by Cary Osborne
Clayton Kershaw’s two-strike slider to Seattle’s Eugenio Suarez in the bottom of the sixth inning on Sunday completed the back of the baseball card for the legendary left-handed pitcher.
Kershaw’s 94th pitch of the afternoon, the 43,216th pitch he has thrown over 18 Major League seasons, struck out Suarez.
Kershaw, in his final career regular-season start, struck out seven batters over 5 1/3 shutout innings at Seattle’s T-Mobile Park. Kershaw earned career win №223 in the Dodgers’ 6–1 victory in the Dodgers’ final game of the 2025 regular season.
The back of the baseball card now shows this as the final record:
His 2025: 11–2, 3.36 ERA, 1.22 WHIP, 84 strikeouts in 112 2/3 innings in 23 games (22 starts and one relief appearance).
A career win-loss record of 223–96: The .699 winning percentage is the best-ever by a starting pitcher in the Modern Era with a minimum of 1,500 innings pitched.
3,052 strikeouts: The 20th most in Major League history and the fourth-most by a left-handed pitcher.
A 2.53 ERA: The best ever by a starting pitcher in the Live Ball Era (Since 1920).
A 1.018 WHIP: The second best by a starting pitcher in the Live Ball Era (Since 1920) behind Jacob deGrom’s 0.986
He is the Dodgers’ all-time leader in career strikeouts. He ranks second in wins behind Don Sutton (233). He ranks third in games started (451) behind Sutton (533) and Don Drysdale (465). He ranks fourth in innings pitched (2,855 1/3).
Among Dodger starting pitchers with at least 100 starts, he ranks first in WHIP (1.018), ERA+ (154) and strikeout-to-walk ratio (4.3), second in strikeouts per nine innings (9.6), third in ERA (2.53) and seventh in fielding independent pitching (2.86).
Kershaw is the only Major League pitcher with at least 200 career wins and fewer than 100 losses.
Kershaw’s performance on Sunday was the 102nd time he has allowed zero runs in a start. That ranks fifth in Major League history.
The Dodgers went 96–6 in those games.
The Dodgers went 302–147 is his 451 career starts.
Clayton Kershaw’s remarkable career numbers was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.