No Surprise: Clayton Kershaw Is Back With the Dodgers

On Tuesday, pitchers and catchers officially reported to Camelback Ranch, the spring training home that the Dodgers share with the White Sox in Glendale, Arizona. Among the Dodgers reporting was a familiar face, that of Clayton Kershaw. According to ESPN’s Alden Gonzalez, the three-time Cy Young winner — who had entered free agency for the fourth offseason in a row — has agreed to terms with the Dodgers and will return for his 18th major league season.

For as much as the move was anticipated, the sight of Kershaw in camp was a reassuring harbinger of spring. Given his accomplishments and the slew of injuries he’s endured in recent years, the continuation of the future Hall of Famer’s career isn’t something to take for granted. The details of his contract have not been announced at this writing, and the deal is still pending a physical. Once it’s finalized, we can probably expect some incentives and mechanisms that help to lower the team’s tax hit, whether in the form of deferred money or a less lucrative player option for 2026. The Dodgers’ 40-man roster is full, but with the opening of camp, the team can transfer players to the 60-day injured list and free up roster spots. On Tuesday, they did just that in order to accommodate the return of Enrique Hernández, moving pitcher Gavin Stone, who will miss the whole season due to shoulder surgery, to the 60-day IL.

[Update: The deal became official on Wednesday, with River Ryan, who is recovering from August 2024 Tommy John surgery, transferred to the 60-day IL to make room. According to FanSided’s Robert Murray, Kershaw will receive a base salary of $7.5 million, and can max out at $16 million via incentives. He’ll receive an additional million apiece for starts 13 through 16, a roster bonus of $2.5 million for being active for at least 30 days, and additional $1 million bonuses for reaching 60 and 90 days.]

Kershaw, who turns 37 on March 19, could be a candidate for a 60-day IL slot himself, as he underwent a pair of offseason surgeries following a season in which he made just seven starts totaling 30 innings, the last of them on August 30. He was a bystander during the Dodgers’ championship run, though anyone who witnessed either the clubhouse festivities at Yankee Stadium — during which Kershaw shed his shirt — or the celebration at Dodger Stadium following their victory parade through Los Angeles can attest that he was no less exuberant about the team’s World Series win.

“I didn’t have anything to do with this championship, but it feels like the best feeling in the world,” Kershaw told the Dodger Stadium crowd, his voice cracking. “Dodgers for life!”

Clayton Kershaw: Dodger for life ? pic.twitter.com/o7P0Ecvudy

— MLB (@MLB) November 1, 2024

Indeed, unlike a couple of his recent trips through free agency, Kershaw did not muse openly about the possibility of joining the Texas Rangers in order to play closer to Highland Park, the Dallas suburb where he grew up and still makes his offseason home. However, he did decline the $10 million player option on the back end of a two-year, $10-million-plus-incentives contract that he signed with the Dodgers in February 2024, a move that freed up a roster spot for the team over the winter.

Since we’ve seen so little of Kershaw in the past 16 months, a refresher is in order. In 2023, he pitched to a 2.46 ERA and 4.03 FIP in 24 starts totaling 131.2 innings, earning a spot on the NL All-Star team for the 10th time along the way. Before he could pitch in the All-Star Game, however, he landed on the IL due to shoulder soreness, missed six weeks, and returned to throw just 36.1 innings in eight post-injury starts. The quality of his stuff (as measured by both the Stuff+ and PitchingBot pitch models) was notably down, and his results reflected that.

Though manager Dave Roberts hinted that Kershaw was not fully healthy, the team nonetheless tabbed him to start Game 1 of the 2023 Division Series against the Diamondbacks. Kershaw was tarred and feathered, retiring just one batter while being charged with six runs, and he didn’t get a shot at redemption because the Diamondbacks swept the Dodgers. On November 3, 2023, the source of his second-half decline came into focus when he revealed that he had undergone surgery to repair the glenohumeral ligaments and capsule of his left shoulder. At the time, he said he hoped to return to pitch for the Dodgers “at some point next summer.”

After officially re-signing with the Dodgers in early February, Kershaw finally made his 2024 season debut on July 25, throwing four wobbly innings against the Giants. He didn’t complete five innings until his fourth start, a 5.2-inning, six-strikeout, one-run performance against the Brewers on August 12. He followed that with six shutout innings of the Cardinals on August 18, but then was hit hard while allowing five runs in five frames against the Rays on August 24. One batter into the second inning of his August 30 start against the Diamondbacks, he departed due to pain in his left big toe, and was subsequently diagnosed with a bone spur. He continued his throwing program, with the team readjusting his spikes to help compensate for his soreness, but compromised mechanics triggered pain in other parts of his body, no small matter given not only the shoulder surgery but his past back issues. On October 5, the team announced that he would be shut down regardless of how far the Dodgers advanced in the playoffs, a decision that, in conjunction with other injuries (most notably Tyler Glasnow’s elbow sprain), led to the Dodgers relying upon a three-man rotation of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Walker Buehler, and Jack Flaherty plus occasional openers in their series against the Padres, Mets, and Yankees.

Shortly after the World Series, orthopedic surgeons played a doubleheader on Kershaw’s left leg. One surgery, performed by Dr. Kenneth Jung, addressed not only the bone spur in his left foot but also arthritis and a ruptured plantar plate, the ligament that runs beneath the metatarsal heads and keeps the toes aligned. The other surgery, done by Dr. Neil ElAttrache, repaired a torn meniscus in his left knee, an injury that did not come to light until he went through testing regarding his foot.

Both injuries, along with Kershaw’s recovery from shoulder surgery, provide context for his unimpressive 2024 numbers (4.50 ERA, 3.53 FIP, 4.59 xERA, 18% strikeout rate) and his diminished stuff, which included a four-seam fastball whose 89.9 mph average velocity represented an 0.8-mph drop from his ’22 and ’23 averages. Both of our pitch modeling systems suggest his arsenal was at least better than during his post-injury stretch in 2023, albeit mainly in terms of command:

When Kershaw has been healthy, his fastball has at least played about average and his breaking balls have been above average to exceptional, depending upon which model you choose. The hope is that he’ll be able to tap into that pre-injury form. Even on lesser workloads, he was quite effective from 2021–23, posting a 2.75 ERA, 3.21 FIP, and a 27.8% strikeout rate while averaging 127 innings and 3.2 WAR per season.

While Kershaw’s rehab has progressed to the point that he was spotted going through his throwing program at Camelback on Tuesday, it’s unclear how soon he’ll be game-ready. If he is placed on the 60-day IL — which would extend his streak of seasons with a trip to the IL to 10 — he won’t be eligible to return until late May at the earliest. Even if he’s ready sooner, the Dodgers aren’t counting on him to shoulder the workloads of his heyday. Mindful of their threadbare October rotations, president of baseball Andrew Friedman has absolutely loaded up on starting pitching. During the winter of 2023–24, the team signed Yamamoto and traded for Glasnow. While they lost Buehler and Flaherty to free agency, they signed lefty Blake Snell and another Japanese star, righty Roki Sasaki. Sometime around May, they expect that Shohei Ohtani will return to full unicorn status by taking the mound following late-2023 UCL reconstructive surgery, as well November ’24 surgery to repair a tear in his left (non-throwing) labrum. Add Kershaw to the mix and that’s already six.

Particularly with Yamamoto, Sasaki, and Ohtani all used to working in six-man rotations in Japan (and, for the latter, in Anaheim), and with none of the above pitchers throwing more than Glasnow’s 134 innings last year, the Dodgers are likely to go that route in 2025. They have no shortage of pitchers to fill in the gaps while Ohtani and Kershaw complete their rehabs. Tony Gonsolin didn’t pitch for the Dodgers last year, but after undergoing Tommy John surgery on September 1, 2023, he did make three starts for Triple-A Oklahoma City last September and drew at least brief consideration for the postseason roster. Dustin May is returning from surgery to repair an esophageal tear, and Bobby Miller is hoping to rediscover the electrifying stuff that made him such a compelling rookie in 2023 before he bottomed out following a bout of shoulder inflammation in ’24. Landon Knack, Ben Casparius, and Justin Wrobleski all saw time with the team in 2024, with the first two of those pitchers joining them in the postseason; Casparius even opened Game 4 of the World Series (the Dodgers’ lone loss).

When Kershaw does return, he’ll be chasing a major milestone. He’s 32 strikeouts away from becoming the 20th pitcher — and just the fourth lefty, after Steve Carlton, Randy Johnson, and CC Sabathia — to reach 3,000 strikeouts. He’s also about 0.6 bWAR away from passing Robin Roberts to move into the top 20 in S-JAWS. He’s already done more than enough to ensure a spot in the Hall of Fame some day, but those would be impressive capstones to his career. As for whether this is his last go-round, it’s not an unreasonable assumption, particularly if he winds up sidelined by another major injury. Even if he’s fully healthy, there’s little doubt that he’s near the end of his career, so any highlights he produces will be ones to savor.