MLB's Old Guard of Greatness on the Mound Is All But Over

It is a gift to be here in 2025 and know the three greatest pitchers of the 21st century are still working. Particularly for those of us of a certain age, it's hard to fathom MLB without Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw, and Max Scherzer.

That day is coming, however. And soon.

Though Verlander, Kershaw and Scherzer are technically still working, only one of them is actually pitching right now. Verlander, 42, and Scherzer, 40, are both on the injured list. The 37-year-old Kershaw only just came off the IL on Saturday, and he was rudely greeted by the Los Angeles Angels.

Rude greetings have been a bit too common for all three hurlers of late. Whereas each of the three boasts a career ERA between the mid-2.00s and low-3.00s, their composite ERA the last two seasons is darn near 5.00. Because of a steady flow of injuries, that is over just 45 total starts.

As Kershaw is the only one of the three who has gotten truly candid in his ponderings of retirement, this is not where you will find a definitive prediction that 2025 will, in fact, be the end of the line for him and his fellow aces.

This merely feels like the end of the line. And, truthfully, there's no shame in quietly hoping it is.

These 3 Deserve to Go into the Hall of Fame Together

After all, Verlander, Kershaw and Scherzer choosing the same year to retire would clear the way for all three to go into the Hall of Fame at the same time. Just how appropriate would that be?

That they are the greatest pitchers of their generation is less of an opinion and more like a fact. They are the only three-time Cy Young Award winners this century has produced. They also occupy the top three spots among pitchers in rWAR since 2000:

1. Justin Verlander: 81.0
2. Clayton Kershaw: 76.2
3. Max Scherzer: 74.4
4. Zack Greinke: 72.4
5. Roy Halladay: 62.4

With 300 wins out of reach for all three, the only bit of unfinished business is Kershaw's pursuit of 3,000 strikeouts. He needs just 30 more to get there, and he can get those in just a handful of starts.

Otherwise, each has been an All-Star at least eight times. Each possesses multiple World Series rings. Each has pitched at least one no-hitter, with Scherzer also tossing a 20-strikeout game for good measure.

There is zero doubt that all three will be first-ballot Hall of Famers when their time comes. As such, the three sharing the same stage for the same induction ceremony at Cooperstown would be an all-too-perfect epilogue.

Welcome to the End of MLB's Workhorse Era

As easy as it is to look upon Verlander, Kershaw and Scherzer as the best pitchers of their era, a harder thing to do is admit that this era ended years ago.

All three were still ace-caliber pitchers as recently as 2022, when Verlander won his third Cy Young Award. The trio ultimately combined for 73 starts and a 2.08 ERA that season. But they were done as workhorses well before then, and that is what really matters in the broader context of where starting pitching is now.

All three came into MLB at a time when it was common for starting pitchers to log not only 200 innings, but often over 220. A total of 67 pitchers crossed the latter threshold at least once in the 2000s, with 10 doing so four or more times.

By contrast, only 34 pitchers had a 220-inning season in the 2010s, with only six doing so four times. Verlander, Kershaw and Scherzer were among that latter group, with Verlander topping out at 251 innings in 2011 alone.

It is safe to declare the tradition that Verlander, Kershaw and Scherzer so faithfully kept alive in the 2010s to be well and truly dead here in the 2020s. Sandy Alcantara holds the only 220-inning season of the decade. Even 200 innings has indeed become a lot to ask, with only four pitchers working that hard in 2024.

A rant like this invariably gives off "Old Man Yells At Cloud" energy, but the only way this wouldn't be a sad story is if the explanation simply traced back to the MLB season having gotten shorter. And this, obviously, is not the case.

What is the case is that an era of highly impressive, highly visible starting pitchers has given way to one in which starters are no less impressive, yet a lot less visible.

MLB's New Pitching Era Defies Explanation

Of all the problems MLB has in 2025, a shortage of talented starters is not one of them.

The fWAR leaderboard for this season features 20-something pitchers in eight of the top 10 spots. Among them are Paul Skenes and Garrett Crochet, whose respective careers are off to both subtle and obvious historic beginnings. There is also Tarik Skubal, who has somehow gotten even better after winning the Cy Young Award and pitching triple crown in the American League in 2024.

There isn't a single 220-inning candidate in the bunch, however, and that's a sign of the times. Starters are averaging 5.3 innings per start, whereas they averaged exactly 6.0 innings barely more than a decade ago in 2014.

There is not a single explanation for why starters don't work as deep into games. There are indeed many, with quite a few of them relating to how pitchers at all levels are incentivized to expend energy rather than conserve it. Simply put, it's hard to work deep into games when you're going max effort on every pitch.

It is to MLB's credit that it wants starting pitchers to have the spotlight again, but the how is a whole 'nother matter. A six-inning minimum for starters went up as a trial balloon last August, but it seems fair to say it got shot down.

So, here's a better idea for restoring the glory of starting pitchers: Rather than a reestablishment of old norms, what is needed is a resetting of expectations.

This is sort of a time-honored tradition. Pitchers were expected to throw 300 innings until they weren't, then 250 innings until they weren't. It was, therefore, always likely a matter of time before 200 innings became the new tipping point, and that moment is now.

Fortunately, what starters are losing in stamina, they're gaining in effectiveness.

All that max-effort throwing is resulting in ever-increasing fastball velocity and consistently high strikeout rates. We'll see how things ultimately shake out, but this year is on track to be only the second full season in which eight different pitchers post strikeout rates north of 30 percent. And that list isn't even a who's-who of the most promising starters in MLB today, notably excluding Skenes and Crochet.

If expectations are ultimately reset, we may come to see the 2021 NL Cy Young Award race as the point of no return.

That was the year that Zack Wheeler pitched 213.1 innings to Corbin Burnes' 167.0, yet it was Burnes who won the award. It was other stats that held sway with voters, and not just ERA. Burnes also had Wheeler beat in key rate stats such as WHIP, strikeout percentage, strikeout-to-walk ratio and a host of Statcast metrics, including expected ERA. Effectively, the voters rewarded the guy who was better at getting outs over the guy who got more outs.

Those of us who were there to watch them at their best will always remember that Verlander, Kershaw and Scherzer excelled on both of those fronts. Thus are they about to graduate into "they don't make 'em like that anymore," as the likes of Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez and Roy Halladay did before them.

It's too soon to know who will join them in that special club in the long run. It would also be folly to promise that MLB will get another generational trio like Verlander, Kershaw, and Scherzer. As with crying, there is no reincarnation in baseball.

The important thing to do, then, is to enjoy them while they're still here. After that, the second-most important thing is to trust that life for starting pitchers will go on.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.