Kershaw Has The Most Value!

 

  Now that the baseball regular season is over, the postseason is slated to start tonight. We have an exciting 1 game playoff game between the A's and the Royals. There is one big debate going on in the baseball world and it does not involve the postseason. Will Clayton Kershaw, the clear cut NL Cy Young winner, win the MVP award too? He lead all of baseball with a 1.77 ERA, 21 wins, and was in top 3 in strikeouts in the NL with 239. We saw a few years ago Justin Verlander win both the Cy Young award and MVP, so anything is possible. The main debate is that the Cy Young award is the equivalent of MVP award for pitchers. Does that really matter? Pitchers are considered players too.

    The first thing I will say is that Clayton Kershaw absolutely deserves to win both awards. If it was not for him, the Dodgers may not have won their division, let alone made it to the playoffs. There are not many instances where a pitcher has won the MVP. Before Justin Verlander, the last pitcher to win a MVP was Dennis Eckersley. The likes of Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax, Roger Clemens, and Rollie Fingers have all won MVP awards, respectively Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax, and Clemens each lead their teams to the World Series the year they won their MVP's. That shows how VALUABLE they were to their respective teams. Clayton Kershaw is probably the closest thing we've seen to Koufax in quite some time.

  

  Kershaw was 21-3 with a 1.77 ERA and 239 strikeouts in just under 200 innings. Let us not forget that he missed about a month of the season. Had he not been injured, he could have had at least 25 wins and more innings pitched.  Kershaw had the lowest ERA in the NL since Bob Gibson. When a pticher gives you chance to win games in everyone of his starts, even if he doesn't get a decision, is that not considered valuable. Doesn't the MVP award go to someone who's valuable to his team? Even if he's valuable to his team, not everything is in the stat sheets.

   There is no doubt that Gincarlo Stanton had an unbelievable season. He deserves all the consideration in the world but is not as valuable to the Marlins as Kershaw is to the Dodgers this season. He did not make that lineup better overall. Kershaw did help take off the pressure off the rest of Dodgers pitching staff. Zack Grienke doesn't need to think he has as much pressure as Kershaw. People need to consider a players overall value to their team. Kershaw has the most value to his team.