Have the Oilers done enough to get Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl a Stanley Cup?
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Ryan S. Clark, NHL reporter
DALLAS — Everything about Dylan Holloway and Darnell Nurse sitting next to each other on an elevated dais at the Western Conference finals said quite a bit before either one of them answered a single question.
Between them, they represent so much of what the Edmonton Oilers have done to build around their generational superstars, Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid.
It’s important to have homegrown talent in today’s NHL, and the Oilers have that. They selected Nurse with the No. 7 pick in 2013 — a year before Draisaitl and two years before McDavid — which shows how long the Oilers have been trying to build through the draft. Holloway, who went 14th in 2020, is a more recent example of Edmonton remaining committed to that approach while simultaneously trying to win in the present.
“It’s cool to come in to a team with such phenomenal players,” Holloway said. “Darnell, Leo, Connor. I want to learn from those guys. They kind of paved the way here. Our team’s this good right now because of them.”
But while nine of the players in the Oilers’ Game 1 lineup were drafted and developed by the franchise, they had to build the rest of the team with intent. They acquired Warren Foegele and Zach Hyman because they needed forwards who could forecheck and score. They added Cody Ceci, Mattias Ekholm and Brett Kulak because they needed to strengthen a defense that was in a consistent state of flux.
The natural inclination could be that having superstars who have yet to hit 30, such as Draisaitl and McDavid, should guarantee a title at some point. But there are no guarantees in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
The Tampa Bay Lightning won consecutive Stanley Cups because they hit on first-rounders Victor Hedman, Steven Stamkos and Andrei Vasilevskiy while striking it rich with later-round picks Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point. The Colorado Avalanche won their title because they were able to build around first-round picks Gabriel Landeskog, Nathan MacKinnon, Cale Makar and Mikko Rantanen.
Other teams, such as the Toronto Maple Leafs, show how building around a core of stars can come with many challenges. Despite having Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, the Leafs have been beyond the first round only once since 2016, and there is no guarantee they’re going to win a championship with their current core.
Somewhere in the middle are the Oilers.
Since McDavid and Draisaitl first played together in 2015-16, winning the Stanley Cup has been the expectation. That only intensified once Draisaitl, who was drafted third in 2014, exploded for 50 goals and 105 points in his fourth season. His surge showed the Oilers truly had a pair of generational talents, and not just one in McDavid.
The Oilers have reached the postseason in five consecutive seasons. Altogether, they’ve missed the playoffs only twice in the McDavid-Draisaitl era. Until recently, the biggest highlight of those postseason runs came in 2022, when the Oilers reached the Western Conference finals for the first time since 2006.
If reaching the conference final in 2022 was a lesson, what they’ve done this year could determine if they’re ready to pass the final test by winning that elusive Stanley Cup.
But if they fall short, they may be a step closer toward being the latest cautionary tale of a franchise that built one of the most talented rosters of its generation and failed to win a championship.
“The organization as a whole, especially from when we first got here, has grown and grown,” Nurse said. ” At some points, when you first got here, it was like, ‘Are we ever going to even play in the playoffs?’ And now over the last few years, being a team that’s competing at this time of year is just a testament to ownership and management of where they wanted this team to grow and get to.”
The conversation about how this championship-caliber team was built starts with Oilers general manager Ken Holland bringing up two names from the team’s not-so-distant past.
The 2019-20 season was Holland’s first with the Oilers. The Oilers had several young players, with nine who were drafted by the franchise appearing in more than 20 games during that campaign. The tesm included Oscar Klefbom and Adam Larsson, who arrived in the Taylor Hall trade with the New Jersey Devils. But as Holland quickly noted, the departures of those two defensemen were the first metaphorical dominos to fall when it came to making the necessary adjustments to keep the Oilers competitive.
“Klefbom’s career was over because of his shoulder, and Adam Larsson, for personal reasons, made a decision that he didn’t want to be in Edmonton anymore,” Holland recalled. “Those are two massive pieces to try to replace. You just peck away.”
Draisaitl, McDavid, Nurse and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins are the only holdovers from that 2019-20 roster. Sam Gagner, who was drafted by the Oilers in 2007, played 36 games that season in his second stint with the club before he was traded to the Detroit Red Wings. Gagner returned for a third tour this season.
So how did Holland and his staff build out the roster? They constructed their current top defensive pairing by using the team’s 2018 first-round draft pick on Evan Bouchard, and then trading for Mattias Ekholm in 2023. It was a deal that saw them part with prospect forward Reid Schafer along with a 2023 first-round pick, a 2024 fourth-round pick and blueliner Tyson Barrie.
Holland’s 34 years with the Detroit Red Wings as an amateur scouting director, assistant GM and GM allowed him to learn something vital from former Wings GM Jim Devellano and coach Scotty Bowman: the importance of having depth players who can check, kill penalties and be trusted to play on either special teams.
“These are all the things that over 82 games are important, but over seven games are really important,” Holland said. “One miscue can change a game and change a series.”
Between Edmonton’s amateur and professional scouting staffs, Holland & Co. were able to identify the set of current NHL players who could fill those needs.
The Oilers’ professional scouting staff identified proven players who could address key needs for the club, such as Cody Ceci, Evander Kane, Brett Kulak, Derek Ryan, Foegele and Hyman, among others.
“I’ve been pretty fortunate throughout my whole career to make the playoffs, and there are some guys who’ve played a lot of games and not made the playoffs,” said Foegele, who arrived via trade in 2021. “It’s understanding that you don’t always get this opportunity. Obviously, the moves that Kenny has made — you understand what’s at stake and that everyone’s here to win.”
The prospects who became full-time roster players — such as Vincent Desharnais, Ryan McLeod, Stuart Skinner and Bouchard — were already in the system when Holland arrived, while Holloway was a pick made during Holland’s tenure.
“I think since being drafted and coming in here, they’ve kind of wanted to engrave a winning mindset,” Bouchard said. “They’ve had a lot of years prior when they didn’t have success. I think the guys here have learned from that, have built from that. They want guys coming in to know that this is a winning organization.”
As with many teams, the trick is finding the balance of using picks to build their system while knowing when to trade them to gain a useful veteran to help win right now.
The Oilers drafted 18 players in Holland’s first three years. Since then, they’ve traded away more than 20 picks and have drafted only seven players.
For example, the Ekholm trade means they don’t have Schaefer, their first-round pick in 2022, along with their 2023 first-rounder (which the Predators used to select defenseman Tanner Molendyk). They also don’t have their 2024 first-round pick because it was used in the three-team trade that brought in Sam Carrick and Adam Henrique at the trade deadline.
Past Oiler trades resulted in other teams cashing in well: The Minnesota Wild landed star defenseman Brock Faber, and the Montreal Canadiens secured defenseman Lane Hutson.
“Some have worked, some don’t … so we’ve traded away lots of futures looking at ‘this is the window,'” Holland said. “So what’s the window? You look at Connor, Leon, Darnell, Ryan. The players that were here, these are their prime years and trying to build a supporting team around them that can make us better.”
Holland said the Oilers felt good about their team. But their 2-9-1 start to this season led to the firing of coach Jay Woodcroft, who was replaced by Kris Knoblauch. The work done by Knoblauch and his staff — which includes Hall of Fame defenseman Paul Coffey — saw the Oilers go from near the bottom of the NHL standings to second in the Pacific Division by finishing 46-18-5 in their final 69 games.
That gave the Oilers the best record in the NHL since Nov. 12, 2023, when they announced they hired Knoblauch. Winning games, however, is only part of the equation. The Oilers returned to being the sort of prolific team that was averaging 3.72 goals per game, with a power play that was operating at 26.9% under Knoblauch.
They also found a way to establish a connection between their defensive structure and goaltending that hadn’t consistently been there in years past. The Oilers allowed 2.68 goals per game after Knoblauch took over, which was the fifth fewest in the NHL. Their penalty kill had a 81.7% success rate, good for seventh, while the 28 shots per game they allowed was also fifth fewest in the league.
“Everyone has had different roads to get to what our team looks like today,” Skinner said. “I think just combining all that experience and we’ve been able to grow with each other this season as well. Looking back on it, we’ve been through a lot obviously as a group. I think being able to go through what we have had to go through has brought us as a team a lot closer and we have a solid brotherhood now.”
All of their success led to a number of questions, the most significant being: Can the Oilers’ translate their regular-season success under Knoblauch to playoff success?
Beating the Los Angeles Kings in five games in the first round while fending off elimination twice to beat the Vancouver Canucks in the second round has helped answer that question. Holland said the key is having that mix of core players starting to hit their prime, with young players carving out their place alongside established veterans.
“But we also know we are in the final four, and these are the four teams that have performed the best to get to this point,” Holland said. “You’re playing the best teams in the world now. One’s going to advance, and one’s going to get shuffled to the sideline.”
The manner in which the Oilers won Game 1 of the Western Conference finals was emblematic of how they’ve tried to build a team around McDavid and Draisaitl.
Contrarians will point out that Draisaitl still scored the Oilers’ first goal, and McDavid scored the winning goal in double overtime. Those who have closely watched the Oilers will point out that the Game 1 win was a group effort.
Edmonton’s current setup meant it could rely upon a penalty kill led by Desharnais, Ekholm, Nugent-Hopkins and Ryan, among others, to blank Dallas on five attempts. Their most notable kill came just 17 seconds into overtime, when McDavid was assessed a high-sticking double minor. The Oilers’ short-handed unit took away time and space en route to running its streak of consecutive kills to 21 entering Game 3.
“I think it’s just about confidence,” said McLeod, who is part of the Oilers’ PK setup. “We’ve been tweaking it all year and we’ve found something that’s been working. It’s confidence and that everyone’s in the right spots and being aggressive, and it’s been working.”
While Bouchard and Ekholm played more than 31 minutes in Game 1, the Oilers have been able to find a balance with their six defensemen. They all played more than 20 minutes that contest, while the Stars have largely relied on five defensemen this postseason.
Prior to Game 6 against the Canucks, Skinner had a 4.63 goals-against average and a .790 save percentage this postseason. Since then, he has a 1.64 GAA and a .918 save percentage in four starts.
This postseason also shows how the Oilers are more comfortable playing in one-goal games. They’ve won six out of their 10 one-goal games, with nine of their past 11 games being decided by a single goal.
Contrast that to the prior two years, which saw the Oilers go a combined 3-6 in one-goal games. Last postseason, they had just one one-goal game in their second-round series against the Golden Knights, while having a lone one-goal game versus the Avs in the conference finals in 2022.
“You’ve got to win tight games,” McDavid said following Game 1. “We’re down to the final four teams and you don’t get to the final four without being a great team. All four teams are solid. Dallas is a great team and it’s going to be tight hockey and we’re comfortable in these games. We’re comfortable in this environment, and I thought we did a great job truthfully all game.”
Winning Game 1 of the Western Conference finals has technically made this the most successful campaign in the McDavid-Draisaitl era, considering that they were swept the last time they were at this stage in 2022.
They’re seven victories away from winning the organization’s first Stanley Cup since 1990. Only five players on the current roster were alive when Mark Messier raised the Cup that spring. In fact, Ekholm was born on the exact day when the Oilers won their last Cup which was May 24, 1990.
Capturing the Western Conference crown and then winning the Stanley Cup would bring an end to all the questions surrounding the Oilers’ strategy in building around Draisaitl and McDavid. From there, the discussion would shift to whether they could win at least one more.
Falling short of the Cup would lead to more questions in what could be an offseason of change.
The Oilers have a 10-player unrestricted free agent class. It’s a group that includes Foegele, Henrique and Desharnais. Decisions will need to be made about how to strengthen the Oilers with what CapFriendly projects to be less than $10 million in cap space.
Even that comes with questions about who would be the one charged with improving the roster; Holland is in the last year of his contract.
And if all of that isn’t enough, Draisaitl will be entering the final season of his contract, too. Whatever he decides to do will have a significant ripple effect throughout the NHL.
“Once you’ve built your team, every year is the year,” Holland said. “You’ve always got to have a look to the future. Then when the year’s over, and you haven’t won the Stanley Cup, you’re gutted. There’s an empty hole in the pit of your stomach. That’s where you have to take the summer whether you’re a player, a coach or manager and you’ve got to regroup and rebuild and play your way back into another opportunity. I think that’s certainly what we’ve done.”
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Bradford Doolittle
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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Alden Gonzalez
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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Alden Gonzalez
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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