Clayton Kershaw

It wasn’t so much the culmination of a career as it was another signpost pointing the way to the Hall of Fame.

It certainly wasn’t the last pitch Clayton Kershaw will ever throw for the Dodgers, but it will likely be among the most memorable.

Because when Chicago White Sox third baseman Vinny Capra took a 1-2 slider for a strike to end the sixth inning Wednesday night, Kershaw became just the 20^th pitcher in major league history to record 3,000 strikeouts.

More people have flown to the moon than have struck out 3,000 major league hitters. And for Kershaw, who has been chasing history since he threw his first big-league pitch as a skinny 20-year-old, entering such an elite club will be a big piece of his legacy.

Only now he has the wisdom and the grace to realize it was never about him in the first place.

“It’s an incredible list. I’m super, super grateful to be a part of it,” Kershaw said. “But if you don’t have anybody to celebrate with, it’s just doesn’t matter.”

Kershaw would know since he’s one of the most decorated players in history. Twice a 20-game winner, a five-time ERA champion and two-time world champion, he’s won three Cy Young Awards, was a league MVP and is a 10-time all-star.

“The individual stuff,” he repeated “is only as important as the people around you.”

So while Kershaw stood out when reached the 3K milestone on the 100^th and final pitch he threw in the Dodgers’ 5-4 win, he refused to stand apart, pausing on his way off the field to point at his family sitting in their usual seats in the front row of the loge section. He then accepted hugs from teammates Mookie Betts and Kiké Hernández.

But he saved his warmest embrace for manager Dave Roberts, who bounded up the dugout steps to greet him.

“We’ve been through a lot together,” said Roberts, who has guided Kershaw through doubts and disappointments, through high points and lows in their 10 years together.

“I’m one of the few people in uniform that has been through them,” Roberts said. “That was kind of what the embrace was.”

Kershaw, 37, is just the fourth left-hander to reach 3,000 strikeouts but more important, he said, is the fact he’s just the second in a century, after Bob Gibson, to do it with the same team. No pitcher, in fact, has spent more years in a Dodger uniform that Kershaw.

“I don’t know if I put a ton of stock in being with one team early on,” he said. “Over time you get older and appreciate one organization a little bit more. Doc [Roberts] stuck with me, too. It hasn’t been all roses, I know that.

“So there’s just a lot of mutual respect and I’m super grateful now, looking back, to get to say that I spent my whole career here. And I will spend my whole career here.”

Kershaw struck out the first batter he faced in his Dodger debut 18 years ago, getting the Cardinals’ Skip Schumaker to wave at a 1-2 pitch. It was the first of three strikeouts he would record in his first big-league inning. So even from the start, the K in Kershaw — the scorebook symbol for a strikeout — stood out more than than the rest of the name.

In between Schumaker and Capra, Kershaw fanned nearly 1,000 different hitters, from CJ Abrams and Bobby Abreu to Ryan Zimmerman and Barry Zito.

He’s stuck out (Jason) Castro and (Buddy) Kennedy, Elvis (Andrus) and (Alex) Presley and (Billy) Hamilton and (Alex) Jackson. He’s whiffed (Scott) Cousins and brothers (Bengie and Yadier Molina), a (Chin-lung) Hu and a Yu (Darvish), a Cook (Aaron) and a (Jeff) Baker as well as a Trout (Mike) and multiple Marlins (Miami).

Former Giant Brandon Belt was Kershaw’s most frequent victim, striking out 30 times in 62 at-bats. Fewer than 50 batters have faced him at least five times without striking out, according to Baseball Reference.

Along the way Kershaw’s unique windup, the right knee pausing as he lifts both hands just above his cap, has become an instantly recognizable silhouette for a generation of Dodger fans.

There’s only one other left-hander in team history that can compare with Kershaw, yet he and Sandy Koufax are so different the comparisons are more contrasts than anything.

Kershaw has been brilliant over the entirety of his 18-year career, winning 10 or more games 12 times. He’s never finished a season with a losing record and his career ERA of 2.52 is the lowest of the last 105 years for pitchers who are thrown at least 1,500 innings. Even at 37, he’s unbeaten in four decisions.

Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw walks off the mound after recording his 3,000th career strikeout as right fielder Andy Pages, left, and first baseman Freddie Freeman, right, react behind him.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Koufax was 36-40 with an ERA above 4.00 through his first six seasons. And while Koufax’s career was ended by injury before his 31^st birthday, Kershaw has pushed through repeated problems with his back, shoulder, knee, toe, elbow, pelvis and forearm.

Only Don Sutton has won more games in a Dodger uniform than the 216 that belong to Kershaw, who will soon be enshrined next to Koufax and Sutton in the Hall of Fame.

“Early on they were talking about this next Sandy Koufax guy, this big left-hander. Really didn’t have an idea where the ball was going, but pretty special,” said Roberts, who retired as a player after Kershaw’s rookie season. “It’s much better to be wearing the same uniform as him.”

But Roberts has seen the other side, when the young promise gives way to pitfalls. He’s seen Kershaw battle so many injuries, he’s spent nearly as much time on the injured list as in the rotation over the past five seasons. Alongside the brilliance, he’s seen the uncertainty.

So with Kershaw approaching history Wednesday, Roberts loosened the leash, letting him go back to the mound for the sixth inning despite having thrown 92 pitches, his most in more than two years.

“I wanted to give Clayton every opportunity,” he said. “You could see the emotion that he had today, trying to get that third strike. But I think it just happened the way it’s supposed to happen, in the sense that it was the third out [and] we got a chance to really celebrate him.”

Each time Kershaw got to two strikes, something he did to 15 of the 27 hitters he faced, “I said a few Hail Marys” Roberts said.

“It’s the last box for Clayton to check in his tremendous career,” he added, saying he doubted many more pitchers will ever reach 3,000 strikeouts. “You’ve got to stay healthy, you’ve got to be good early in your career, you’ve got to be good for a long time.”

And Kershaw has been all of that.

That, Roberts said, was behind the second long hug he and his pitcher shared in the dugout Wednesday night as a highlight reel of Kershaw’s career played on the video boards above both outfield pavilions. The sellout crowd, which had long been on its feet, continuing cheering, eventually drawing Kershaw back out onto the field to doff his cap in appreciation.

“That ovation,” he said “was something that I’ll never forget, for sure.”

Because who wants to celebrate alone?

The slider was sizzling. The hitter was frozen. The strikeout was roaring.

With an 84-mph pitch on the black in the sixth inning against the Chicago White Sox Wednesday at a rollicking Dodger Stadium, Clayton Kershaw struck out Vinny Capra looking to become the 20th player in baseball history to record 3,000 strikeouts.

As impressive as the pitch itself was the cementing of a truth that has taken nearly two decades to become evident.

Clayton Kershaw is the greatest pitcher in Dodgers history.

Clayton Kershaw records his 3,000th career strikeout as the Dodgers take on the Chicago White Sox at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday.

(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)

Greater than even the great Sandy Koufax.

Gasp. Scream. Please.

This opinion appeared here three years ago and was swarmed with a barrage of emphatic and mostly emotional arguments for Koufax.

How dare you diss our Sandy! Koufax won more championships! Koufax never choked in the postseason! Koufax was more dominant!

All true, Koufax being a tremendous human being worthy of every syllable of praise. But as Wednesday so clearly proved in front of a history-thirsty crowd at Chavez Ravine, Kershaw has done something that any defense of Koufax can not equal.

He’s endured. He’s taken the ball far more than Koufax while outlasting him in virtually every impact pitching category.

The Dodgers’ 5-4 victory Wednesday was the perfect illustration of the grinding that has lifted Kershaw to the Dodger heavens. He didn’t have his best stuff, he was battered by one of baseball’s worst teams for four runs on nine hits, but he fought through six innings to dramatically record his third strikeout and end his quest for 3,000 on his final hitter with his 100th pitch.

“I made it interesting, for sure,” Kershaw said afterward. “I made it take too long.”

When he took the mound at the start of the sixth, just one strikeout shy of 3,000, the crowd erupted in deafening screams previously only matched by a World Series win. When he breathtakingly struck out Capra — this was his last hitter regardless — he stalked off the mound and sighed and offered the thunderous crowd a sweaty wave.

“It’s a little bit harder when you’re actually trying to strike people out,” said Kershaw with a chuckle. “Running back out there in the sixth and hearing that crowd roar was up there for me, special moments…It was an amazing night.”

A young Dodgers fan holds up a sign that reads “3,000” to celebrate Clayton Kershaw’s strikeout milestone.

(Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)

In all, it was pure Kershaw, and it has been unmatched even by his legendary predecessor.

Koufax was a meteor, streaking across the sky for the greatest five seasons of any pitcher in baseball history.

Kershaw, meanwhile, has become his own planet, looming above for 18 years with a permanent glow that is unmatched in Dodgers lore.

Koufax was an amazing flash. Kershaw has been an enduring flame.

Koufax was Shaq. Kershaw is Kobe.

When this was previously written, manager Dave Roberts waffled on the question of whether Kershaw was the greatest Dodger pitcher ever.

This time, not so much.

“Obviously, Sandy is Sandy,” he said Wednesday. “You’re talking about 18 years, though, and the career of the body of work. It’s hard to not say Clayton, you know, is the greatest Dodger of all time.”

When one talks about the GOAT of various sports, indeed, a key element is always longevity. Tom Brady played 23 seasons, LeBron James has played 22 seasons and Babe Ruth played 22 seasons.

One cannot ignore the fact that Kershaw, in his 18th season, has played six more seasons than Koufax while pitching 463 more regular season innings. With his 3,000 strikeouts he has also fanned 604 more batters than Koufax, the equivalent of 22 more games composed solely of strikeouts, an unreal edge.

In the great Koufax debate, Kershaw is clearly being punished for his postseason struggles, and indeed his 4.49 postseason ERA doesn’t compare to Koufax’ 0.95 ERA.

But look at the sample size. Kershaw has pitched in 39 postseason games while Koufax has appeared in just eight. Kershaw has had 13 postseason starts that have lasted past the sixth inning while Koufax has had five.

Kershaw has pitched in multiple playoff rounds in multiple seasons, while Koufax never pitched in more than one playoff round per season, greatly increasing Kershaw’s opportunity for failure.

Kershaw has indeed stunk up the joint in some of the most devastating postseason losses in Dodger history. But he has taken the mound for nearly five times as many big games as Koufax and, in the end, he has just one fewer World Series championship.

“I’ve been through it, a lot, ups and downs here, more downs that I care to admit,” said Kershaw. “The fans … it was overwhelming to feel that.”

In the end, the strongest argument for Koufax supporters is the seemingly obvious answer to a question. If you had to win one game, would you start Koufax or Kershaw?

Of course you’d pitch Koufax … if your parameters were limited to five years. But if you wanted to pick a starter and you had to do it inside a two-decade window, you would take Kershaw.

Then there are those rarely recited stats that further the argument for Kershaw over Koufax: Kershaw has a better career ERA, 2.51 to 2.76. Kershaw has a better winning percentage, .697 to .655. And despite playing in an era where individual pitching wins are greatly cheapened, Kershaw has 51 more wins than Koufax.

How rare is 3,000 strikeouts? More pitchers have won 300 games. Only three other pitchers have done so left-handed. Only two pitchers in the last 100 years have done it with one team.

Now for the intangibles. If this is indeed the golden age of Dodger baseball — as Andrew Friedman so deftly described it — then the guardian of the era has been Kershaw.

The clubhouse culture is borne of his constantly present professionalism. The work ethic starts with him. The accountability is a reflection of him. For 18 years, through injury and embarrassment as well as fame and fortune, he has never complained, never blamed, never pointed fingers, never brought distraction.

And he always shows up for work. Every day. Every game. Every season. Clayton Kershaw has always been there, which is why he will be there forever on a statue that will surely be erected in the center field plaza next to the bronze figures of Jackie Robinson and, yes, of course, Sandy Koufax.

It is unlikely the Dodgers would ever script the words, “The greatest Dodger pitcher” on the base of his statue. They are understandably sensitive to Koufax and his legacy and importance to a legion of longtime fans.

But they know, just as those fans lucky enough to be at Dodger Stadium Wednesday know it.

They weren’t just watching greatness. They were watching The Greatest.

The transformation happened quickly in May 2009.

Early into his second year in the majors, a young Clayton Kershaw was enduring a sophomore slump with the Dodgers. Looking for a way to complement his predominantly fastball/curveball mix, he began toying around with a slider in his between-starts bullpen sessions.

When Brad Ausmus, the well-traveled 40-year-old backup catcher on that year’s Dodgers team, heard about the experiment, he didn’t initially think much of it. That a raw 21-year-old talent would be tinkering with a new pitch didn’t come as much of a surprise.

But when Ausmus asked the club’s bullpen catcher, Mike Borzello, how Kershaw’s new pitch looked, he got his first inkling it might be special.

“He was like, ‘It’s really good,’” Ausmus recalled recently. “I said, ‘Oh, so maybe he’ll throw it in a couple more bullpens before taking it into the game.’ And he’s like, ‘Ehh, I think he might take it into the game his next start.’”

A few weeks later, Ausmus got his first chance to see it up close, calling it sporadically in a Freeway Series game at Angel Stadium. That day, Kershaw spun a gem, throwing seven scoreless innings in a Dodgers victory.

But it was afterward, as Kershaw, Ausmus and longtime Dodgers pitching coach Rick Honeycutt reviewed the outing, that the longtime catcher started to understand that Kershaw wasn’t just any young pitcher. That his tantalizing talent was matched by a preternatural aptitude. That his precocious battery mate was both a physical force and pitching prodigy.

Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw, left, talks with former teammate Brad Ausmus, right, and coach Matt Martin before a game in 2019, when Ausmus was the manager of the Angels.

(Alex Gallardo/AP)

“Keep in mind, this is a rookie, basically, talking to a guy who’s been in the big leagues 17, 18 years,” Ausmus said. “And he goes, ‘Brad, I wish you would call more sliders.’”

Initially surprised, Ausmus thought to himself: “Really? This is a brand new pitch. We probably threw 10 or 15 of them.”

But Kershaw could already see the bigger picture. He immediately sensed how the new pitch might profoundly influence his game.

“If you think about it, the fastball was 95, the curveball was probably in the low-to-mid 80s, so there was a lot of separation in terms of velocity. It almost gave the hitter time to reload before swinging,” Ausmus said. “The slider did not allow the hitters to do that.”

Seventeen years, three Cy Young Awards, two World Series titles, and — very nearly — 3,000 strikeouts later, the rest has been singularly impressive history.

“It speaks to not only his knowledge, but his ability and his confidence,” said Ausmus, now bench coach for the New York Yankees. “He has an aptitude for the game. He adjusts. And he continues to perform at a high level. It really is remarkable … I miss having that guy as a teammate.”

When Clayton Kershaw takes the mound on Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium, he will need just three strikeouts to become the 20th member of Major League Baseball’s 3,000 strikeout club.

And, just as it was almost two decades ago, it will be the same primary three-pitch mix that is all but certain to lift him into such rarified air.

For better or (very rarely) worse, at full strength or in ailing health, the now 37-year-old future Hall of Famer has managed to perfect one of the sport’s all-time signature plans of attack on the mound:

Establish the fastball on the edge of the plate for a strike. Tunnel the slider on the same trajectory to get awkward swings when it tails off late. Mix in a curveball when a change of pace is needed. And never be afraid to change the sequence and tendencies of that infallible trio of pitches, using instinct and feel to amplify his physical talent.

“It’s what’s upstairs [that makes him special],” current Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior said. “He’s always a step ahead.”

Countless big-league pitchers have used a similar fastball-slider-curveball repertoire. Even in Kershaw’s prime years, there were always others who could throw harder, or produce more break, or manipulate the ball with more gravity-defying spin.

What separates Kershaw are more foundational skills. His unwavering execution, in seasons he threw 200-plus innings or those in which he battled increasingly persistent injuries to his back, shoulder and even a bothersome left big toe. His unflappable persistence to move from one pitch, one start, one year to the next; never satisfied with his best moments nor shaken by his rare failures.

“He just knows the ins and outs of baseball, and has such good feel,” longtime teammate and backstop Austin Barnes said. “He’s like a train that comes at you consistently.”

That’s why, when Kershaw does inevitably cross the 3,000-strikeout threshold, it will be equal parts a testament to his talent and durability — an accomplishment that required him to continually reinvent his game without ever changing his fundamental nature as a pitcher.

“Clayton has everything the right way, on the field, off the field, over a long period of time,” manager Dave Roberts said last week.

“It’s hard to wrap your head around what it takes,” he added, “as far as longevity, and greatness.”

“He’s like a train that comes at you consistently,” former Dodgers catcher Austin Barnes, center, said of pitcher Clayton Kershaw, left.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Few players have produced the kind of prolonged period of greatness Kershaw did during the peak of his career. Starting in that 2009 season, he went on a run of sub-3.00 ERA campaigns in 11 of his next 12 years. In seven of them, he had 200 or more strikeouts, including a career-high 301 punchouts in 2015. Eight of his 10 All-Star selections came in that stretch, as did his three Cy Young Awards and a 2014 National League MVP (still the last time a pitcher won the game’s highest individual honor).

His only blemishes in that time were repeated disappointments in the playoffs. But even in most of those, he was tasked with trying to save the team’s season while pitching on short rest or desperately-needed outings out of the bullpen.

“Even with all the pressure he’s had as the Dodgers’ ace … he’s always out there, he’s always willing to take the ball,” Barnes said. “I think that goes underappreciated. He’s willing to put himself out there, even when he doesn’t feel his best.”

To Barnes, who has caught more Kershaw starts than anyone other than A.J. Ellis, the way Kershaw strives to always be better is what has made it all possible. It was a trait he noticed in one of his first games catching him in 2017 against the San Diego Padres.

“I kind of went against the scouting report, and I called a fastball that froze the guy,” Barnes, who signed a minor-league deal with the San Francisco Giants this week after being released by the Dodgers earlier this year, recalled recently. “I remember him coming up to me after, kind of sizing me up and down, like, ‘Why’d you call that?’ I just said, ‘I just kind of felt it.’”

It was a small example of how Kershaw’s pitch mix — unchanged over the years, outside of an occasional flirtation with a variety of changeup grips — could be weaponized in ways opposing batters have long struggled to expect.

“Not everybody gets to his caliber of pitching and stuff,” Barnes said. “But the work he puts in, in the weight room, in the video room, for him to go out there and have clarity and conviction in what he needs to do, I think that’s what helps most. And the level of competitor he is. He can do it all.”

Even, in recent years, as his stuff has gradually diminished.

At the start of this season, Kershaw was just 32 strikeouts away from the 3K club — an exclusive fraternity that includes only three other left-handed pitchers, and two who spent their entire career with one team.

In past seasons, that would’ve been a total he could clear in less than a month.

But now, he joked early in his return from offseason foot and knee surgeries: “Maybe by September I’ll get there. We’ll see.”

After all, Kershaw barely touches 90 mph with his fastball even on a good day now. His slider and curveball don’t always have as much bite as they once did. Such has been the case for much of the last three seasons, as the miles on Kershaw’s arm and body have steadily caught up to him.

At the end of 2020, when Kershaw finally won his first World Series and began more seriously starting to contemplate when he might retire, he was less than 500 strikeouts away from 3,000. He seemed like a virtual lock to get there, perhaps as the last new entrant for the foreseeable future.

“He’s always a step ahead,” Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior, left, said recently about pitcher Clayton Kershaw when discussing the key to his success.

(Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press)

Since then, however, he had a season-ending elbow injury in 2021 that nearly required Tommy John surgery; back and shoulder problems that limited him in what were nonetheless All-Star seasons in 2022 and 2023; consecutive offseasons of surgical rehabs each of the past two winters, first on his shoulder and then his lower-body ailments; all on top of the normal aches and pains that come with pitching into someone’s late 30s.

His three-pitch arsenal remains unchanged, but figuring out ways to maximize it has been an ongoing challenge.

“He’s doing it the same way, but he’s having to figure out different ways to do it, if that makes sense,” Prior said.

Just like when he first broke into the majors, it has required him to trust what’s working best and adjust on the fly to his ever-weakening capabilities.

And yet, entering Wednesday’s potential milestone outing, Kershaw is 4-0 with a 3.03 ERA in his eight starts this season (the second-best ERA among Dodgers starters behind only Yoshinobu Yamamoto). He is coming off a particularly productive June, giving up just seven earned runs in 27 ⅔ innings. And, while they don’t come as frequently as they once did, the strikeouts are still present, with Kershaw averaging 7 ½ per nine innings over his last five starts.

To Prior, it’s a testament to Kershaw’s enduring ability to still pitch his way through a start.

“He knows when guys are looking hard and he can get them with the slider. The fastball and slider still do look the same, when he’s on, so he can pull the trigger on one or the other … And he has the equalizer with the curveball, to be able to use that to change speeds like he has his whole career.”

“Again, it’s the same pitch mix,” Prior added, “but he’s still finding ways to do it at this stage.”

To Roberts, it’s made Kershaw an example for the rest of the team to follow.

“It’s a lesson in life,” the manager said. “You don’t always have to feel perfect to be productive. I have a lot of respect for him.”

The great irony, once Kershaw does eclipse the 3,000-strikeout mark, is that punchouts have never been his primary objective.

“No, no,” Barnes said with a laugh. “He cares about winning the game and throwing up zeroes. That’s the biggest thing for him. The strikeouts are just a byproduct of him getting ahead of hitters, and being able to have [the pitches in] his mix playing off each other.”

But once that moment does arrive — fittingly, as things have lined up, likely on the Dodger Stadium mound he has dominated for almost two decades — the total will be indicative of all he has accomplished in a career of unmatched excellence, and the way he has elevated himself as one of the best pitchers in the history of the sport.

“He’s teaching me that so much of this game is still about mindset,” Prior said. “There’s so much object data, which is helpful in all aspects of our game. But part of it is still so unquantifiable. He’s just someone who has willed himself to be better than everybody else.”

As someone who has permanent ringing in the ears (tinnitus) as a result of hearing damage from concerts, I must take exception to how loud the music is played at sporting events these days. Despite quotes from Dodger players and executives stating how “great” the loudness at Dodger Stadium is, they are putting the paying customers and employees at risk for hearing loss with the excessive volume. Entertaining the fans is one thing, assaulting the delicate instrument that is our ears is quite another. I’m sure they could turn it down to safer decibel levels and everyone will still have a good time.

Mark Furcick
San Pedro

Dodger Stadium hosts a Military Appreciation Night, a Salvadoran Heritage Night, and a Guatemalan Heritage Night. But we will never see an Autism Spectrum Night. The ear-shattering sound system would cause fans to run from the stadium screaming in pain and terror.

I suffer from a condition called hyperacusis, where loud noises can cause ear pain lasting for days or even weeks. It’s rare in the general population, but more common among autistic people. I love baseball, and used to love going to Dodger Stadium from the year it opened until 20-something years ago. But now I’d have to wear industrial-strength ear protection.

Russell Stone
Westchester

I used to like bleacher seats but won’t sit there again — way too loud right under the sound system.

Bob Wieting
Simi Valley

Sure it’s “entertainment.” Sure the players like the enthusiasm. But there are seats located beneath or near speakers that are simply painful to the ears.

Richard Melniker
Los Angeles

DENVER — Clayton Kershaw got to the precipice of history on Thursday afternoon. And now, when he inevitably crosses the 3,000 career strikeout milepost, it will almost certainly happen on his home mound.

In the Dodgers’ 3-1 win against the Colorado Rockies, Kershaw struck out five batters over a six-inning, one-run start to move to 2,997 punchouts for his career.

For a moment, it seemed as if Kershaw might be able to eclipse the threshold on Thursday. At the end of the sixth inning, he had thrown only 69 pitches while mowing through a free-swinging Rockies lineup.

Alas, manager Dave Roberts gave his 37-year-old left-hander an early hook, turning a narrow late-game lead over to his bullpen — and preserving the opportunity for Kershaw’s milestone moment to happen back at Dodger Stadium during next week’s homestand.

“I would argue there might be a temptation to take him out [today] and let him go for it in front of the home fans,” Roberts said pregame, when asked if he would consider extending Kershaw’s leash to let him chase his 3,000th strikeout on Thursday. “I’m not going to force anything.”

Ever since Kershaw returned from offseason foot and knee surgeries in May, and showed an ability to produce even with a diminished fastball and increasing mileage on his arm, his pursuit of 3,000 strikeouts has felt less like an “if” than a “when.”

Entering Thursday, his career total was up to 2,992, leaving him just eight shy of becoming the 20th pitcher in MLB history, and only the fourth left-hander, to join the prestigious 3K club.

“I guess ultimately the last box he needs to check for his future Hall of Fame career is that 3,000-strikeout threshold,” Roberts said. “We’re all waiting in anticipation.”

More impressively, though, Kershaw has been winning games and limiting runs for the Dodgers (51-31), improving to 4-0 with a 3.03 earned-run average through eight starts this season.

“I think there’s good days and bad days, good pitches and bad pitches,” Kershaw said. “Not as consistent, not as perfect as I would want. But the results have been OK. And at the end of the day, we’re winning games that I’ve been on the mound. So I’m thankful for that. Just a product of being on a great team.”

Kershaw wasn’t exactly expecting to reach the 3,000 mark Thursday, acknowledging that “eight in Colorado is never going to be easy to do.”

Over his first two innings, however, he quickly inched closer. Thairo Estrada whiffed on a curveball in the first inning. And though Brenton Doyle hit a solo homer in the second, Kershaw set Michael Toglia and Orlando Arcia both down swinging with a slider and curveball, respectively.

“I just love that edge that he gives each start day,” Roberts said. “We certainly feed off that.”

Kershaw didn’t get another strikeout until the end of the fifth, retiring the side with a slider that froze Braxton Fulford for a called third strike. An inning before that, he was bailed out by his defense after his lone walk, when Miguel Rojas turned a spinning double-play up the line at third base to erase the free pass.

“It could’ve been one run in, runner on second, nobody out,” Kershaw said. “So to turn that double-play there was kind of a game-changer. … Biggest play of the day.”

Still, in the sixth, all eyes returned to Kershaw’s strikeout total after Tyler Freeman was rung up on a generous outside strike call to finish off an eight-pitch at-bat.

Though it would have required striking out the side, Kershaw was as little as one inning away from No. 3,000.

Instead, Roberts decided to end his day, ensuring that the next time Kershaw takes the mound — likely to be next Wednesday at home against the Chicago White Sox — he will need only three more strikeouts to do something only two pitchers before have ever done: Have a 3,000-strikeout career while playing for only one team.

“It would be very special,” Kershaw said of potentially reaching the milestone at Dodger Stadium. “It would be.”

Ohtani to pitch Saturday

While Kershaw mowed through the Rockies (18-63), Shohei Ohtani delivered the biggest swing of the day for the Dodgers, padding what was only a 2-1 lead in the seventh with a solo home run to right, his NL-leading 28th of the year.

The blast came hours after the other big news of the day, with Roberts confirming pregame that the two-way star will make his next start as a pitcher on Saturday against the Kansas City Royals.

That game will mark Ohtani’s third pitching outing of the season and could be his first in which he goes beyond the first inning. Last week, Roberts hinted at the possibility of Ohtani — who is still building up in his return from Tommy John surgery — pitching into the second inning, but he has continued to leave any final decisions open-ended.

If only! On June 18, 2014, the airwaves and the internet lit up in collective awe at one of the greatest athletic feats in modern history. Clayton Kershaw recorded 15 strikeouts in a 107-pitch no-hitter that many consider the best single-game pitching performance of all time. The asterisk of this epic Dodgers game was the one error in the seventh inning that prevented its official recognition as a “perfect game”: When the Rockies’ Corey Dickerson tapped the ball toward the mound, Dodgers shortstop Hanley Ramirez botched a throw to first base, and Dickerson made it to second.

If only Ramirez had made the play at first! If only coach Don Mattingly hadn’t substituted the ailing Ramirez one inning prior! Los Angeles was one bruised right finger away from celebrating perfection.

Baseball has a celebrated history of quantifying value. No professional sport embraces numbers and statistics in the way baseball does. Statisticians are as much a part of the game as the dirt, chalk and grass. Although baseball has been collecting data since the late 1800s, the empiric statistical analysis that is part of our game today dates back to 1977 with the introduction of sabermetrics.

It’s critical to the game: How else are we to determine success when the majority of what we see is failure? The best hitters in baseball are those who only fail less than 70% of the time; in other words, have a batting average over .300. These perennial all-stars will experience the dissatisfaction and humility of an out in 7 out of every 10 plate appearances. In what other profession can you fail 70% of the time and be considered one of the greats? Consider the mental strength required to accept failure as part of the game and the focus to view each at-bat as an opportunity to fail a little bit less.

We need a similar kind of thinking in life to quantify value in our failure rates.

A “perfect game” is defined by Major League Baseball as a game in which a team pitches a victory that lasts a minimum of nine innings and in which no opposing player reaches base. It’s so rare because failure — by pitchers as well as batters — is expected as a matter of course. Francis Thomas Vincent Jr., the eighth commissioner of MLB, is quoted as saying: “Baseball teaches us, or has taught most of us, how to deal with failure. We learn at a very young age that failure is the norm in baseball and, precisely because we have failed, we hold in high regard those who fail less often — those who hit safely in one out of three chances and become star players. I also find it fascinating that baseball, alone in sport, considers errors to be part of the game, part of its rigorous truth.”

On June 19, 2014, the fans and commentators of baseball praised in dramatic fashion Kershaw’s dominant no-hitter, but with a subtle tone of confusion and denial of the ugly blemish recorded across the team’s box score: 0-0-1. Zero runs. Zero hits. One error. One base runner. An imperfect game. If only!

The collective hope for perfection is understandable. Most people are afraid to fail.

Parades aren’t held for the runner-up. Grades aren’t given just for trying. Job promotions aren’t offered for making mistakes. Placing perfection on a pedestal relieves the collective anxiety — but prohibits the opportunity — of accepting failure as an integral part of life. For an individual, failure is an opportunity to grow and become a better person. For a business, failure is an opportunity to pivot and redefine success. The opposite of perfection is not failure. It is accepting the opportunity to learn from transgressions. Winston Churchill once quipped, “The maxim, ‘Nothing prevails but perfection,’ may be spelled P-A-R-A-L-Y-S-I-S.”

Almost to the day, 75 years before Kershaw’s no-hitter, the world of sports witnessed the catastrophic reality of paralysis. In June 1939, after a week of extensive testing at the Mayo Clinic, Lou Gehrig announced to the world that he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. This announcement happened to fall on his 36th birthday. This represented the end of Gehrig’s illustrious baseball career. But 75 years later, what is remembered about this man is not his career batting average of .340, seven-time All-Star appearances, six-time World Series championships, winning of the Triple Crown or two-time league MVP. Sabermetrics could not possibly explain Gehrig’s value to the sport. What endures is what no statistic can capture: his grace. His humility. His courage in the face of loss. What is remembered and honored is his response to the ultimate “failure”: a failure of upper and lower motor neurons to make necessary connections that ultimately leads to rapidly progressive muscle weakness and atrophy. In defiance to an illness that is uniformly fatal, Gehrig paid homage to his teammates, professional members of the MLB and its fans by proclaiming himself “the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”

Similarly, sabermetrics misses the true greatness of Kershaw’s no-hitter. What could never be displayed in statistics or numbers was Kershaw’s response to the error. After Ramirez’s throwing error, his hat lay at the base of Kershaw’s pitching mound. As I watched from the stands, I could not hear what Kershaw said to Ramirez as he picked it up, dusted off and handed the hat back to his humiliated teammate. But his body language appeared unbelievably humble, accepting and supportive, as if to recognize the lesson of baseball, which is that errors are a celebrated part of the game. To dwell on errors and think “if only” leads to disappointment and blame, but to accept and embrace imperfections with a positive and optimistic attitude defines the ultimate success.

If only we could all be that perfect.

Josh Diamond is a physician in private practice in Los Angeles and a lifelong Dodgers fan. Some of his earliest memories are of attending games with his father; he now shares his love of the Dodgers with his son.

It’s hard not to count as the strikeouts go by.

Clayton Kershaw’s first strikeout Friday night came on his “Cooperstown curveball” — a pitch that’s dazzled since its first appearance at Dodger Stadium on May 25, 2008. Two strikeouts on sliders that dove into the dirt like paper airplanes curtailing in the wind brought his chase to single digits.

The milestone is inevitable. Kershaw will all but certainly reach the 3,000-strikeout mark, etching his name on a list that features just 19 other pitchers. But he’ll have to wait a little while longer.

“There’s a few pitches tonight where it clicked,” Kershaw said, moving his earned-run average to 2.49 in June. “It’s just not every one. So hopefully it’ll get there.”

Kershaw struck out four batters against the Nationals, tossing five innings and giving up two solo home runs as the Dodgers took the series opener 6-5.

“It’s really special knowing that he’s approaching 3,000,” said infielder Miguel Rojas, who played third base Friday like he did for Kershaw’s no-hitter in 2014. “Every pitch… every strikeout counts. But for him, I feel like it’s more important to win games, and for him to be 3-0 and with really good numbers overall, I’m happy for him — that he’s healthy, happy and able to contribute.”

Kershaw brought his career strikeout total to 2,992, just eight away from 3,000. Strikeout 3,000 could come Thursday in Colorado or Friday in Kansas City when he’s next expected to toe the mound.

“It’s hard not to appreciate how close he is to the 3,000 mark,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “My guess is that he just wants to get this thing over with as soon as possible, right? … He wants it over as quick as possible, I’m sure.”

Kershaw still doesn’t feel his sharpest in his seventh start of the season. He walked two and 33 of his 78 pitches were balls. His fastball was more than a tick down from his season average as he flailed with his command early.

And yet, Kershaw battled through five innings.

“I can still get people out,” Kershaw said. “I just want to do it a little bit better.”

Clayton Kershaw delivers in the third inning against the Washington Nationals on Friday night.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

If the Dodgers’ previous four-game series against the Padres had the energy and animosity of postseason baseball, then the Nationals coming to town felt like a true mid-June game. Coming off an 11-game losing streak — broken Thursday in Colorado — the Nationals (31-45) fell out of an early lead because of self-inflicted gaffes.

After the Dodgers knotted the score 1-1 when bench coach Danny Lehmann’s first successful challenge (stepping in at manager for the suspended Roberts) brought home a run after Mookie Betts was deemed safe at first on a fielder’s choice, Nationals shortstop CJ Abrams made what looked to be an inning-ending force play.

Abrams dove to his right on an infield single from Andy Pages, stabbed the ball and used his glove to flip to Amed Rosario at second base. The ball never reached Rosario, and Betts hustled home from second base without a throw.

Rojas extended the Dodgers’ lead to 6-2 in the bottom of the sixth when he hit his third home run of the season, a two-run shot, to score Kiké Hernández (two for three, two doubles). When the Nationals threatened in the top of the seventh — with runners on second and third, down by two — Michael Conforto came to the Dodgers’ rescue by making a diving catch to keep his team ahead.

“It’s a long season, and you’re going to receive more opportunities to contribute, and it’s nice to finally get one game like this where you feel part of it,” Rojas said, adding that he was glad to showcase his hitting against a left-hander such as Washington ace MacKenzie Gore.

Abrams homered in the ninth, but Dodgers closer Tanner Scott buckled down to secure his 15th save.

The Dodgers (47-30) will turn to right-hander Dustin May against the Nationals on Saturday as they attempt to clinch their fourth consecutive series. Neither Roberts nor Lehmann was made available to reporters after the game.

Miguel Rojas, left, is gets a hand slap from Dodgers first base coach Chris Woodward after hitting a two-run home run in the sixth inning against the Nationals on Friday night at Dodger Stadium.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Etc.

Right-hander Tyler Glasnow (shoulder inflammation) is set to throw two innings in a rehabilitation assignment with triple-A Oklahoma City on Sunday, while left-hander Blake Snell (shoulder inflammation) is set to throw a bullpen in the next few days, Roberts said.

Roki Sasaki (right shoulder impingement), who stopped throwing after a recent flare up stymied his progression, threw in the outfield Friday afternoon.

“I don’t know if it was 60, 90 feet, with the baseball,” Roberts said of Sasaki, who was moved to the 60-day injured list Friday. “That was a bonus. That was a plus. Chatted with him briefly afterward. He was excited about it.”

On how Sasaki was feeling, Roberts said: “I would say pain-free. Now it’s just getting the build-up. But most important, he’s pain-free.”

On the field, he’s produced the first 50-50 season in baseball history and won a World Series. Off it, he’s sold everything from unsweetened green tea to skin-care products.

As it was, it felt as if Shohei Ohtani was everywhere. In reality, this was just half of the package.

The Dodgers are finally about to have the complete version of Ohtani, the right-handed pitcher with a 100-mph fastball who also launches 470-foot homers as a left-handed hitter.

Two-Way Shohei is back.

Ohtani will pitch his first game for the Dodgers on Monday, the team naming him as its starter for the opening game of a four-game series against the San Diego Padres at Dodger Stadium.

What was already a one-of-a-kind show will evolve into something that might never be seen again after Ohtani retires — not at Dodger Stadium, not at any other major league stadium, not anywhere in the world.

The news of Ohtani’s mound return became a source of anticipation in the Dodgers’ clubhouse, with Clayton Kershaw describing himself as “super excited.”

“I think we all are,” Kershaw said. “I think as fans of the game and just seeing him day in and day out get ready to pitch and do both, it’s going to be really fun, whether it’s one inning or whatever it is.”

The Dodgers plan to deploy Ohtani for an inning or two as an opener.

For most of this season, the Dodgers operated under the assumption that Ohtani wouldn’t pitch until after the All-Star break. The change of plans doesn’t represent a speeding up of a timeline as much as it does a modification of the route that will be taken to a final destination.

Ohtani last pitched in 2023 when he was still playing for the Angels, and he didn’t pitch in his first season for the Dodgers last year as he recovered from his second Tommy John surgery.

Shohei Ohtani pitches in the bullpen at Dodger Stadium on June 4.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

In recent weeks, he prepared for his mound return by pitching to hitters in live batting practice. He threw 44 pitches in three innings in his third and most recent session.

However, throwing live batting practice and taking four or five at-bats in an actual game as a designated hitter was like “playing a doubleheader for him,” Roberts said.

To eliminate the exhausting cycle of warming up to throw, cooling down after, and warming up again to play a game, the Dodgers figured they could build up Ohtani’s arm in games. Whatever modest Ohtani’s contributions can make from the mound, the Dodgers will take them. With multiple starters on the injured list, the bullpen has shouldered a disproportionate share of the pitching load.

Because Ohtani wouldn’t take up an extra roster spot, Kershaw pointed out, “We don’t have to lose a pitcher or anything, so if he throws an inning a week, it’s great.”

Ohtani will likely pitch about once a week, with every start expected to be about an inning longer than the previous one. Theoretically, he could pitch four times before the All-Star break, which would stretch him out to be ready to pitch five innings when the Dodgers resume play.

While Ohtani remains in a ramp-up phase and his fastball has sat in the 94-95 mph range in his live bullpen sessions, still not at the 98-99 mph he once averaged. However, team officials believe he is ready to compete at the major league level because of the movement of his pitches.

Ohtani evidently thinks so as well.

“I think I’m approaching a level that is sufficient to pitch in games,” Ohtani said in Japanese on Saturday night.

His 25 homers are the most in the National League. He is also batting .297 with 41 runs batted in. The Dodgers’ leadoff hitter, he’s also stolen 11 bases.

Ohtani said didn’t think his offensive production would be diminished by pitching.

“I played as just a DH last year,” he said, “but to do both at the same time is my usual style.”

Ohtani played six seasons with the Angels, and he was a two-way player in four of them. His last three seasons with them made up what was arguably the greatest three-year stretch in the history of the sport, as he won two MVP awards and would have won a third if not for a 62-home season by Aaron Judge.

He has an opportunity now to match, or even surpass, that. Only this time, he will do so on a team that has a chance to reward him for his unprecedented achievements with the postseason glory he craves.

ST. LOUIS — The Dodgers have sent Clayton Kershaw to the mound to give a slumping team a lift countless times during his 18-year career. And they’ve rarely been disappointed.

So they did it again on a sultry Sunday afternoon in St. Louis and once again Kershaw delivered, earning his first win of the season in a 7-3 victory over the Cardinals that snapped a two-game losing streak and ended a slide that had seen the team lose five of its last seven.

“He’s been a stopper for many years. He’s been a staff ace for many years. He’s going to the Hall of Fame,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said before the game. “So he understands. And he’s going to be prepared.”

Especially after the Cardinals picked at an old wound just before the first pitch, using the massive scoreboard facing the Dodgers’ dugout to replay video of Kershaw bent over, hands on knees, after giving up a series-winning home run to Matt Adams in Game 4 of the 2014 National League Division Series.

Kershaw answered that slight with his best outing of an injury-delayed season, allowing just a run on six hits in five innings. He struck out seven, the most he’s had in exactly two years, leaving him just 17 strikeouts shy of 3,000 for his career. And more importantly, he did not issue a walk for the first time in five starts.

That performance was especially useful coming a day after the Dodgers’ rotation was scrambled before the team’s big three-game series with the Padres. Right-hander Tony Gonsolin was moved back to the injured list Saturday with discomfort in his surgically repaired elbow, leaving the Dodgers with 14 pitchers on the IL and without a starter for Tuesday’s game in San Diego. A scan of Gonsolin’s elbow on Saturday showed no structural damage.

Michael Kopech, activated from the injured list Saturday, pitched a scoreless inning of relief in the ninth.

For Roberts the most telling stat in Kershaw’s line was the lack of walks since Kershaw has struggled with his control in his first brief comeback.

“What’s been consistent is the inconsistency of the command,” Roberts said. “There’s certainly uncharacteristic walks in there, getting behind in counts, which is so uncharacteristic with Clayton.”

Kershaw hit 91.5 mph with his fastball Sunday and averaged 89.6 mph.

“The velocity is something that he’s really mindful of and there might be a little bit of overthrow in there trying to chase a certain number versus just kind of commanding the baseball,” Roberts said. “He wants both. He wants the velocity and feels he can command the ball.”

Kershaw also became the first Dodger pitcher in the series to get some help from his offense, which scored four times in the first four innings and seven times in the game, the most runs the team has scored in a game this month.

The Dodgers, who stranded 21 baserunners while going one for 25 with runners in scoring position in the first two games in St. Louis, wasted their first scoring opportunity Sunday. After Shohei Ohtani led off with a double to left-center, the next three hitters failed to get the ball out of the infield.

Mookie Betts runs the bases after hitting a solo home run for the Dodgers in the seventh inning Sunday.

(Jeff Roberson / Associated Press)

But they scored three times in the second when three of the first four batters, Max Muncy, Will Smith and former Cardinal Tommy Edman, all singled to center ahead of Hyesong Kim’s two-run triple to right.

A leadoff triple by Smith followed by a one-out double from Edman made it 4-0 in the fourth. And Kershaw, staked to the early lead, sailed into the fifth with a shutout before two singles and a two-out double by Masyn Winn got the Cardinals on the board.

St. Louis added to that against reliever Lou Trivino in the sixth, with Willson Contreras doubling off the left-field wall, then scoring on Alec Burleson’s one-out fly ball to center.

The teams traded runs in the seventh with Mookie Betts lining a two-out solo homer just over the wall in left in the seventh and the Cardinals answering with a walk and two-out singles by Brendan Donovan and Contreras.

The Dodgers then closed out the scoring with two runs in a sloppy eighth inning that featured a single, two walks, two batters hit by pitches, a passed ball and a sacrifice fly.

Now, the Dodgers move on to San Diego, which is just a game back in the NL West. Roberts, however, downplayed the importance of the first series of the season against the division rival.

“Outside of it just [being] a division opponent, and us trying to find a way to win a game, it really doesn’t have any extra impact,” he said. “Right now we’re not playing our best baseball, but I think that that environment is going to bring out the best in us.

“It’s a fun place to play a ball game. But as far as kind of the stakes right now, I don’t think it really has a whole lot of extra.”

The Dodgers now have 15 pitchers on the injured list. This team, with all of its talent, is going nowhere without frontline pitching. Andrew Friedman realized this when he emptied Fort Knox during the offseason. But, like previous seasons, they are dropping like flies, with shoulder and forearm issues.

Other MLB teams don’t seem to have these issues, at least not to this degree.

At what point do we begin to look at the training staff, starting with pitching coach Mark Prior? What is it that he’s asking (and teaching) these guys to do with their arms, to get that extra ‘something’ out of them? Too often that extra something becomes nothing at all.

Rodger Howard
Westlake Village

The underperforming, injury-plagued — and very well-paid — Dodger pitching staff illustrates the true financial advantage of big-market teams willing and able to spend. Yes, the Dodgers can afford to sign and pay frontline players, but, just as important, they can also afford to set aside or simply eat the contracts of those expensive players if they become hurt or ineffective, and replace them with additional highly (over)paid players. It’s almost a lock that, if their staff isn’t healthier and more reliable come August, the Dodgers will probably trade for pitching help and take on even more salary. Small-market teams such as the Reds, Guardians and Pirates can’t sign many top-tier players in the first place, let alone replace them if they don’t pan out.

John Merryman
Redondo Beach

Instead of spending hundreds of millions on pitchers to sit on the injury list for the majority of every year, I recommend the Dodgers instead allocate those funds to put nine All-Star offensive players in the lineup. Then just do what the team always winds up doing anyway — rely on inexpensive, lower-tier and journeyman pitchers for the season.

Jerry Leibowitz
Culver City

Before anything, Clayton Kershaw has to believe. Before he can snap off curveballs the way he used to, before he can be a dependable member of the rotation instead of last resort, he has to believe.

Clayton Kershaw believes.

Never mind the mounting evidence to the contrary — the 5.17 earned-run average through his four starts this season, the two starts that weren’t interrupted by rain in which he failed to complete five innings, the unremarkable high-80s-to-low-90s fastball, the career-low strikeout rate.

Kershaw believes he can once again be a contributor on a championship team.

“I just need to put it together for a whole game,” Kershaw said, “which I think I can do and will do.”

Who’s to say otherwise?

He’s looked finished before, and he wasn’t. Even with diminished stuff, he’s found ways to get hitters out, so why should this time be any different?

“I’m gonna bet on him,” manager Dave Roberts said.

For now, at least, Roberts doesn’t have a choice. Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell remain sidelined. So is Roki Sasaki.

The next man up would be Bobby Miller, who lasted only three innings in his only major league start this season.

In reality, Kershaw also doesn’t have a choice other than to believe. What’s the alternative?

In the wake of a 10-inning, 6-5 victory over the New York Mets on Tuesday night in which he pitched just 4 ⅔ innings, Kershaw’s rhetoric and demeanor were remarkably upbeat. He pointed to his recovery from the knee and foot surgeries he underwent over the winter, as well as his shoulder operation from the previous offseason.

“I mean, physically, I feel great,” he said. “I don’t feel old. My arm feels good. There’s not really any excuses. It’s just pitch better, pitch like you’re capable of. I think the stuff’s there. The stuff’s there to get people out.”

Kershaw was charged with five runs, three of them earned. He gave up six hits and three walks.

“It’s kind of in and out for me,” he said. “I think I’ll go on a stretch of making, like, 10 or 11 good pitches in a row and then just make enough bad ones to get some damage done against me.”

In Roberts’ view, his trademark slider lacked “teethiness.” More problematic was his curveball, which was particularly erratic.

“Can’t just be a two-pitch guy out there, so definitely need to throw my curveball better, for sure,” Kershaw said.

The absence of the curveball prevented Kershaw from putting away batters. He had 14 batters into two-strike counts but managed only two strikeouts while giving up four hits and a walk.

“I know he’s frustrated because he’s getting count leverage with guys and can’t put them away by way of strikeout,” Roberts said. “He’s competing his tail off, but it just hasn’t been as easy as it has been for him prior to this little stretch.”

In Kershaw’s defense, he was let down by, well, his defense.

In the Mets’ two-run five inning, Max Muncy allowed a potential inning-ending double play grounder to skip through his legs. Later, Brandon Nimmo reached base on a train wreck of a defensive play by the Dodgers, allowing the Mets to score and take a 5-4 lead.

Kershaw is 37 now, with more than 3,000 innings pitched in professional baseball. He won’t win another Cy Young Award, and he knows that. The Dodgers know that too, and that’s not what they’re asking of him. What they’re counting on him to do is to take the mound every six or seven days and keep them in games, perhaps take down six or seven innings on occasion to relieve their overworked bullpen.

“I think he’s going to approach each start to give us a chance to win,” Roberts said. “And I don’t know what that looks like each start, but I think that that’s a starting point, and then from that point, as a game goes on, then I’m gonna have to make decisions on what we have behind him.”

Kershaw made an All-Star team just two years ago and started one the year before that. His stuff was almost as diminished then as it is now. He should be able to pitch like that again, and he’s taken a small but critical first step toward doing that. He believes he can.

When is the “fastest” something of a slow roll?

How about last week when pitcher Chris Sale was crowned the fastest to reach 2,500 career strikeouts?

Not to diminish Sale’s accomplishment: It took him fewer innings (2,026) to record No. 2,500 than any other pitcher in history. But because of injuries and a reduced workload — both huge, flashing signs of the times — he didn’t achieve the feat until his 16th season.

Sale was appropriately humble, telling reporters, “I appreciate it for what it is, but I try not to get too caught up in stuff like that right now.”

Perhaps he realizes it took others far less time to reach the 2,500 milestone, including the top two strikeout artists of all time: Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson.

Strikeouts are a single lens in viewing the substantive changes over the last 100-plus years in how pitchers are utilized, record outs and withstand the burden. But they can be an instructive one.

Catch a whiff of this: A certain Dodger currently on the injured list strikes out more batters per nine innings than any other pitcher in baseball history, which in effect is another way to express Sale’s “fastest” title.

Blake Snell averages a record 11.1679 strikeouts per nine innings, edging out Sale, who is second all-time at 11.1056 among pitchers who average at least one inning per team game.

The believe-it-or-not distinction might explain why the Dodgers gave Snell a five-year, $182-million free agent contract last offseason. His wicked stuff that features a 96 mph four-seam fastball also could help explain why he’s on the injured list for the eighth time in the last eight seasons, this time out since April 6 with left shoulder inflammation.

Snell is the epitome of a highly valued starter in today’s game: He accumulates strikeouts at a higher rate than anyone else, gives up fewer hits than anyone else, and elicits only shrugs when someone points out that he has a grand total of one complete game in 213 career starts.

It is revealing that 13 of the top 20 pitchers on the all-time strikeout per innings list are active. The only one who didn’t pitch in the 21st century is Ryan at No. 19, just ahead of another believe-it-or-not name, Lucas Giolito.

Among the 33 pitchers to average more than a strikeout per inning, the only one whose career began in the 1950s has a statue outside Dodger Stadium: Sandy Koufax.

Koufax and Snell are two of 10 Dodgers among the 33, a clue as to what the Dodgers front office values in mound performance. Several of the names are less than luminary.

The others, from bottom to top: Lance Lynn (No. 32; 9.04), Rich Hill (No. 29; 9.12), Andrew Heaney (No. 25; 9.33), Clayton Kershaw (No. 16; 9.72), Trevor Bauer (No. 15; 9.82), Pedro Martinez (No. 12; 10.04), Yu Darvish (No. 7; 10.59) and Max Scherzer (No. 5; 10.65).

Note: Dodgers two-way star Shohei Ohtani averaged a mammoth 11.40 strikeouts per nine innings in six seasons with the Angels but hasn’t pitched enough to qualify for the all-time list. He has recovered from elbow surgery and is expected to return to the mound after the All-Star break for the first time since August 2023.

Sale’s accomplishment, then, is sustaining a near-record rate of strikeouts per nine innings for more than 2,000 innings, certainly worthy of note.

An equally valid definition of “fastest” to reach a strikeout milestone would be how long it took to get there. The pitcher that the 6-foot-6, left-handed Sale surpassed was his boyhood idol: Johnson, a 6-10, left-handed flamethrower who ranks second to Ryan on the career strikeout list with 4,875.

Johnson notched No. 2,500 in inning No. 2,108 — 82 more than it took Sale. But he did so in only his 11th season, five seasons “faster” than Sale.

Incidentally — and incredibly — Johnson was only halfway through his career. He retired in 2009 after 22 seasons with 4,135.1 innings and 303 wins.

Granted, Johnson was an anomaly, the only hurler ever to amass more than 200 innings and 300 strikeouts in multiple seasons well into his 30s. At ages 35-38 from 1999-2002, he averaged a staggering 354 strikeouts and 258 innings a season.

The only comparable hurler was Ryan (record strikeout total: 5,714), who also reached No. 2,500 in his 11th season, the milestone whiff coming in inning No. 2,287 when he struck out Andre Thornton of Cleveland while pitching for the Angels in 1978.

Ryan’s longevity was even more impressive than Johnson’s: 27 seasons from 1966-93, 5,386 innings and 324 wins. No current pitcher will come close to those numbers.

On the other end of the strikeout spectrum are Hall of Fame pitchers from more than 100 years ago who logged vast numbers of innings while striking out far fewer batters per inning. Velocity wasn’t nearly as high or as prized as it is today and pitchers were expected to complete games they started.

Sale ranks No. 40 on the all-time strikeout list, and he next will pass Christy Mathewson, who needed a prodigious 4,788 innings to log 2,507 strikeouts from 1900-16. Mathewson is far down the list of strikeouts per nine innings, checking in at No. 689 with 4.71.

Walter Johnson, the legendary “Big Train” out of Fullerton Union High, is third all-time with 5,914 innings and ninth with 3,509 strikeouts in a career spanning 1907-27. But he averaged just 5.34 strikeouts per nine innings, ranking No. 520, a few notches ahead of the less than legendary former Dodgers swingman Elmer Dessens.

Other fabled names associated with blazing fastballs compiled surprisingly low strikeout rates as well. Bob “Rapid Robert” Feller, for example, sits at 6.07 strikeouts per nine innings.

Kershaw, meanwhile, is on the cusp of reaching a milestone that very nearly guarantees entry into the Hall of Fame: 3,000 strikeouts. The career Dodger in his 18th season has 2,974, and he’s inching toward the finish line, having struck out six in three abbreviated starts since coming off the injured list two weeks ago.

Although Kershaw has consistently downplayed the significance of reaching 3,000, he told Tyler Kepner of the Athletic last week that it’s on his mind.

“Yeah, I’d be lying if I didn’t want to do it,” Kershaw said. “But I think the coolest part is the company you get to be a part of. You know what I mean? There’s just some really special names.”

They include, of course, Ryan and Johnson. Nineteen pitchers have reached the milestone and 17 are in the Hall of Fame, with Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling falling short for reasons that had nothing to do with strikeout totals.

Kershaw is considered a Hall of Fame shoo-in, his earned-run average of 2.51 the lowest of any active pitcher that meets the innings qualification and his 212 career victories an impressive number in today’s game.

Snell’s candidacy falls into the “way too early to tell” category. Yes, he is the only pitcher to win a Cy Young award in each league, and his 3.18 career ERA sparkles. And, of course, striking out more batters per nine innings than anyone else in history stands out on his resume.

Yet Snell is in his 10th season and he has just 77 wins. Hall of Fame starters with the fewest MLB wins are Dizzy Dean (150) and Koufax (165), the careers of both cut short by arm injuries.

Snell’s career should be far from over. He’s only 32 and his lucrative Dodgers contract doesn’t expire until after the 2029 season. But to have a shot at the Hall, Snell must fulfill the promise that prompted the Dodgers to sign him.

The only active pitchers besides Kershaw considered Hall of Fame locks are Justin Verlander and Scherzer, both hard throwers with the requisite strikeout totals.

Verlander, 42, has 3,457 strikeouts while averaging 8.98 per nine innings. He also has 262 wins — 46 more than Scherzer and 50 more than Kershaw, the next two active pitchers on the all-time list. No one else is close to 200.

Scherzer ranks fifth all-time in strikeouts per nine innings at 10.65, trailing only Snell, Sale, Robby Ray (another believe-it-or-not name) and Jacob DeGrom. Scherzer’s career total of 3,408 ranks 11th, just behind Verlander.

Gerrit Cole, 34, appeared on a Hall of Fame track before undergoing Tommy John surgery in March. He won’t pitch again until early next season, putting a long pause on his current totals of 153 wins, 2,251 strikeouts and 10.37 strikeouts per nine innings.

The only recently retired starter who might be rehearsing his Hall induction speech is another former Dodger, Zack Greinke, who posted 225 wins and 2,979 strikeouts along with a 3.49 ERA before retiring in 2024 after 20 seasons.

What about Sale, whose rebound from four years of debilitating injuries to win a Cy Young award with the Atlanta Braves was one of baseball’s best stories of 2024? He finished in the top five of Cy Young voting seven years in a row from 2012-2018, and his 3.04 career ERA is lower than any active starter besides Kershaw and DeGrom.

“He’s kind of doing Hall of Fame stuff,” Braves manager Brian Snitker told reporters. “That guy is probably as big a baseball fan as anybody, just the history of the game and the competition. He’s a ballplayer, and it’s really cool to watch.”

Yet Sale has only 141 wins, and that perceived blemish could be an interesting litmus test for Hall voters who profess to recognize that wins are much more difficult to accumulate now that teams routinely limit starters to six or fewer innings.

Strikeouts are king these days, and the Dodgers clearly know it.

CLEVELAND — The Dodgers got five good innings out of Clayton Kershaw on Wednesday. Then they let it go to waste in a five-run eighth inning.

Despite leading most of the day at Progressive Field, seeking to end their East Coast road trip with a three-game sweep against the Cleveland Guardians, the Dodgers instead lost 7-4 after an eighth-inning meltdown.

It was three ground ball singles, one walk to load the bases and one mighty Angel Martínez swing that changed the game.

Leading 4-2 entering the eighth, Dodgers left-hander Tanner Scott took the mound for his second inning of work, manager Dave Roberts asking for an up-and-down outing out of his recently up-and-down closer.

Scott’s appearance had started well, striking out Gavirel Arias to escape a jam in the seventh inning.

But, in what was charged as already his fifth blown save of the season, he failed to limit damage as a threat began to brew.

Jhonkensy Noel led off the frame with a ground ball up the middle, after second baseman Kiké Hernández got to it in the hole but had no chance to make a throw. Will Wilson followed that with a spinning ball up the third base line, its awkward hop off the edge of the infield grass tripping up Max Muncy for another infield single.

Scott only hurt his own cause from there, walking Daniel Schneemann in a left-on-left matchup to load the bases.

And though he fanned Austin Hedges for the first out of the inning, Nolan Jones hit a one-out bouncer that found a hole through the left side of a shifted infield. Two runs came around to score. A lead the Dodgers had held since the fourth inning had suddenly evaporated.

The final blow came in the next at-bat, when left-hander Alex Vesia entered the game and quickly fell behind 2-and-0 to Martínez. Vesia tried to get back in the count with a fastball up in the zone. Martínez instead delivered a knockout blow, belting a three-run homer to left to complete the Guardians’ five-run rally.

The ending meant that Kershaw, who gave up just one run in five innings despite generating only three strikeouts, was left with a no-decision — and that the Dodgers had to settle for only a 3-3 record on this New York-Cleveland road trip, stumbling to another frustrating loss during a stretch of the season that has recently been full of them.

Slow down.

Previously limited to fastballs and splitters, Shohei Ohtani threw a handful of sliders and curveballs in his mid-week bullpen session, but that doesn’t mean he will be a two-way player again before the All-Star break.

Ohtani is lined up to potentially face hitters in a simulated game on Saturday in New York, but that doesn’t mean he will pitch in the upcoming four-week stretch that could determine the course of the Dodgers’ season.

As encouraged as the team is with his progress and as desperate as the Dodgers are for one of their sidelined frontline starters to return, they will continue to slow play Ohtani’s return to the mound, according to a person familiar with the team’s thinking but not authorized to speak publicly.

The Dodgers could use Ohtani’s arm, but they absolutely need his bat, and they don’t plan on jeopardizing his offense by exposing him to any unnecessary risks on the mound.

Which is a major gamble in itself.

Every one of their next 26 games will be against teams with winning records. Of them, 23 will be against teams that would have qualified for the playoffs if the regular season ended on Wednesday, the exception being the St. Louis Cardinals, who have won 13 of their last 17 games.

Starting on Friday at Citi Field with the opening game of a three-game series against the New York Mets, the stretch of games will include seven meetings with the San Diego Padres and three with the San Francisco Giants.

The Padres were 2 ½ games behind the Dodgers in the National League West entering Thursday. The Giants were just two back.

Considering the state of their pitching staff, the Dodgers could very easily emerge from this stretch of games in second, third, or maybe even fourth place in their division.

Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell will be sidelined for another month, leaving Yoshinobu Yamamoto as the team’s only reliable starter.

Roki Sasaki is targeting a return in late June from what the team described as a shoulder impingement, but the rookie never looked entirely comfortable before he went down, so who knows what he will offer them when he comes back.

Roki Sasaki is one of several Dodgers starting pitchers on the injured list.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

“Not sure I’ve ever seen their pitching so decimated,” an executive from a rival team said.

The loss of frontline starters is nothing new for the Dodgers, whose injury problems last year practically forced them to acquire Jack Flaherty at the trade deadline. What’s new is their lack of depth.

The returns of Tony Gonsolin and Clayton Kershaw have mitigated the problem but only so much. Along with the inconsistent Dustin May and the consistently mediocre Landon Knack, Gonsolin and Kershaw represent the rotation’s final line of defense.

In previous seasons, the Dodgers always seemed to have 10 pitchers in their organization who could beat a mid- or low-level opponent on any given day. However, the inability to keep their young pitchers healthy has cost them much of that depth. Emmet Sheehan, River Ryan and Gavin Stone underwent major surgeries last year. Michael Grove had a shoulder operation this year. Injuries have turned Bobby Miller into a pedestrian minor leaguer, but if another starter is injured, the Dodgers could be forced to call him up again.

Dave Roberts expertly managed a depleted rotation and exhausted bullpen in the playoffs last year, and he’ll have to do it again less than two months into the regular season. He could have to punt on certain games. When his team is behind, he could have to ask his starter to pitch an extra inning or two so that he could save his high-leverage relievers for games in which they are ahead.

This isn’t to say Ohtani’s pitching comeback should be expedited. Whomever they have pitching, the Dodgers will have to score runs to win another World Series, and that starts with Othani. Before they unleash Ohtani the pitcher, they have to protect Ohtani the hitter.

Because of that, they have gambled on May pitching more games like the one he pitched on Wednesday night in a 3-1 victory over Diamondbacks. They have gambled on Kershaw figuring out how to pitch as a 37-year-old returning from multiple operations. And they have gambled on Roberts managing an injury-ravaged pitching staff.

The wagers will decide what kind of season this will be, whether this is a year in which the Dodgers will run away with the NL West or one in which they will have to fight until the final days of the regular season to determine which team is granted a first-round bye in the playoffs.

Clayton Kershaw paused halfway up the dugout steps Saturday and bowed his head. The jog he was about to make to the mound at Dodger Stadium would be the first steps of what is likely the final chapter of his spectacular career.

A moment of silent reflection was in order.

“I don’t like the word emotional, but there’s definitely some thoughts. It’s just special,” Kershaw said of his first outing of the season, an uneven four-inning stint in the Dodgers’ 11-9 loss to the Angels. “You get a little bit older, you just learn to appreciate that more. It was different.”

Kershaw threw his last pitch in August at Phoenix’s Chase Field; Corbin Carroll hit it over the right-field wall. Kershaw then walked off the mound and was put on the injured list with a bone spur on his left big toe.

The first pitch of his latest comeback came at 6:10 p.m. Saturday, a high fastball that Zach Neto took for a ball. The rest of the inning went downhill from there, with Kershaw giving up three runs on three hits and two walks in the first inning.

He recovered nicely, though, yielding two runs and two hits over the next three innings while striking out two over four innings in a wild game the Angels won behind a career-high five RBIs from catcher Logan O’Hoppe.

“I love getting back out there. It’s a special thing to get to go back and pitch at Dodger Stadium,” Kershaw said. “Obviously, I wanted to pitch better. I need to pitch better going forward. But I think there’s some glimpses of some of my stuff being there, which is good. The problem tonight was just command.

“But, you know, first one back and just to be back out here at Dodger Stadium was special for me, regardless of the outcome.”

Kershaw’s return comes at a key time for the Dodgers (29-17), who are missing three starters — Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Roki Sasaki — to injury.

Dodgers starting pitcher Clayton Kershaw wipes his face during the third inning of an 11-9 loss to the Angels on Saturday night.

(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)

A three-time Cy Young Award winner, Kershaw, 37, is the Dodgers’ all-time leader in strikeouts and is 30 shy of becoming the 20th pitcher in big-league history to reach 3,000. His 212 career wins are second in franchise history behind only Don Sutton’s 233 and his 2.50 ERA ranks third. He also ranks third in starts (430).

But he’s spent almost as much time on the injured list as he has in the Dodgers’ rotation over the last five seasons and the list of injuries includes so many body parts, it reads like a page out of “Gray’s Anatomy”. There’s the toe, which kept him off the opening day roster. Last season it was knee, toe and shoulder injuries. In 2023, it was his left shoulder. The year before that, his back and pelvis and before that it was his forearm, elbow and back again.

Last season was clearly the most painful, though. Kershaw made seven starts and pitched just 30 innings, both career lows, and missed the World Series. Days after the team’s victory parade, he underwent surgery for a torn meniscus in his left knee and another on his left foot that left him on crutches and in a walking boot for two months.

“The superstar players that I have been around, there’s always something that fuels them and they need that,” Roberts said. “Him not being a part of that last year, I know that that’s fueling him.”

Logan O’Hoppe hits a three-run home run off Dodgers reliever Kirby Yates in the seventh inning Saturday.

(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)

With Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford, Kershaw’s high school teammate, looking on, Kershaw struggled through a 38-pitch first inning, giving up a bases-loaded single to O’Hoppe and an RBI double to Matthew Lugo. But the Dodgers needed just four batters to match that with Andy Pages belting a three-run homer, his ninth of the season, to dead center in the bottom of the inning.

After Kershaw retired the side in order in the second, Taylor Ward put the Angels (19-25) back in front in the third, hitting his 11th home run. A walk, a double and a sacrifice fly from Neto extended the lead in the fourth before Kiké Hernández pulled a run back for the Dodgers with a lead-off homer, his seventh, in the bottom of the fourth.

Kershaw was done by then, having thrown 83 pitches, nearly half of them in the first inning.

“The stuff overall, I was impressed with,” Roberts said. “The velocity was more than it’s been in quite some time. At times the slider was good. At times the curveball was good. He mixed in a lot of change-ups, which was good.

“The command just wasn’t consistent. He got to a lot of two-strike counts and couldn’t put hitters away, where typically that’s his hallmark.”

The Dodgers went in front for the first time in the sixth, turning three walks, two hits, a stolen base, a wild pitch and a ground-ball double play into three runs and 7-5 lead that O’Hoppe erased with his 10th homer, highlighting a five-run Angel seventh inning.

Five players — O’Hoppe, Luis Rengifo, Lugo, Nolan Schanuel and Kevin Newman — had two hits each for the Angels, who will try to sweep the three-game series Sunday afternoon.

For the Dodgers, Freddie Freeman matched a season high with four hits and is batting .407 in May, raising his league-leading average to .375. Pages, Hernández and catcher Dalton Rushing each had two hits.

Notes: Shohei Ohtani, who went hitless in six at-bats for the first time since 2019, threw 50 pitches in his most extensive bullpen session since undergoing a second surgery on his right elbow in 2023. The up-and-down session, in which Ohtani simulated a break between innings, was his second in a week. … To make room for Kershaw on the 26-man roster the Dodgers optioned right-hander Ryan Loutos to the minors. To create space on the 40-man roster, the Dodgers moved Snell to the 60-day injured list.

Last year could have been a storybook ending.

Had Clayton Kershaw been healthy, he likely would have been part of the Dodgers’ postseason rotation. He would have given them badly needed innings during their run to a World Series championship. And, in Year 17 of his future Hall of Fame career, he could have ridden off into the sunset, having little else to prove after playing an integral role on two championship teams.

“Yeah, if I was able to be a part of last year’s run and win a World Series and get to go out like that, that would have been really cool,” Kershaw said recently, contemplating what might have been if only he was available to pitch last October. “But I wasn’t. And it was still really fun to be part of. But it made it easier to want to come back, for sure.”

Back again, Kershaw is set to make his season debut for the Dodgers on Saturday after spending the first two months of the campaign recovering from offseason surgeries to address toe and knee injuries that sidelined him for the team’s title-winning trek through the playoffs last year.

Unlike previous offseasons, when the now 37-year-old Kershaw seemed to give retirement more serious thought, the three-time Cy Young Award winner made his mind up quickly last fall. Even before the Dodgers won their second championship in the last five years, he knew he wanted to pitch in 2025. After making just seven starts in 2024 with a 4.50 ERA, and missing the stretch run of the season when his long bothersome toe injury finally became too much, he didn’t want his career to end with him as a spectator, able only to cheer from the dugout as the Dodgers went on to win the World Series without him.

“For me, just getting back out on the mound is a big first step,” Kershaw said, ahead of what will be his first big-league outing since Aug. 30 of last year. “And then it’s the rest of the season, obviously. But just making it through Saturday and getting back out there is what I’ve thought about so far.”

To get to this point, the 18-year veteran had to endure a grueling offseason.

Days after the Dodgers’ World Series parade, Kershaw had two surgical operations: One on his left knee, where he had suffered a torn meniscus; and another on his left foot to address arthritis, a bone spur on his big toe and, most seriously, a ruptured plantar plate.

“If someone asked me, ‘What all did they do to your foot?’ I don’t know if I can answer all the way, but I know it’s not been fun,” Kershaw said, underscoring the complicated nature of a foot surgery, in particular, that he noted “only one or two baseball players” have had before.

“This one was painful,” he added, contrasting it to the relatively straightforward shoulder procedure he had the previous offseason. “It was like, ‘Oh, this is what people talk about when they talk about bad surgeries.’”

The worst part was the recovery, with Kershaw spending the better part of the next two months on crutches or in a walking boot.

“Trying to be on crutches and have four kids, it’s not easy,” he said. “Your offseason is supposed to be like, where you’re around and get to help more. And those first six weeks, I wasn’t much help. So it’s kind of a helpless feeling. And I don’t sit still well in general. So it was a hard process.”

Still, Kershaw’s commitment to come back never wavered. He was into a throwing program by the start of spring training. He began a minor-league rehab stint in the middle of April. And he posted a 2.57 ERA in five rehab starts, feeling he’d “turned the corner” with his foot over the last couple outings.

“Those last few rehab starts, I was more concerned about throwing well and getting guys out than I was [about] how my foot felt or anything like that,” he said. “So I think that was a good sign for me physically. And now, it’s just a process of figuring out how to get guys out consistently again and perform. That’s a much better place to be than seeing if you’re hurt.”

Exactly how Kershaw will fare back in the big leagues is an unknown. During his rehab stint, his fastball sat in the upper-80 mph range, a few ticks down from the already diminished velocity he’d had in recent seasons. He struck out only 16 batters in 21 innings, relying more on command and an ability to induce soft contact to navigate his way through starts.

On the other hand, Kershaw’s arm is as healthy as it’s been in years, now 17 months removed from his 2023 shoulder surgery. Even without eye-popping stuff last year, he proved to be competitive, owning a 3.72 ERA before leaving his Aug. 30 start early when his toe flared up. And simply having him back in the rotation will come as a boon for the Dodgers, who have been shorthanded recently with fellow starters Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Roki Sasaki all nursing shoulder injuries.

“It’s a big shot in the arm,” manager Dave Roberts said. “Clayton has worked really hard to get healthy, and the bar is high for him, you know. He doesn’t want to just come back to be active. He wants to come back and help us win baseball games and be good. And so I know he’s excited to contribute.”

In a break from his typically stoic facade, that excitement was evident from Kershaw all week. Except when reflecting upon the departure of teammate and close friend Austin Barnes, Kershaw was smiling almost everywhere he went around the ballpark in recent days. “Is that unusual?” he deadpanned when a reporter noted the observation Thursday. He also downplayed his pursuit of 3,000 career strikeouts — he is just 32 Ks away from becoming the 20th member of the illustrious statistical club — in favor of amplifying the gratitude he felt about simply pitching in the majors once again.

“I think when you haven’t done something for a long time, and you realize that you miss it — you miss competing, you miss being a part of the team and contributing — there’s a lot of gratitude and gratefulness to get back to that point,” Kershaw said. “I definitely feel that. Now, if I go out there and don’t pitch good, it’s gonna go away real fast. So there’s a performance aspect of it, too. But I think for now, sitting on the other side of it, just super excited and grateful to get to go back out there again.”

When asked if he ever planned on hanging it up, Kershaw then laughed.

“Somebody will tell me to retire at some point, I’m sure,” he said.

But, after finishing last season injured and grinding through a long rehab this winter, that point is not now, not yet.

Eighteen years later, Kershaw still feels he has more to give.

“At the end of the day, you just want to be a contributing factor to the Dodgers,” he said. “You don’t want to just be on the sidelines. So I’m excited to get back to that.”