Clayton Kershaw Must Become More Than Regular-Season Award Stockpiler

The awards, acknowledgement and attention keep coming for Clayton Kershaw, the ace of the Los Angeles Dodgers. 

He deserves them. He is the best pitcher in baseball, and his sweep of the National League Cy Young and MVP awards should not shock anyone. He is not only a great pitcher, he is one of the best baseball players in the majors.

The thing is, all of these awards are given for regular season performance. Kershaw has proven himself as the best pitcher in baseball from April through September.

Now he has to do it in October.

"

Bet Clayton Kershaw, who's 1st NL pitcher 2 win MVP & Cy Young in same season since Bob Gibson, would trade them all 4 post-season success.

— Cindy Bristow (@cindybristow) November 13, 2014"

For all of Kershaw’s regular-season dominance, he has wilted in the playoffs. In 11 appearances, eight of them starts, Kershaw is 1-5 with a 5.12 ERA and 1.235 WHIP. In the last two postseason runs for the Dodgers, when Kershaw has been the Kershaw we now know to be the best pitcher in baseball, he has made four quality starts in six outings.

Still, those starts haven’t been up to the bar Kershaw has set during the regular season. His last four starts in the playoffs have resulted in Dodger losses, and in his last three, he has allowed 18 earned runs in 16.2 innings. That’s a 9.72 ERA.

“I’m going to try to do it in the postseason now, too,” Kershaw said on MLB Network after he won the MVP Award on Thursday.

Stinging Kershaw more, even if he won’t readily admit it, is that the rival San Francisco Giants have three World Series titles in the last five years, and their ace, Madison Bumgarner, was historically dominant during this year’s run.

“For me, personally, the season didn’t end the way I wanted it to,” Kershaw said after winning his third Cy Young Award in four years Wednesday, via Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times. “I didn’t pitch well enough to win games. That’s ultimately why we all play the game, to win a World Series.”

Kershaw hasn’t been all bad in October. He has pitched at least six innings and allowed one run or fewer in three of his last six starts, but it’s the blowups that stick out.

In Game 6 of last year’s National League Championship Series, Kershaw pitched four innings, gave up 10 hits and allowed seven runs to the St. Louis Cardinals.

In Game 1 of the NL Division Series against the Cardinals this year, Kershaw allowed eight runs in 6.2 innings, including six in the seventh inning after being handed a four-run lead. In Game 4 of that series, Kershaw allowed a three-run home run to Matt Adams in the seventh inning to squander a two-run lead in an elimination game the Dodgers eventually lost.

Tom Gannam/Associated Press

The Dodgers are the richest team with a gaggle of former and current superstars. World Series expectations are built-in these days. Kershaw is their best player. He is the face of the franchise, one of the ones on baseball’s current Mt. Rushmore.

When the best pitcher in the game fails on its brightest stages, again and again, it becomes a label until he can shed it. This year, Kershaw was stigmatized.

Clayton Kershaw: The Best Pitcher in the Majors...When It Matters Least.

That is obviously absurd. The regular season does matter. It is a marathon to give your team the best odds to win an October crapshoot, where luck and randomness play a significant role, like it or not.

Players are and should be rewarded for being the best over six months. Kershaw has been. Repeatedly. Deservedly.

"

Kershaw faced 749 hitters this year. They batted .196/.231/.289. That is almost 750 PA of Mario Mendoza production. Pitchers should be MVPs.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 14, 2014"

This year, Kershaw was primed to continue his dominance into the postseason. An injury early in the season limited his innings going into the playoffs, and the Dodgers clinched early, allowing him to be set up nicely to pitch the first game. But his Game 1 implosion ultimately doomed the Dodgers, sealing their fate as postseason failures once again and his as a choker.

The labels and ridicule for Kershaw’s October numbers are only partly deserved. He hasn't been completely awful, and he has been far from great. But when so much is expected of you, failing to be great is failing all together. It doesn't matter what you did in the regular season—or the hardware in your trophy room.

Now it’s time for Kershaw to become more than a regular-season award hoarder. It’s now time for Kershaw to lead the Dodgers into their first World Series since 1988 and be great in that final series as well.

Kershaw is no longer pitching to keep his place as the top pitcher in the game. From now until he proves himself in October, he will be pitching to shed the belief that he can’t win in the playoffs.

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News, and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.