One of the greatest left-handed pitchers to ever toe the rubber will be hanging up his cleats at the end of the 2025 MLB season.
Los Angeles Dodgers legend Clayton Kershaw on Thursday announced his retirement, which will come when L.A.'s season is over.
Kershaw has a legitimate case as the greatest southpaw pitcher ever. He's certainly been the best of this era.
His greatness can be summed up in so many ways.
He was the National League MVP -- not just Cy Young, but MVP -- in 2014. That season, he went 21-3 with a 1.77 ERA and 239 strikeouts in 198.1 innings.
That was the fourth consecutive season in which he led the NL in ERA.
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He might have been even better in 2015, when he had a 2.13 ERA, three complete game shutouts and a career-high 301 strikeouts in 232.2 innings pitched.
Kershaw's early-career bugaboo was a few negative postseason moments, but he turned that around with World Series rings in 2020 and 2024.
He won three Cy Young Awards, and this season, he surpassed the 3,000-strikeout plateau.
Kershaw's ability to reinvent himself as he aged was remarkable, too.
Even this season, at 37, Kershaw is 10-2 with a 3.53 ERA.
He broke in with a dominant, loopy curveball. He'll retire as a pitcher who throws his slider even more than his fastball.
In an era of more home runs than ever, Kershaw allows only 0.7 homers per nine innings.
He's the definition of greatness, and for the next few weeks or month-plus, baseball fans will get to pay tribute to a legendary lefty before he walks off the mound for good.
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