seat behind home plate early in the 18 innings played that night.
Clayton Kershaw will someday make a speech in Cooperstown, when he's inducted into the Hall of Fame for his three Cy Young awards and MVP award and many ERA titles. And now that he is committed to remaining with the Dodgers for the years ahead, it is all but assured Kershaw will spend the rest of his career with the franchise before joining Koufax in legacy.
Kershaw and the Dodgers negotiated a one-year extension beyond the two years that were remaining on his contract; he is owed $93 million over the next three seasons.
He could have opted out of his contract, walking away from the last two years of his deal and testing the open market -- and he would've drawn at least some interest. Kershaw doesn't have an exorbitant lifestyle, but as one of the most prominent members of the players association, he does have some obligation to union brethren to take the best possible deal -- and if he had walked away from the Dodgers, he might have struggled to pull in offers that would've come close to replicating what he'll make with L.A. in 2019 and 2020.
Agents and club evaluators polled informally this week about Kershaw's decision were just about unanimous in their collective opinion that Kershaw's best financial decision, under the current circumstances, was to keep his Dodger deal in place for 2019 and 2020.
He is 30 years old and coming off an excellent 2018 regular-season performance, in which he posted a 2.73 ERA. But any teams outside of L.A. would've wanted to pay Kershaw for what he might do for them, rather than what he's accomplished for the Dodgers in his career, and the trends in Kershaw's stuff are distinct.
His average fastball velocity:
2015: 93.6 mph
2016: 93.1 mph
2017: 92.7 mph
2018: 90.9 mph
Evaluators with other clubs say that because Kershaw doesn't throw as hard as he used to, and because all of his pitches generally move toward right-handed hitters, rather than away from them, he is struggling to generate soft contact or swings-and-misses. His rate of missed swings over the past few years:
2015 regular season: 33 percent
2016 regular season: 32 percent
2017 regular season: 30 percent
2018 regular season: 23 percent
2018 postseason overall: 21 percent
2018 World Series: 15 percent
It doesn't take a team of analysts to figure out Kershaw's dominance has diminished over the past two years and that a long-term investment in the lefty would bear heightened risk -- especially in light of the unspecified physical problems he's had.
Kershaw's innings, year to year:
2015: 232 2/3
2016: 149
2017: 175
2018: 161 1/3
Some parallels between Kershaw's situation and negotiations involving a couple of Yankees stars could be instructive in illuminating the reality the Dodgers left-hander faced. After the 2010 season, Derek Jeter's record-setting 10-year, $189 million contract expired, and the gap between what he wanted in an extension and what the Yankees were willing to pay was enormous -- somewhere between $75 million and $100 million. As the impasse lingered, Yankees GM Brian Cashman encouraged Jeter to test the market, betting Jeter, at age 36, wouldn't get anything close in offers from other teams what the Yankees were willing to pay; Jeter was worth far more to the Yankees, because of his legacy, than any other team. Jeter wanted to stay with the Yankees and never considered other teams, and he and the Yankees worked out a deal which, in the end, paid Jeter about $60 million for his last four seasons. Similarly, there are rival officials who believe Kershaw's greatest value is as a Dodger, as a homegrown superstar destined to play his whole career with the same team.
After CC Sabathia played the first three seasons of a seven-year, $161 million contract, he had the right to opt out of the last four years of his contract after the 2011 season. But Sabathia liked pitching in New York far more than he had anticipated, and he also had a major shoulder tear that might've made it difficult for him to get as much from another team as the $92 million the Yankees were set to pay him in his last four years. Rather than opt out of his deal, Sabathia used his looming free agency as leverage and the Yankees added two more years to his contract.
In recent seasons, Sabathia's velocity has dropped, but he has learned to succeed by mixing a changeup and a sinking fastball with cutters, giving him the weapons necessary to induce imperfect contact. The only AL pitcher to generate a better rate of weakly hit baseballs in 2018 was Boston's Chris Sale.
It's unclear how long Kershaw will pitch or whether he'll age competitively as well as Sabathia. He's never really been forced to rely on a changeup in his career and has joked self-deprecatingly about his struggles to execute the pitch; it might be that he'll have to refine some kind of offspeed pitch out of necessity. It's unclear whether Kershaw's injury issues will eventually end his career.
What we do know is he'll probably be a Dodger for life, like his friend Sandy Koufax.