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4 years ago

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8:00 AM ET

  • Ryan Hockensmith

Editor’s note: This story contains descriptions of an attempted sexual assault.

ON A STUNNING Saturday morning in March, Justin Herron decides to go for a walk. Lifting or running is out of the question — his whole body is run down from the grueling offseason work he’s doing at LeCharles Bentley’s offensive-line camp in Chandler, Arizona. But Herron is somebody who keeps moving, keeps grinding. He doesn’t take many days off — a walk instead of a run is about the best he can do.

Herron started six games for the New England Patriots last year, after the Pats picked him in the sixth round last year following a solid career at Wake Forest. But he knows he’ll be fighting for playing time again this year — he began the 2021 season as a swing guy on the line behind tackles Trent Brown and Isaiah Wynn — so he’s determined to make the most out of every day of his offseason.

On sore days, Kiwanis Park, near his home in Tempe, is the perfect place for Herron. It’s isolated enough — there is just the right amount of people to not feel alone, but still find solitude amongst the trees, sports fields and the lake in the middle of the park.

At 11 a.m. on this spectacular spring day of sun and mid-70s weather, Herron is winding down his walk when he hears yelling. He can’t make out what the words are, or where they’re coming from, but he pulls out his earbuds and starts to scan the park. Eventually he zeroes in on a man and woman about 75 yards from him.

He’s not sure exactly what he is seeing, but his eyes lock with the woman’s. Herron pauses a long time as he tells this part of the story. “There was a moment that I don’t really want to get into,” he says. “There was just one moment when I realized how bad it was, but I don’t want to talk about it. It’s private.”

In that moment, he knows his walk is over. It’s time to run.

BACK IN 2018, right before Wake Forest’s spring football season began, Herron anxiously awaited the voting results for team captain. He was a redshirt junior offensive lineman for the Demon Deacons, and he was sure he’d done everything right — he’d started his entire career, done countless extra hours of film work, chosen to double major in psychology and communication. Teammates had watched him work his way up from being a lightly recruited late-bloomer in high school to a reliable, All-ACC-level tackle. To make this next step, to be recognized as one of the most valuable leaders on his team, would mean something — everything — to him.

But when the votes were tallied, Herron’s teammates picked six other players, including two offensive linemen not named Justin Herron.

It tore him up. He just couldn’t fathom what his teammates didn’t see in him. After a week of letting it gnaw at him, Herron went and met with head coach Dave Clawson. “Coach, I do everything right,” Herron said. “I get there early. I watch more film than anybody. I do everything right. Why didn’t I get elected as a captain? What else can I do?”

“Justin, you do do everything right,” Clawson told him. “We always see you doing extra work. You’re a tremendous competitor and a very good player. But football is a team sport. You need to set a good example and bring other guys with you.”

Herron realized Clawson was right. He was a perfectly competent guy to line up alongside, but he wasn’t a giver. On a talented (all five starters ended up in the NFL) and very competitive Wake line, he tended to keep to himself. He often did workouts and film study alone. Clawson told him that the best leaders — the best people, really — weren’t just singular, widely respected talents; they knew how to lift others up at the same time. “That changed me,” Herron says.

He headed into the 2018 season on a mission to be a better teammate. He had never been selfish but he wanted to be selfless now. That August, he started mentoring the guys competing for his position. As Wake’s season kicked off, away at Tulane, coaches were seeing a new Herron. Then, in that first game, Herron suffered an ACL tear and was out for the year. Coaches weren’t sure how Herron would respond. “Everybody sulks for a while after a season-ending injury,” Clawson says.

But a week later, right after the surgery, Herron began to show up at every meeting, film session and practice. He started producing typed-up weekly breakdowns of upcoming opponents for his teammates. The younger linemen began to gravitate toward him, and Herron became an unofficial assistant coach.

Herron considered leaving Wake after that year for the NFL draft (he’d graduated already). But he ultimately returned for a final season as a grad student in 2019, and he won the team’s Deacon House of Pancakes (DHOP) award for most wipeout blocks. But most importantly, in the months leading to his last year, he got the call he wanted most. “Congratulations, Justin,” Clawson said. “Your teammates have named you a team captain.”

As Herron hung up the phone, he thought about the gut punch he’d felt a year earlier and the good that had come of it. “I really applied that to my life ever since then,” Herron says. “And it’s definitely paid off.”

ON THAT MARCH morning at Kiwanis Park, she feels a push in the back, hears a strange man telling her to be quiet, and then she starts screaming. She screams over and over again, but nobody comes. People are around — she can see 10 or so bystanders in her peripheral vision — but her screams are just faint enough, just far enough off in the distance, that no one moves.

And then she makes eye contact with someone she calls her angel. “People need to know what an amazing person Justin is,” says the woman, who wanted to remain anonymous but agreed to an interview with ESPN to describe Herron’s involvement. “He couldn’t have known if that man had a weapon. He just did it spontaneously. Justin has given me hope for the rest of my life. I love him for it.”

Since she’d retired a few years earlier, the former elementary school teacher had gone for a walk almost every day. She loved her job but it had been long, hard days for 39 years, teaching different grades. She especially enjoyed the last stretch of her career, when she was working with fifth-graders. They were the perfect age group for her — old enough to have real conversations with her, yet still young enough to be kids.

She would often daydream about someday retiring and living a tranquil existence, full of walks and parks. She’d spent most of her past four decades around Tempe, often visiting with her daughter that lives in the area, but sometimes traveling to Texas, where her other daughter works as a doctor. Through it all, she always made sure to get her walks in and built a small community of joggers and dogsitters and fellow park walkers that she would see every day. “Walks were my treat once I stopped teaching,” she says.

That morning, she is already shaken after a disturbing start to her outing: a soccer game on pause as a player in distress lays on the field. First responders frantically try to revive the man as worried teammates crowd around. She can’t hear what they’re saying. She can just feel the fear in the air as the man fights for his life. She cries and says a little prayer for the man, and before she leaves, she breathes a sigh of relief: The man had sat up. He appears to be okay, and he’s loaded into an ambulance and taken away.

A few minutes later, she’s still thinking about the player on the soccer field when a man approaches from behind and attacks her. She doesn’t know how long she screams and fights but it feels like forever. “Time went so slow,” she says now.

That’s when her eyes connect with another man almost a football field away. “I saw her,” Herron says, and his words slow down. “And she saw me. And… I think… I felt like when I got there… we had a moment of eye contact. And then… the situation did de-escalate quickly and then it stopped, right there and then…”

Herron goes silent for a second, and then finally finishes his sentence. “Right after the eye contact,” he says.

Herron remembers making the decision to run, but he doesn’t remember actually running. He is suddenly just there, next to the man, a local homeless man named Kevin Caballero. When he gets to Caballero and puts his giant 8.88-inch hands on him, Herron is able to latch onto him and drive him, hard, into a heap across from the woman. Caballero tries to wobble back to his feet but Herron is making loud noises that he can hardly believe are coming from within him. His voice is guttural and terrifying, even to him. “Don’t move,” Herron yells.

Around that time, Murry Rogers arrives. He’d been preparing for his teen daughter’s birthday party 30 yards away, putting ice in the coolers and hanging balloons, when he hears the screams. “I didn’t think it was what it was,” he says. When he sees Herron in a sprint toward the man, he begins to run, too, and he arrives a few seconds later.

As Herron comforts the woman, Caballero is insisting that she had initiated the assault. (Later, when detectives interview him about the incident, Caballero says he believes the woman telepathically communicated to him and told him that she wanted to have sex. He admits to pushing her down and attempting to sexually assault her.) Herron eventually tells the woman, “You don’t have to listen to this guy anymore,” and they walk out of ear shot from the man as Rogers stands guard with Caballero.

“Don’t let him go,” the woman says over her shoulder to Rogers, who has his hand on Caballero’s shoulder. “Just don’t let him go.” Caballero continues to mumble, mostly incoherently, but he doesn’t move. “I think he just knew, ‘This was going to be way more trouble if I start running from this guy,'” Herron says.

Police arrive within a few minutes and take Caballero away. (He’s ultimately charged with attempted sexual assault and kidnapping. His public defender — who did not respond to calls and emails from ESPN — argued that Caballero had never been convicted of a felony and had been off his mental health medications, and the court agreed to release him to the custody of a relative. The trial is scheduled for sometime this fall.)

Herron does his best to soothe the woman while the detectives interview witnesses and the police cars pull away. She gives Herron and Rogers one more hug each, and then she’s loaded into an ambulance and driven off.

Herron and Rogers watch as she pulls away, and then they’re the only people still there, standing in the park, staring at each other, as people wander past with no idea that a sexual assault had been prevented a half-hour earlier.

“It’s just… over now?” Rogers says to Herron.

“I guess so,” Herron says.

Rogers goes back to setting up his daughter’s birthday party. Guests begin arriving soon after, and Rogers can’t help but sit amongst all the laughing and balloons and presents and think about the way something can happen — something really bad, something really traumatic — but the world just hurtles forward.

As Herron leaves the park, he calls his mom to tell her what happened. “You’re never going to believe this,” he tells her. “I saved this woman from getting raped in the park.”

“What if the guy had had a gun or a knife?” she asks. Herron lies and says that he could tell immediately Caballero didn’t have any weapons. He didn’t know, though. He just knew he had to start running.

A FEW DAYS after the attack, Herron and Rogers were asked if they’d come back to the Tempe town hall for a ceremony to honor them for their good deeds. The woman was notified but not expected to attend.

Herron and Rogers arrived to a crowded hallway of Tempe police commissioners and officers, with media cameras set up outside. The two men were chitchatting with everybody, and football kept coming up. Most of the people there were Cardinals fans, but a Patriots fan or two made sure to remind the room of the significant gap in success between the two franchises. Everybody laughed.

And then the group went quiet. A retired schoolteacher and her daughter turned the corner and began to approach. They walked side-by-side for a bit but then the mom sped a few steps ahead. “I wanted to hug my angels,” she says.

The hug began as a low-speed collision between Herron and the teacher, and they both peeled off one arm apiece to make room for Rogers. All three bowed their heads, and almost no words were exchanged. They just hugged and cried, and pretty soon, all those old grizzled cops were dabbing at their eyes, too.

About a minute later, the small huddle broke, and Herron told Rogers and the woman that he would get them to a Patriots game this fall. “For sure, that is a given,” says Herron, who will be splitting snaps at right tackle as starter Trent Brown deals with a calf injury. “There is no way that isn’t happening. We’ve established a relationship that will never be forgotten. Our paths will definitely cross again in some way shape or form. I don’t know when that is. But it will be a wonderful reunion.”

Now it was time to speak to the media outside. Rogers and Herron waved goodbye, and the woman’s daughter handed them each a thank-you letter she’d written. Herron really wanted to open his but he didn’t have time — he put the note in his pocket and headed for the exit.

But as he got to the doors, he looked back once more at the woman he’d saved. She was watching him the whole time as he walked away, so Herron gave her one final wave and smile. He was surprised — happily surprised — that she came that morning.

The truth is, she had to go. She says in the weeks after the attack, the only visual she had in her mind was the face of her attacker. She needed to stare at Herron and Rogers that morning for as long as she could. “I wanted to take in their faces,” she says. “I didn’t want to only see that man’s face for the rest of my life. And now I can — I only see Justin and Murry now when I think back on it. I will carry their faces forever.”

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Kershaw joins the 3K club! Where does he rank among pitchers with 3,000 strikeouts?

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7 hours ago

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July 3, 2025

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Kershaw joins the 3K club! Where does he rank among pitchers with 3,000 strikeouts?

  • Bradford DoolittleJul 2, 2025, 11:44 PM ET

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      • MLB writer and analyst for ESPN.com
      • Former NBA writer and analyst for ESPN.com
      • Been with ESPN since 2013

The 3,000-strikeout club has grown by one, with Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers whiffing the Chicago White Sox‘s Vinny Capra in the sixth inning Wednesday at Dodger Stadium, becoming the 20th pitcher in baseball history to reach that milestone.

The 3K pitching club doesn’t generate as much hullabaloo as its hitting counterpart, but it is more exclusive: Thirty-three players have reached 3,000 hits.

When you look at the list of pitchers with 3,000 strikeouts, and Kershaw’s place on it, a few things jump out.

• None of them pitched at Ebbets Field, at least not in a regular-season game. I frame it like that to illustrate that this level of whiffery is a fairly recent phenomenon. The Dodgers bolted Brooklyn after the 1957 season, and at that point, Walter Johnson was the only member of the 3,000-strikeout club. A career Washington Senator, he never pitched against the Dodgers. Every other 3K member made his big league debut in 1959 or later. Half of them debuted in 1984 or later. Three of them (Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander) are active.

• For now, Kershaw has thrown the fewest career innings of any 3K member, though he’s likely to eventually end up with more frames than Pedro Martinez.

• Kershaw has the highest winning percentage of the 20 (.697) and the best ERA+ (155), though his edges over Martinez (.685 and 154) are razor thin.

• Kershaw tops the list in average game score (61.9) and is tied for second (with Bob Gibson) for quality start percentage (68%), behind only Tom Seaver (70%).

• Kershaw lags behind in bWAR, at least among this group of current, future and should-be Hall of Famers with 77.1, ranking 16th.

So where does Kershaw really rank in the 3K club? I’m glad you asked.

First, what should be obvious from the above bullet points is that the response to the question will vary according to how you choose to answer it. The ranking below reflects not only how I chose to answer the question but how I’d like to see starting pitchers rated in general — even today, in the wildly different context from the days of Walter Johnson.

1. Roger Clemens

FWP: 568.8 | Strikeouts: 4,672 (3rd in MLB history)

Game score W-L: 477-230 (.675)

The top three pitchers on the list, including Rocket, match the modern-era top three for all pitchers, not just the 3K guys. (The string is broken by fourth-place Christy Mathewson.) Before running the numbers, I figured Walter Johnson, with his modern-era record of 417 career wins (the old-fashioned variety), would top the list. But Clemens actually started more games (relief appearances don’t factor in) and had a better game score win percentage.

2. Randy Johnson

FWP: 532.9 | Strikeouts: 4,875 (2nd)

Game score W-L: 421-182 (.698)

Since we’re lopping off pre-1901 performances, the method does Cy Young dirty. Only two pitchers — Young (511 wins) and Walter Johnson got to 400 career wins by the traditional method. By the game score method, the club grows to nine, including a bunch of players many of us actually got to see play. The Big Unit is one of the new 400-game winners, and of the nine, his game score winning percentage is the highest. The only thing keeping Johnson from No. 1 on this list is that he logged 104 fewer career starts than Clemens.

3. Walter Johnson

FWP: 494.7 | Strikeouts: 3,509 (9th)

Game score W-L: 437-229 (.656)

Don’t weep for the Big Train — even this revamping of his century-old performance record and the fixation on strikeouts can’t dim his greatness. That fact we mentioned in the introduction — that every 3K member except Walter Johnson debuted in 1959 or later — tells you a lot about just how much he was a man out of his time. Johnson retired after the 1927 season and surpassed 3,000 strikeouts by whiffing Cleveland’s Stan Coveleski on July 22, 1923. It was nearly 51 years before Gibson became 3K member No. 2 on July 17, 1974.

4. Greg Maddux

FWP: 443.3 | Strikeouts: 3,371 (12th)

Game score W-L: 453-287 (.612)

There is a stark contrast between pitcher No. 4 and pitcher No. 5 on this ranking. The wild thing about Maddux ranking above Nolan Ryan in a group selected for strikeouts is that no one thinks of Maddux as a strikeout pitcher. He never led a league in whiffs and topped 200 just once (204 in 1998). He was just an amazingly good pitcher for a really long time.

5. Nolan Ryan

FWP: 443.1 | Strikeouts: 5,714 (1st)

Game score W-L: 467-306 (.604)

Ryan is without a doubt the greatest strikeout pitcher who ever lived, and it’s really hard to imagine someone surpassing him. This is a guy who struck out his first six batters in 1966, when Lyndon Johnson was in the White House, and his last 46 in 1993, when Bill Clinton was there. Ryan was often criticized during his heyday for his win-loss record, but the game score method clears that right up. Ryan’s revised winning percentage (.604) is markedly higher than his actual percentage (.526).

6. Max Scherzer

FWP: 385.7 | Strikeouts: 3,419 (11th)

Game score W-L: 315-145 (.685)

Here’s another club Mad Max is in: .680 or better game score winning percentage, minimum 100 career starts. He’s one of just eight members, along with Kershaw. The list is topped by Smoky Joe Wood, who dominated the AL during the 1910s before hurting his arm and converting into a full-time outfielder. The full list: Wood, Martinez, Randy Johnson, Lefty Grove, Mathewson, Kershaw, Stephen Strasburg and Scherzer.

7. Justin Verlander

FWP: 385.0 | Strikeouts: 3,471 (10th)

Game score W-L: 349-190 (.647)

Like Scherzer, Verlander is fresh off the injured list. Thus, the two active leaders in our version of FWP have resumed their tight battle for permanent supremacy. Both also resume their quests to become the 10th and 11th pitchers to reach 3,500 strikeouts. Verlander, who hasn’t earned a traditional win in 13 starts, is 4-9 this season by the game score method.

8. Pedro Martinez

FWP: 383.5 | Strikeouts: 3,154 (15th)

Game score W-L: 292-117 (.714)

By so many measures, Martinez is one of the greatest of all time, even if his career volume didn’t reach the same levels as those of the others on the list. His 409 career starts are easily the fewest of the 3K club. But he has the highest game score winning percentage and, likewise, the highest score for FWP per start (.938).

9. Steve Carlton

FWP: 379.8 | Strikeouts: 4,136 (4th)

Game score W-L: 420-289 (.592)

When you think of Lefty, you think of his 1972 season, when he went 27-10 (traditional method) for a Phillies team that went 59-97. What does the game score method think of that season? It hates it. Kidding! No, Carlton, as you’d expect, dominated, going 32-9. So think of it like this: There were 32 times in 1972 that Carlton outpitched his starting counterpart despite the lethargic offense behind him.

10. Tom Seaver

FWP: 371.3 | Strikeouts: 3,640 (6th)

Game score W-L: 391-256 (.604)

Perhaps no other pitcher of his time demonstrated a more lethal combination of dominance and consistency than Seaver. The consistency is his historical differentiator. As mentioned, his career quality start percentage (70%) is tops among this group. Among all pitchers with at least 100 career starts, he ranks fifth. Dead ball era pitchers get a leg up in this stat, so the leader is the fairly anonymous Jeff Tesreau (72%), a standout for John McGraw’s New York Giants during the 1910s. The others ahead of Seaver are a fascinating bunch. One is Babe Ruth, and another is Ernie Shore, who in 1917 relieved Ruth when The Babe was ejected after walking a batter to start a game. Shore replaced him, picked off the batter who walked, then went on to retire all 26 batters he faced. The other ahead of Seaver: Jacob deGrom.

11. Clayton Kershaw

FWP: 370.9 | Strikeouts: 3,000 (20th)

Game score W-L: 301-137 (.687)

And here’s the guest of honor, our reason for doing this ranking exercise. As you can see, Kershaw joined the 300-game-score win club in his last start before Wednesday’s milestone game, becoming the 38th member. In so many measures of dominance, consistency and efficiency, Kershaw ranks as one of the very best pitchers of all time. When you think that he, Verlander and Scherzer are all in the waning years of Hall of Fame careers, you can’t help but wonder who, if anyone, is going to join some of the elite starting pitching statistical clubs in the future.

12. Don Sutton

FWP: 370.6 | Strikeouts: 3,574 (7th)

Game score W-L: 437-319 (.578)

For a post-dead ball pitcher, Sutton was a model of durability. He ranks third in career starts (756) and seventh in innings (5,283⅓). During the first 15 seasons of his career, Sutton started 31 or more games 14 times and threw at least 207 innings for the Dodgers in every season.

13. Ferguson Jenkins

FWP: 353.8 | Strikeouts: 3,192 (14th)

Game score W-L: 363-231 (.611)

Jenkins is in the Hall of Fame, so we can’t exactly say he was overlooked. Still, it does feel like he’s a bit underrated on the historical scale. His FWP score ranks 17th among all pitchers, and the game score method gives him a significant win-loss boost. That .611 percentage you see here is a good bit higher than his actual .557 career winning percentage. He just didn’t play for very many good teams and, in fact, never appeared in the postseason. He’s not the only Hall of Famer associated with the Chicago Cubs who suffered that fate.

14. Gaylord Perry

FWP: 335.6 | Strikeouts: 3,534 (8th)

Game score W-L: 398-292 (.577)

Perry, famous for doing, uh, whatever it takes to win a game, famously hung around past his expiration date to get to 300 wins, and he ended up with 314. Poor Perry: If my game score method had been in effect, he’d have quit two wins shy of 400. Would someone have given him a shot at getting there in 1984, when he was 45? One of history’s great what-if questions.

15. Phil Niekro

FWP: 332.5 | Strikeouts: 3,342 (13th)

Game score W-L: 408-308 (.570)

Knucksie won 318 games, and lost 274, the type of career exemplified by his 1979 season, when he went 21-20. We aren’t likely to see anyone again pair a 20-win season with a 20-loss season. His .537 traditional winning percentage improves with the game score method, but he’s still the low man in the 3K club in that column. Niekro joins Ryan and Sutton on the list of those with 300 game score losses. Sutton, at 319, is the leader. The others: Tommy John, Tom Glavine and Jamie Moyer. Of course, they were all safely over the 300-game-score win threshold as well.

16. CC Sabathia

FWP: 323.2 | Strikeouts: 3,093 (18th)

Game score W-L: 339-221 (.605)

Sabathia will be inducted into the Hall of Fame next month, and his place in this group only underscores how deserving he is of that honor. Sabathia debuted in 2001, and to reach the 250 traditional-win level (he won 251) in this era is an amazing feat. The only pitcher in that club who debuted later is Verlander, stuck at 262 wins after debuting in 2005. Right now, it’s hard to imagine who, if anyone, will be next. Of course, if we just went with game score wins, that would be different.

17. Bob Gibson

FWP: 321.0 | Strikeouts: 3,117 (16th)

Game score W-L: 305-177 (.633)

Gibson, incidentally, also won 251 games — and also gets enough boost from the game score method to climb over 300. His revised percentage is better than his traditional mark of .591. His average game score ranks third in this group, a reflection of his steady dominance but also of the era in which he pitched. Gibson is tied for eighth in quality start percentage among all pitchers. In 1968, when Gibson owned the baseball world with a 1.12 ERA, he went 22-9 by the traditional method. The game score method: 26-8. You’d think it would be even better, but it was, after all, the Year of the Pitcher.

18. Bert Blyleven

FWP: 320.2 | Strikeouts: 3,701 (5th)

Game score W-L: 391-294 (.571)

It took a prolonged campaign by statheads to raise awareness about Blyleven’s greatness and aid his eventual Cooperstown induction. He finished with 287 traditional wins, short of the historical benchmark. Here he would fall short of the 400-win benchmark, but, nevertheless, he is tied with John and Seaver for 11th on the game score wins list. His actual winning percentage was .534.

19. Curt Schilling

FWP: 307.1 | Strikeouts: 3,116 (17th)

Game score W-L: 281-155 (.644)

There are 31 pitchers who have broken the 300 FWP level, and it’s hard for me to imagine how anyone in that group could be left out of Cooperstown. You can sort this out for yourself in terms of baseball and not baseball reasons for this, but the group not there is Clemens, Schilling, John and Andy Pettitte, plus the greats (Kershaw, Verlander, Scherzer) who are still active.

20. John Smoltz

FWP: 273.8 | Strikeouts: 3,084 (19th)

Game score W-L: 290-191 (.603)

Smoltz won 213 games the traditional way, and he falls just short of 300 by the revised method. But all of this is about starting pitching, and with Smoltz, that overlooks a lot. After missing the 2000 season because of injury, he returned as a reliever, and for four seasons he was one of the best, logging 154 saves during that time. He’s the only member of the 200-win, 100-save club.

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Dodgers’ Muncy (knee) helped off, set for MRI

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8 hours ago

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July 3, 2025

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Dodgers' Muncy (knee) helped off, set for MRI

  • Alden GonzalezJul 3, 2025, 12:30 AM ET

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      ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.

LOS ANGELES — Clayton Kershaw‘s 3,000th career strikeout was preceded by a scary, dispiriting moment, when Los Angeles Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy injured his left knee and had to be helped off the field Wednesday night.

Muncy is set to undergo an MRI on Thursday, but Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said initial tests have them feeling “optimistic” and that the “hope” is Muncy only sustained a sprain.

With one out in the sixth inning, Muncy jumped to catch a throw from Dodgers catcher Will Smith, then tagged out Chicago White Sox center fielder Michael A. Taylor on an attempted steal and immediately clutched his left knee, prompting a visit from Roberts and head trainer Thomas Albert.

Muncy wrapped his left arm around Albert and walked toward the third-base dugout, replaced by Enrique Hernandez. His injury, caused by Taylor’s helmet slamming into the side of his left knee on a headfirst slide, was so gruesome that the team’s broadcast opted not to show a replay.

Taylor also exited the game with what initially was diagnosed as a left trap contusion.

The Dodgers went on to win 5-4 on Freddie Freeman‘s walk-off single that scored Shohei Ohtani.

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Kershaw becomes MLB’s 4th lefty with 3,000 K’s

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8 hours ago

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July 3, 2025

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Kershaw becomes MLB's 4th lefty with 3,000 K's

  • Alden GonzalezJul 2, 2025, 11:54 PM ET

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      ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.

LOS ANGELES — His start prolonged, the whiffs remained elusive, and the Dodger Stadium crowd became increasingly concerned that Clayton Kershaw might not reach a hallowed milestone in front of them Wednesday. Finally, with two outs in the sixth inning, on his 100th pitch of the night, it happened — an outside-corner slider to freeze Chicago White Sox third baseman Vinny Capra and make Kershaw the 20th member of the 3,000-strikeout club.

Kershaw came off the mound and waved his cap to a sold-out crowd that had risen in appreciation. His teammates then greeted him on the field, dispersing hugs before a tribute video played on the scoreboard, after which Kershaw spilled out of the dugout to greet the fans once more.

Kershaw, the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ longtime ace, is just the fourth lefty to reach 3,000 strikeouts, joining Randy Johnson, Steve Carlton and CC Sabathia. He is one of just five pitchers to accumulate that many with one team, along with Walter Johnson, Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton and John Smoltz. The only other active pitchers who reached 3,000 strikeouts are the two who have often been lumped with Kershaw among the greatest pitchers of this era: Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer, the latter of whom reached the milestone as a member of the Dodgers in September 2021.

Kershaw’s first strikeout accounted for the first out of the third inning — immediately after Austin Slater’s two-run homer gave the White Sox a 3-2 lead. Former Dodger Miguel Vargas fell behind in the count 0-2, becoming the ninth batter to get to two strikes against Kershaw, then swung through a curveball low and away. The next strikeout, No. 2,999 of his career, came on his season-high-tying 92nd pitch of the night, a curveball that landed well in front of home plate and induced a swing-and-miss from Lenyn Sosa to end the fifth inning.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts did not even look at Kershaw as he made his way back into the dugout, a clear sign that Kershaw would not be taken out. The crowd erupted as Kershaw took the mound for the start of the sixth inning. Mike Tauchman grounded out and Michael A. Taylor hit a double, then was caught stealing on a play that prompted Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy to come down hard on his left knee, forcing him to be helped off the field.

The mood suddenly turned somber at Dodger Stadium. Then, four pitches later, came elation.

Kershaw reached 3,000 strikeouts in 2,787⅓ innings, making him the fourth-fastest player to reach the mark, according to research from the Elias Sports Bureau. The only ones who got there with fewer innings were Johnson (2,470⅔), Scherzer (2,516) and Pedro Martinez (2,647⅔).

The Dodgers came back to win 5-4, capping their rally with three runs in the bottom of the ninth.

Before the game, Roberts called the 3,000-strikeout milestone “the last box” of a Hall of Fame career — one whose spot in Cooperstown had already been cemented by three Cy Young Awards, 10 All-Star Games, an MVP, five ERA titles and more than 200 wins.

Kershaw’s 2.51 ERA is the lowest in the Live Ball era (since 1920) among those with at least 1,500 innings, even though Kershaw has nearly doubled that. He was a force early, averaging 200 innings and 218 strikeouts per season from 2010 to 2019. And he was a wonder late, finding ways to continually keep opposing lineups in check with his body aching and his fastball down into the high 80s.

Kershaw went on the injured list at least once every year from 2016 to 2024. A foot injury made him a spectator last October, when the Dodgers claimed their second championship in five years. The following month, Kershaw underwent surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee and a ruptured plantar plate in his left big toe, then re-signed with the Dodgers and joined the rotation in mid-May. He allowed five runs in four innings in his debut but went 4-0 with a 2.08 ERA in his next seven starts, stabilizing a shorthanded rotation that remains without Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Roki Sasaki and Tony Gonsolin.

Since the start of 2021, Kershaw has somehow managed to put up the sixth-lowest ERA among those with at least 400 innings.

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