Dodgers: Three players with milestones at risk if 2020 season is lost

Clayton Kershaw

Chasing: 300 wins, Dodger record in wins, strikeouts

For the Dodgers, the player perhaps most impacted by a lost 2020 season would be Clayton Kershaw. The southpaw is 131 wins short of reaching the 300 mark as a starter, a number that still matters to pitchers even if advanced metrics tell a better story about their overall performance. Using Szymborski’s probabilities, Kershaw’s chances of reaching 300 wins drops from 30 percent if the 2020 season is played, to only 22 percent if the season is lost.

Either way, it would be difficult for Kershaw to accumulate nearly the same number of wins he already has (169) over the back-end of his career, but what about 200 wins or even 250? The left-hander is signed through 2021, when he will be 33, turning 34-years-old, heading into free agency. Perhaps he looks to sign one more deal before calling it quits? After winning 25 games over the previous two seasons, he needs 31 more wins to reach 200 for his career, a more difficult task if he loses the entire 2020 season and needs to put together a string of 10+ win seasons in 2021 and beyond.

The Dodger record for pitching wins is 233 set by Don Sutton. Only Sutton and Drysdale (209) have more than 200 wins in a Dodger uniform. Kershaw currently ranks fifth in franchise history, eleven shy of Brickyard Kennedy, and 21 short of Dazzy Vance. While Kershaw will probably climb to third all-time in Dodger wins whether a 2020 season is played or not, he needs all of the opportunities he can get to add as many as 65 more wins to surpass Sutton.

Another category that seems out of reach on a larger scale but within grasp in the Dodger record books is total strikeouts. Kershaw is third all-time among Dodger pitchers with 2,464 K’s. He needs 233 more to set the all-time club record, also held by Sutton. Under normal conditions, it wouldn’t be a problem for Kershaw to reach that plateau over the remaining two seasons on his contract—he recorded 189 strike outs last season. However, if there’s no baseball in 2020, it would require a superlative season for him to reach 233 in 2021, meaning he would probably fall just short, unless he ended up signing another deal to pitch past his age 33 season in Los Angeles.

For Kershaw to reach 3000 strikeouts, he needs to accumulate 536 more K’s. Szymbroski assumes he gets there no matter what happens with the upcoming season, but lowers his odds of reaching 4000 strikeouts from 38 percent to 32 percent. Again, if no season is played in 2020, Kershaw would need to extend his career beyond his mid-thirties to reach the 3000 strikeout milestone, something he could realistically achieve in three full seasons. It seems unlikely he would get to 4000, especially if he loses 2020.