Quote:
Originally Posted by brewing
Kershaw is 49.6 innings behind Koufax.
To match Koufax he would have to do the following over his next 49.6 innings.
Lose 13 games
Give up 39 hits and walk 240 batters.
31 of those hits need to be HR's
Give up 96 Earned Runs, resulting in a nifty 17.12 ERA
And he'd still have more wins and strikeouts than Koufax. Keep in mind the difference of eras too. Koufax played in a pitching era and Kershaw in a hitter's era.
Same number of Cy Young Awards. Kershaw has 7 top 5 finishes in the award voting, Koufax has 4.
Maybe we tend to honor the baseball from the past more because we dig vintage baseball cards. But the numbers don't lie, Kershaw is better than the left arm of God.
https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...ershcl01.shtml
https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...oufasa01.shtml |
That's silly, and not simply as other people have mentioned (because of the Postseason). It's silly because we all know that Koufax's career averages are not spectacular because for the first half of his career, he was mediocre. Koufax wasn't "The Left Arm of God" for his entire career. No one argues that he was. For 5 seasons he was truly spectacular.
That does nothing to take away from what Kershaw has done in his career. I think he deserves the Koufax comparisons. But comparing career totals misses the story with Koufax in my opinion.