A Clayton Kershaw Thought Experiment

Clayton Kershaw is ridiculously good. You know this. I know this. There is not much to say about him for fantasy owners other than you should start him every time in every format. But perhaps because I hit my dog days of summer two months early this season, I wanted to write an article about Kershaw to wrap my head around just how good he has been.

For the purposes of this article, I am going to rely on a stat called Game Score, which Bill James came up with to compare starts to one another. You can look up exactly how Game Score is calculated here. Unless you are in a format that rewards pitchers for getting outs, Game Score is not a perfect proxy for the fantasy value of a start, but it does reward pitchers for strikeouts and penalize them for earned runs, hits, and walks, all of which play into the standard rotisserie categories. Meanwhile, Game Score is a convenient way to place one number on a start that reflects its quality.

It’s easy to tell that Game Score works because Kershaw has 3 of the top 10 Game Scores so far this season. No other starter has 2.

Highest Game Scores, 2016

Player	Game Date	Game Score
Vincent Velasquez	4/14/2016	97
Jaime Garcia	4/14/2016	97
Clayton Kershaw	5/1/2016	95
Clayton Kershaw	5/12/2016	93
Chris Sale	4/15/2016	92
Clayton Kershaw	5/23/2016	89
Jake Arrieta	4/21/2016	89
Johnny Cueto	5/23/2016	89
Drew Smyly	4/19/2016	89
Matt Andriese	5/14/2016	88

But Kershaw’s dominance is not just about high highs. Kershaw has high lows. His most recent start on June 4 was his first with fewer than 7 innings pitched. He’s had just one start with more than 2 earned runs, and he struck out 10 batters in that outing to keep his Game Score over 50, which is the score for an average game by design. The average of all of Kershaw’s Game Scores this season is 74, which is 8 points better than Jake Arrieta in second place. Eight points below Arrieta? Justin Verlander and Steven Matz, who have the 24th and 25th best average Game Scores (among pitchers with at least 8 starts).

Highest Average Game Scores, 2016

Player	Average Game Score
Clayton Kershaw	74
Jake Arrieta	66
Jose Fernandez	64
Noah Syndergaard	64
Madison Bumgarner	63
Marco Estrada	63
John Lackey	63
Johnny Cueto	63
Jon Lester	63
Chris Sale	63

Kershaw’s average Game Score is off the charts, and, in fact, it is the highest of any pitcher going back to at least 2002. Fittingly, Kershaw is on pace to break his own modern era record of an average Game Score of 70 from 2014. Kershaw also has 2 other seasons in the top 10 of the last 15 seasons. Arrieta is the only other pitcher with 2 such seasons in that span.

Highest Average Game Scores, 2002-16

Player	Season	Average Game Score
Clayton Kershaw	2016	74
Clayton Kershaw	2014	70
Zack Greinke	2015	67
Randy Johnson	2002	67
Jake Arrieta	2015	67
Clayton Kershaw	2015	67
Clayton Kershaw	2013	66
Jake Arrieta	2016	66
Justin Verlander	2011	65
Felix Hernandez	2014	65
Chris Sale	2014	65
Johnny Cueto	2014	65

Now for a thought experiment. I was curious whether a psychic could have done better than pick Kershaw in daily fantasy in each of the days Kershaw has pitched this season, so I calculated the Game Scores of every other start on those days and ranked them from highest to lowest. I don’t believe there were any ties for the best non-Kershaw starts, but in general, I gave a better rank to starts with more strikeouts in the event of Game Score ties. Also, I ignored salaries.

Kershaw has made 12 starts this season, and so these results show the 12 best starts from other pitchers on the days that Kershaw pitched, the 12 second-best starts from other pitchers, and so on.

Combined Stats, Nth Best Game Scores on Kershaw’s Game Dates

Rk	W	ERA	WHIP	K	Average Game Score
1	9	0.48	0.53	93	80
Kershaw	8	1.46	0.65	109	74
2	8	0.64	0.73	81	72
3	10	1.25	0.75	82	70
4	7	1.55	0.86	88	68
5	6	1.29	1.00	74	65
6	8	2.38	0.98	75	63
7	7	2.30	1.03	69	61
8	5	2.32	0.94	48	59
9	7	2.99	1.10	59	57
10	3	3.39	1.19	59	55

I think I was relieved to find that Kershaw has not been as good as the best non-Kershaw starters on the days he’s pitched. If he had been better, I would have concerns for the universe. Still, Kershaw is pretty close. His ERA is almost a run worse, which mostly reflects how Game Score chooses its best starts, but he actually has 16 more strikeouts. Think about that for a minute. I take Kershaw and you take the pitchers with the best performances on the days he pitches, and I have 16 more strikeouts than you do. Meanwhile, Kershaw has been better than the second-best non-Kershaw starts on the 12 days that he’s pitched, both by Game Score and by every other category except ERA (and wins, which are tied).

So, in conclusion, Kershaw is amazing and possibly a robot. As such, I think it’s only appropriate that we take the time to congratulate the 10 pitchers—2 of whom are on here twice—who were able to pool their best efforts together in order to be slightly better than Kershaw this season.

Best Starts on Kershaw’s Game Dates, Excluding Kershaw

GameDate	Player	W	ERA	WHIP	K	Game Score
4/4/2016	Jake Arrieta	1	0.00	0.43	6	78
4/9/2016	Vincent Velasquez	1	0.00	1.00	9	72
4/15/2016	Chris Sale	1	0.00	0.22	9	92
4/21/2016	Jake Arrieta	1	0.00	0.44	6	89
4/26/2016	Johnny Cueto	1	0.00	0.89	11	83
5/1/2016	Julio Teheran	0	0.00	0.43	9	81
5/7/2016	Jon Gray	0	0.00	0.43	5	78
5/12/2016	James Shields	1	0.00	1.14	9	71
5/17/2016	Madison Bumgarner	1	1.00	0.56	11	84
5/23/2016	Johnny Cueto	1	0.00	0.22	6	89
5/29/2016	Jake Odorizzi	0	2.57	0.29	6	72
6/4/2016	Jason Hammel	1	2.57	0.43	6	71

Good luck the rest of the season. Kershaw has the possibly Posey-less Giants in pitcher-friendly AT&T Park on Friday.