Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw have each won three Cy Young awards and two World Series titles.
Scherzer, 41, helped Blue Jays get to win first ALCS since 1993.
Kershaw, who spent his entire career with Dodgers, is retiring after the season.
LOS ANGELES – In our nostalgia-soaked culture, the low-def highlights have been exhumed and widely circulated: Clayton Kershaw vs. Max Scherzer, a surprise 2008 showdown at Dodger Stadium pitting eventual Hall of Famers against each other, voiced by the golden tones of Vin Scully, no less.
They were shaggy-haired and far skinnier then, Scherzer making just the fourth start of his career for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Kershaw his 18th .ffor the Dodgers. And there was the added irony that fans were expecting to watch Randy Johnson vs. Greg Maddux, yet circumstances dictated they got quite a consolation prize: Two of the three greatest pitchers of the forthcoming generation.
After that arid 85-degree September Sunday, Kershaw and Scherzer crafted wildly similar resumes despite significantly divergent paths to greatness: World championships and Cy Young Awards, contracts exceeding $200 million, big and growing families and Cooperstown plaques in the pipeline.
Now, it’s another autumn week in Chavez Ravine, biggest of the year, really: World Series Game 3 will jump off at 5 p.m. PT Oct. 27, and amazingly, Kershaw and Scherzer will be on hand for it.
And in a strange closing of the circle, the two will more closely resemble the other’s role when it all began.
Oh, Kershaw and Scherzer remain so similar even as their demeanors are as different as southpaw and right-hander. Kershaw has 223 career wins to Scherzer’s 221. Both have earned three Cy Young Awards.
Both are seeking their third World Series titles, Kershaw’s all as a Dodger, Scherzer hoping to add a Toronto Blue Jay championship to his crowns with the Washington Nationals and Texas Rangers.
Yet in the first inning of Game 3, it will be Scherzer stomping toward, atop and around the Dodger Stadium mound, tasked with pitching the Blue Jays into a 2-1 Series lead.
And it will be Kershaw making the long walk toward left field to join his mates in the bullpen, ending his career just as Scherzer, for the most part, started it, coming on in relief.
The proceedings will take on a partially melancholy tone beyond the fact one of them will lose: This is Kershaw’s final week as a Dodger, the 37-year-old retiring as soon as the World Series ends.
Scherzer will likely pitch in 2026. But not until the generational greats and one-time teammates, possessing mutual respect even if not particularly close, cross paths competitively one more time.
“Max and I are definitely linked. We got to play together. And now I get to do this again,” says Kershaw, who was joined in the rotation by Scherzer at the 2021 trade deadline after a deal with Washington as the Dodgers won 106 games, but bowed out in the National League Championship Series.
“I think I’m too old, now. But Scherz can keep going. He’s doing great stuff, obviously. It’s fun to see us coming up together, being able to do this. It’s a lot of fun.”
For the better part of two decades, Kershaw and Scherzer were the ultimate alphas, Kershaw quietly doing a very good Sandy Koufax emulation over 18 seasons, Scherzer crafting a Mad Max persona that was backed up by utter dominance in every town he invaded.
As this postseason has shown, both can exhibit the requisite humility to take on lesser roles.
Clayton Kershaw ‘handled it with grace’
Injury slowed Kershaw for parts of the past four seasons, and while he bailed out the Dodgers rotation as it was wracked by misfortune this season, he eventually accepted a relief role in the playoffs.
Scherzer, too, faced a litany of physical challenges this season that limited him to 17 starts. He was not on the Blue Jays’ AL Division Series roster when they took out the New York Yankees in four games.
Yet he was back in the mix for the ALCS, starting and winning Game 4 and burnishing the Mad Max brand with some fifth-inning scream therapy with Blue Jays manager John Schneider, who wisely left him in the game – and gave him the sixth inning, too.
One round later, Schneider gave Scherzer a promotion: He will start Game 3, not Game 4, leaving him in line for a potential Game 7 start that draws closer to reality with each pair of games these clubs split.
Kershaw has yet to pitch in this World Series, and had just one ill-fated playoff appearance, in the NL Division Series when a short-handed Dodgers bullpen forced him to eat a few outs for the cause.
Along the way, he took an accelerated victory lap, announcing his retirement plans just ahead of a final start at Dodger Stadium, and one more on the road. Accepting his bouquets while staying ready for a relief appearance that probably won’t come is certainly not how Kershaw spent nearly two decades in hte bigs.
Yet he’s handled it with aplomb, says manager Dave Roberts.
‘He’s handled this last month with class, professionalism,’ says Roberts. ‘All the while, he’s always said that he wants to do anything he can to help the team. He’s followed through on that. All the stuff, finishing out the season and how everything kind of played out, was a lot on his plate.
‘He handled it with grace.’
Scherzer and Kershaw locking horns in this Series would require an unlikelier twist of fate than the circumstances that created their first matchup, when Johnson was scratched due to injury three days before his 45th birthday and Maddux, 42, was pushed back a day.
Now 41, Scherzer shakes his head realizing he and Kershaw will have one more engagement, nearly two decades after they were separated by just a few slots in the 2006 draft, the Dodgers taking Kershaw seventh out of a Dallas high school, four picks before Arizona snagged Scherzer with the 11th pick out of Missouri.
“He’s top notch,” says Scherzer. “We’ve been competing against each other this whole time, our whole careers. Drafted together, the whole nine yards.
“Getting to play with him, too, seeing him behind the scenes – it’s the real deal.”
Max Scherzer has ‘nothing but respect’ for Kershaw
That 2021 season did not work out how the Dodgers nor Scherzer intended, and both went their separate ways. While Kershaw has been a Dodger for life, a true teenage phenom now imbued in club lore more than any player in the past half-century, Scherzer has had to live the life of Mercenary Max.
Unconvinced he could stick as a starter, the Diamondbacks dealt him to Detroit in an epic three-team trade, and Scherzer took off, first riding shotgun with Justin Verlander and then signing a $210 million contract with the Nationals, winning his first championship in his fifth season there.
He was strictly a rental with Los Angeles before signing a three-year, $130 million deal with the New York Mets, moving onto the Rangers and winning another ring before that contract expired and finally, the Blue Jays on a one-year deal.
And while their first encounter may not have left an immediate, lasting impression, their three months as teammates created a rare window for each to see what made the other tick. Different dudes with wholly different personalities, yet the lefty and righty are also competitively insane in their own ways.
“A lot of intensity, when it comes to the game. A lot of intensity, in general,” says Kershaw of Scherzer. “But I think like anybody, there’s switches. There’s a switch you flip when you start competing and everybody has that. Especially starting pitchers: Every five days, it’s your day.
“It’s fun to see how guys go about it. I’ve seen it a lot of different ways now. Scherz was definitely one of the most intense ones. But he was always ready to go.”
Now, Kershaw’s ready to go, for good.
“I always think highly of him and everything he’s done in his career, and how, what he’s meant to the Dodgers,” says Scherzer.
“Nothing but respect for everything that he’s done.”