Dodgers: 3 reasons Clayton Kershaw holds keys to 2020 team success

Always a key piece for the Los Angeles Dodgers, the challenges associated with a potential 2020 season make Clayton Kershaw more important than ever.

The Los Angeles Dodgers roster is pretty stacked heading into the 2020 season, whenever it gets here (and hopefully it does soon).

Saying one player holds the keys to the team’s success seems a bit much considering the overwhelming amount of talent available to manager Dave Roberts every night.

While one player might not dictate whether the Dodgers make the playoffs or not, there could be an individual star who proves the difference between suffering another disappointing ending to the season versus winning a championship.

And Clayton Kershaw is the difference maker on a Dodgers team primed to compete for a World Series title this season.

Kershaw remains the Ace of a starting rotation that has some question marks in the back-end. He provides crucial leadership during what will certainly be a challenging season in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic. And he will hopefully shake off his playoff ghosts to lead the team to their first World Series title since the days of Gibson and Hershiser.

Let’s discuss why Kershaw is so important to the Dodgers’ success in more detail.

1) Strength at the top

While the Dodgers roster doesn’t appear to have many holes, there are a few question marks, and one of those belongs at the end of the rotation. If a rag-tag group doesn’t prove capable of providing consistency from the mound this season, there will be even more pressure than usual on the team’s top starters.

After losing Hyun-Jin Ryu in free agency to Toronto, the top of the rotation belongs solely to Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler. Everyone expects Buehler to continue his progression to Ace status, but the title still belongs to the veteran Kershaw. He will need to provide the Dodgers with the same level of excellence he has brought over the past 12 seasons in Los Angeles in order to lead the team to the promise land.

Behind Kershaw and Buehler, manager Dave Roberts will look to David Price, Julio Urias and Alex Wood to fill out the rotation. By no means a group of terrible options, but there is plenty of uncertainty in projecting their 2020 performance. If a few of them falter, it will be up to the top guys to carry the load.

And the pressure falls particularly on Kershaw, considering Buehler still hasn’t even pitched 200 innings in the majors over his short career. It’s easy to assume Buehler will be the future Ace, but until he gets there, the number one starter status, the guy responsible for leading the rest of the rotation, belongs to Kershaw.

2) Veteran leadership

As different proposals have been leaked to the media about how the 2020 season could look, it has been revealing to learn how different players react to the reports. In general, the younger players, or players without families, seem ready to play, regardless of the format. Whereas, the veteran players, or guys with young kids, are more reluctant.

Clayon Kershaw probably speaks for many veterans when he sounded off against the plan to put the entire league in a bubble in Arizona, separated from their families, in order to play the 2020 season. Kershaw doesn’t want to do that. He joked that he couldn’t imagine himself being stuck playing Call of Duty in a hotel room with Cody Bellinger in between games.

How does this relate to helping the Dodgers?

It’s a reminder of the importance of having a veteran voice in the locker room who can see the big picture and use his status to make sure everyone’s viewpoint is being considered.

There will be a lot of uncertainty entering the 2020 season, if MLB figures out a way to play, and the Dodgers need someone like Kershaw, who carries stature within the league and his own locker room, to keep everyone level-headed.

The Dodgers have a lot of veteran talent, but they also have young pleyers, such as Gavin Lux, Walker Buehler, and Dustin May, once he finds his way to the big club. Kershaw’s role in keeping the clubhouse together and setting an example for the young guys is more important than ever during these challenging times.