The Best Pitcher of Our Time - Clayton Kershaw, Dodgers, LHP

The reason we love sports is that we get to witness exceptional greatness on display. In the past years in basketball, we saw the fierceness of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, the vengeful slam dunks of Vince Carter, and refreshing swishes of Reggie Miller and Steph Curry. In football, we see the greatness of Tom Brady as well as the zig-zagging, ankle breaking runs of Carlos Hyde and Le'Veon Bell. In baseball, we see the brilliant 5-tool performance of Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, and the breakout offensive superstar Aaron Judge.

Also in baseball, we see the un-hittable pitching of Clayton Kershaw.

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2,000 Strikeout Club

In June 2, 2017, Clayton Kershaw struck out Jonathan Villar to earn his 2,000th strikeout, becoming the 5th fastest player to join the club by age and 2nd fastest player in total games played, behind the "Big Unit" Randy Johnson.

Think about this. He's struckout two thousand players before the age of 30, and he's not showing any signs of slowing down. At this pace, he might be able to join the 4,000 strikeout club before retirement - joining Randy Johnson, Nolan Ryan, and Steve Carlton.

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Stats Don't Lie

His career WHIP Walks and Hits per Innings Pitched is .988, just 20 points away from Addie Joss, who pitched ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO from 1902 to 1910. If you account for the fact that professional ballplayers are so much more developed today than 100 years ago, what Kershaw is doing is nothing short of jaw-dropping amazing.

Look at all the other stats. His rookie ERA was a sub-par from 4.26 in 2008. Since then, his career ERA dropped every year, going from 4.26 to 3.36 to 3.17 to 2.88 to 2.79 to 2.60 to 248 to 2.43 to 2.37 last year. He was in the running for the Cy Young Award (Given to the best pitcher in each league) 6 times and won it 3 times. He was the 2014 NL MVP, which is significant because pitchers rarely get the MVP award.

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That Wicked Curve Ball

Kershaw's fastball and sliders are both A+ pitches, and any pitcher than can use the two effectively would be a star pitcher in the league. However, Kershaw's curveball is a A+++ pitch, one that fools even the best of hitters.

Any curveball is hard to hit when it's mixed with fastballs, but Kershaw's special curveball goes from 11 to 5, fooling hitters into thinking that it's going out of the strike zone. It's almost 23-24 miles slower than his fastball but his release is too quick to notice.

To quote Anthony Castrovince from SportsonEarth.com, "The break in Kershaw's breaking ball is now close to 10 inches, on average. And that kind of drop is how you freeze more people than Queen Elsa of Arendelle."

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Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher that we've seen in the last decade. There were many pitchers that challeged him along the way - Matt Harvery, Gerrit Cole, Jake Arrieta - but they all fell short of being the best.

The only challenge that Kershaw faces is to dominate in the playoffs, which he has yet to do. His regular season usage was way too high, in my opinion, but I think Doc has it under control.

But you should really go to a game and watch him pitch, so that one day you can tell your grandkids that you saw Kershaw pitch.

P.S. he's got some monster mitts. check this out.