After Historic Cy Young Season, Can Clayton Kershaw Possibly Get Any Better?

It's hard to climb any higher when you're already on top of the world.

And yet, that's what Clayton Kershaw must now try to do.

First things first, though. Kershaw has a new trophy to add to his collection. In a turn of events that surprised absolutely nobody, Major League Baseball revealed Wednesday that the Los Angeles Dodgers ace left-hander won the National League Cy Young Award in a unanimous vote (h/t B/R's Adam Wells).

This is Kershaw's third Cy Young. That's a lot for a guy who's only 26. It's the most in history for a pitcher that young, in fact.

And the kind of pattern Kershaw is working on almost defies logic. His first Cy Young season in 2011 was good. But his second in 2013 was better, and his third in 2014 was even better.

Kershaw won his fourth straight National League ERA title with a career-best 1.77 ERA and also logged 198.1 innings despite missing April with an injury. In the middle of it came a 15-strikeout, no-walk no-hitter, and we can have a legit argument about it being the best no-hitter ever.

Just how good was Kershaw in relation to his peers? Dayn Perry at CBSSports.com decided to count how many categories Kershaw led all starting pitchers in this past season, and he found 44 of them. 

Forty-four? Forty four. Forty-freakin'-four.

Kershaw's season measures up pretty darn well historically too. His 1.77 ERA is the lowest since Pedro Martinez's 1.74 in 2000. His 197 ERA+, that being ERA adjusted for parks and leagues, is one of the top 20 marks in the integration era (since 1947).

Wins above replacement? Baseball-Reference.com puts Kershaw's 2014 WAR at 7.5, which isn't close to the top of the charts for all-time single seasons. But a WAR as high as 7.5 in only 27 starts? Kershaw's one of only nine pitchers to do that. 

Tom Gannam/Associated Press/Associated Press

When we last saw Kershaw, he was walking off the mound in the seventh inning of Game 4 of the National League Division Series after a go-ahead three-run home run by Matt Adams. That eventually won the game and the series for the St. Louis Cardinals and upped Kershaw's ERA for the series to 7.82 and his career postseason ERA to 5.12.

There's your reminder that Kershaw is, in fact, human. And since he's human in October, it's not impossible to come across those who think he's unworthy of all the praise heaped upon him. Otherwise known as "overrated."

Nonsense.

Kershaw's been among the pitching elite for several years now, and the season he just had cemented his status as the best of the bunch and is very much deserving of a spot among the greatest pitching seasons ever. The word "overrated" has no business being used anywhere near his name.

If you must be skeptical about Kershaw, however, there is something worth being skeptical about:

There's no way he can outdo himself in 2015, right?

Well, there's the obvious answer: Kershaw can pull a Madison Bumgarner next October and put the notion that he's not a big-game pitcher to rest.

There. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's exchange silly narratives for nuts and bolts.

It would be one thing if Kershaw simply posted his best ERA in 2014, but what's significant is that he legitimately earned it. The absolute best ways for a pitcher to be successful are to get strikeouts, limit walks and get ground balls, and Kershaw was better than ever at these three things.

Courtesy of FanGraphs:

Season	K%	BB%	GB%
2008	21.3	11.1	48.0
2009	26.4	13.0	39.4
2010	25.0	9.6	40.1
2011	27.2	5.9	43.2
2012	25.4	7.0	46.9
2013	25.6	5.7	46.0
2014	31.9	4.1	51.8

Strikeout percentage was one of the 44 categories that Kershaw led in 2014. He finished seventh in walk rate and 15th in ground-ball rate. Thus, he was elite at each of the three things starting pitchers should strive to be elite at.

How Kershaw did this isn't some big mystery. He threw half his pitches in the strike zone, which is a darn good way to avoid walks and push hitters toward strikeouts. He threw his slider more and, according to Brooks Baseball, watched it get both swinging strikes and ground balls like never before. 

No wonder. When FanGraphs' Jeff Sullivan looked at what was going on with Kershaw's slider, he found it was coming in faster than ever and being kept lower. Thus:

"

He’s had a slider for a while, but he’s never before had this slider, and he was already amazing with his last one. Now, the slider is sharper. Now, the slider is more consistently coming in on a different plane, staying down after approaching like a regular heater...Now they just drop to the bottom of the zone or below, yielding little opportunity to do damage even given contact, which has grown increasingly rare.

"

While Kershaw's slider got sharper, his curveball remained as dominant as always. Batters hit just .127 against it in the regular season with a .183 slugging percentage.

So in a nutshell, here's what Kershaw was in 2014: a guy with arguably the best slider and curveball in the game who excelled at throwing strikes and keeping the ball on the ground. Basically, the ideal pitcher.

This is the bad news as well as the good news. Never mind a hard act to follow. Kershaw's 2014 is arguably an impossible act to follow. From where he is now, he can only stay the same or get worse.

Unless...

The only thing I can think of is Kershaw possibly evening out his platoon splits. In three out of the last four years, the difference between his performance against left-handed batters and right-handed batters has been about the same:

Season	vs. LHB	vs. RHB	Difference
2011	.512	.564	+52
2012	.570	.598	+28
2013	.477	.532	+55
2014	.477	.531	+54

There's no shame in how Kershaw has performed against right-handed batters. In fact, the .531 OPS righties had against him in 2014 was the lowest against any left-handed starter. Getting them out is just another thing Kershaw is better at than his peers.

Still, the platoon split is there. Perhaps it can be erased, and perhaps that's as simple as Kershaw adding a new pitch.

Namely, the one that's always eluded him: the changeup.

Kershaw knows this. When he was asked on MLB Network (see above video) what he wants to work on, he initially answered consistency. But then: "That and a changeup. I could always figure out how to throw more changeups. That's my goal every offseason, trying to figure that out. And I never do."

He's not kidding. Kershaw's awkward courtship with the pitch was even fodder for an article by Tim Brown of Yahoo Sports last spring, which chronicled how he just...can't...figure...it...out. And he wouldn't appear to be closer to doing so, as he only threw 29 all season in 2014.

If that continues to be the status quo, then Kershaw will have to find ways to make his four-seamer, slider and curveball combination even deadlier, which is the tallest of tall tasks after his 2014 season.

But if Kershaw can figure it out—and in light of his notorious hypercompetitiveness, it's likely he will indeed try—he'll have acquired the one pitch that most left-handers use as a go-to offering for getting right-handed batters out. Even an average one can do the job, and then you have renowned lefty changeups like those of Cole Hamels, Francisco Liriano and Chris Sale.

If Kershaw can add even an average changeup to his arsenal, it will be scary enough that a pitcher with the most lethal three-pitch mix in the game will have added a new weapon. If he adds an above-average changeup...well, let's just say we'll be talking about him in even loftier tones than we are now.

It's hard to improve on three Cy Youngs in four years. It's even harder to improve on a 1.77 ERA that was earned by everything working in perfect harmony. It's more than likely we've seen Kershaw's best.

But there is a way he can get better. And if he works hard enough, he just might.

You hitters out there? Yeah, that's a warning.

Note: Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com unless otherwise noted/linked.  

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