One week ago, Dodgers southpaw Clayton Kershaw layered in another rewrite to his work-in-progress Hall of Fame plaque – one more victory to expand his difference between career wins and losses to a plus 120; five more strikeouts to creep within a dozen punchouts of an even 3,000; yet another zero in the runs column to hold the career ERA at a liveball era-best 2.51.
One week ago, Kershaw applied this mastery in a matchup that retains a special vitality, a sharpened edge that shapes a frame-within-a-frame-within-a-frame picture that has the ability to both enlarge and compress and suggest a consequence beyond just one more win or loss in the appropriate column. On Saturday, June 14, Kershaw focused all his energies and talents and voodoo on a long-suffering opponent, the San Francisco Giants.
The Dodgers-Giants rivalry, along with the feuds between the Red Sox and Yankees and Cardinals and Cubs, towers above all the others built within the National Pastime. In these cases, perhaps, individual success over an extended stretch gets buried a bit by the overwhelmingness of this team against that club. But within this somewhat buried smaller picture, honing in on what that guy did when faced with his team’s arch-enemy offers a revelation of sorts, an adjacent podium to lay out for celebration.
Lou Gehrig’s career slash line (.340/.447/.632) has few matches in the game – it’s built of the sturdiest material in the baseball universe. When the lifetime Yankee faced the Red Sox, the three-digit proclamations of dominance rose across the board (.352/.456/.644). Boston’s one and only Ted Williams (.344/.482/.634 for his career) can’t quite make that same claim, but he was, for all intents and purposes, the same TED WILLIAMS against the Yankees (.345/.495/.608) – no small feat against what was the powerhouse of the AL during the Splendid Splinter’s career from 1939-1960. For a 10-year stretch from 1943-1952, Cardinals southpaw Harry Brecheen was a superhuman muffler when facing the Cubs, holding that franchise’s array of batters to a 2.03 ERA in 420.1 innings.
No player with 1,000 plate appearances against the Yankees owns a better OPS than Williams; only Babe Ruth (of course) claims a higher OPS than Gehrig among all the players in history with at least 1,000 trips to the dish against the Red Sox. As for Brecheen, he can make a grander statement: only two pitchers in the liveball era with at least 40 starts against any single opponent can boast of a lower ERA against that adversary.
You may have guessed that one of those “Anything you can do, I can do better” proclaimers is Clayton Kershaw.
In 61 games (59 starts) amid the refiner’s fire of the Dodgers-Giants rivalry, the future Hall of Famer owns a 27-16 record (.628 winning percentage), a 2.00 ERA, a 0.915 WHIP, a .544 OPS-against, and a rate of 9.19 K’s/9. If most of these numbers draw a gasp of “whoa,” they should. For within one of the most heated, most storied, most enduring rivalries this game has ever constructed and then stood back so as to admire the work, Kershaw claims the lowest ERA, WHIP and OPS-against that any pitcher has against any opponent (min. 40 GS) in the liveball era**. Kershaw is king, the preeminent slayer of the past century-plus.
I like to imagine Kershaw’s Hall of Fame plaque, when it’s eventually unveiled, taking up a little bit of space to memorialize his special silencing effect on his most reviled combatant, for it does elevate the story, it does sharpen and vivify the imagery. There’s going to be a lot to commemorate in that limited space, of course, but his singular demonstration in this significant battle is the stuff of myth.
**Here are the top-four performers in the handful of categories I referenced
1920-2025: Lowest ERA vs. a Single Opponent (min. 40 GS)
2.00 Clayton Kershaw vs. Giants
2.02 Tom Seaver vs. Padres
2.03 Harry Brecheen vs. Cubs
2.12 Jim Palmer vs. Indians
1920-2025: Lowest WHIP vs. a Single Opponent (min. 40 GS)
0.915 Clayton Kershaw vs. Giants
0.981 Juan Marichal vs. Mets
0.994 Tom Seaver vs. Padres
0.999 Clayton Kershaw vs. Padres
1920-2025: Lowest OPS-against vs. a Single Opponent (min. 40 GS)
.544 Clayton Kershaw vs. Giants
.556 Sandy Koufax vs. Cubs
.556 Tom Seaver vs. Padres
.559 Roger Clemens vs. Royals
1920-2025: Highest K/9 vs. a Single Opponent (min. 40 GS)
10.56 Sandy Koufax vs. Cubs
9.87 Clayton Kershaw vs. Diamondbacks
9.72 Roger Clemens vs. Tigers
9.62 Nolan Ryan vs. White Sox
~Kershaw’s 9.19 versus the Giants comes in tied for the 10th highest mark
1920-2025: Best Winning % vs. a Single Opponent (min. 40 GS)
.824 Andy Pettitte vs. Orioles
.814 Lefty Grove vs. Red Sox
.800 Pete Donohue vs. Phillies
.794 Dave McNally vs. Senators/Rangers
~Despite his brilliance depicted in the more controllable categories, Kershaw’s .628 versus the Giants is tied for 202nd best – you can’t have everything
Thanks to Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.
Roger Schlueter
As Sr. Editorial Director for Major League Baseball Productions from 2004-2015, Roger served as a hub for hundreds of hours of films, series, documentaries and features: as researcher, fact-checker, script doctor, and developer of ideas. The years at MLB Production gave him the ideal platform to pursue what galvanized him the most – the idea that so much of what takes place on the field during the MLB regular and postseason (and is forever beautifully condensed into a box score) has connections to what has come before. Unearthing and celebrating these webs allows baseball to thrive, for the present can come alive and also reignite the past.