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Clayton Kershaw, 37, and Max Scherzer, 41, are two of the greatest pitchers MLB has seen. They were once teammates briefly in 2021, but on Friday the future Hall of Famers, on the first-place Dodgers and Blue Jays respectively, will face off for a fifth time.
Here’s a look at the numbers behind each of their illustrious careers.
1. Scherzer and Kershaw are separated by just one regular-season win, with Scherzer having recorded 218 and Kershaw getting 217. Kershaw has led MLB in wins twice, while Scherzer did so once.
2: The number of seasons in which Scherzer and Kershaw both hit a home run and won a Cy Young award: both of accomplished this once, which is all the more incredible because they each have just one career dinger.
2.85: The combined ERA of Scherzer and Kershaw, across over 5,700 innings, is just 2.85 – Kershaw leads all active players at 2.52, but Scherzer has been no slouch himself, at 3.18 despite pitching in plenty of offense-heavy parks in his career.
3: Between Kershaw and Scherzer, they’ve led the league in strikeouts on three occasions: Kershaw in 2015 when he logged his lone 300-strikeout campaign with 301, and Scherzer in 2016 with 284, and in 2018 with his own 300-K showing, with exactly that many. The two have also led at least their respective league in strikeouts a combined six times, three each.
4: Kershaw has two World Series rings – 2020 and 2024 – and Scherzer has a pair to match, from 2019 with the Nationals and 2023 with the Rangers after a midseason trade from the Mets.
6. Kershaw and Scherzer have each won three Cy Young awards, for a total of six. They won the award in the same season in 2013, which was Scherzer’s first and Kershaw’s second. Kershaw won it the following year, too, and then Scherzer went back-to-back in 2016 and 2017.
7. The number of teams Scherzer has played for across his 18-year career. Those seven teams include Arizona, Detroit, Washington, the Dodgers, the Mets, Texas and now Toronto. Kershaw is the opposite, having played all 18 of his seasons with the Dodgers, who also drafted him.
8. Scherzer is an eight-time All-Star, and seven of those appearances came consecutively between 2013-2019. He made the Midsummer Classic as recently as 2021.
11. Kershaw is an 11-time All-Star and made his latest appearance during the 2025 season, as commissioner Rob Manfred’s “Legend Pick” for the game.
18. Both Kershaw and Scherzer have played 18 seasons each in MLB.
21. The highest number of wins both Kershaw and Scherzer have achieved in a single regular season. Kershaw hit that mark twice in 2011 and 2014, while Scherzer did it in 2013 while with the Tigers when he led all of MLB in wins and winning percentage (.875).
2008: The year that both Kershaw and Scherzer broke into MLB. They were also selected in the same MLB Draft, 2006, though Kershaw was picked out of high school and Scherzer out of college – hence their age discrepancies.
3,000: Kershaw and Scherzer are two of the three current MLB pitchers to have eclipsed the 3,000-strikeout mark, with the other being another former teammate of Scherzer’s, Justin Verlander. This is a testament to both their consistent greatness and the longevity of their careers. Scherzer actually achieved this when he was a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2021, and four years later is up to 3,451 strikeouts, good for 11th all-time. Kershaw surpassed 3,000 earlier this season, during the Dodgers game against the White Sox on July 2nd, and is now at 3,010 Ks.
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