Deion Sanders’ roster remake at Colorado like nothing college football has ever seen
By Kyle Bonagura, Adam Rittenberg and Andrea Adelson
BOULDER, Colo. — In the midst of training camp, three weeks before the season opener, first-year Colorado coach Deion Sanders was in no mood to sing the virtues of building a strong team culture. In fact, he took exception to the idea that it was even necessary as part of his Rocky Mountain reclamation project.
“I’m not welcoming to that word, culture,” Sanders said. “That’s all I heard when I was in Jackson. Culture, culture, culture, culture, culture. Now culture, culture. What the heck does that mean?”
In this context, it was defined for the Pro Football Hall of Famer as creating an environment to become a good football team. For example, what little things do the players have to do every day to maximize their potential?
“I don’t think you got to have unity whatsoever,” Sanders said. “You got to have good players.”
While that might partially defy conventional wisdom, it does sum up the blueprint from which Sanders has built his team over the past nine months. Since his splashy arrival in early December, hired following a successful three-year stint at FCS Jackson State, Sanders made it clear he planned on taking advantage of college football’s now unrestrictive transfer rules to overhaul his roster — even encouraging holdover players to enter the transfer portal the first time he addressed the team.
He hasn’t wavered in his plan since.
The Buffs weren’t just one of the worst teams in college football last season, they were one of the worst teams in recent memory. Coach Karl Dorrell was fired after an 0-5 start in just his third season, and the team finished 1-11. Colorado lost games by an average margin of 29.1 points last year, the worst in the country and the fourth-worst among Power 5 programs in the past 30 years.
When the Buffaloes take the field in Fort Worth, Texas, against No. 17 TCU on Saturday (noon ET, Fox), the only resemblance from last year’s team will be the uniforms. Only 10 scholarship players from the 2022 roster remain with the team. The team’s 86 new players come from all over — from high school to junior college to the SEC — including nine who followed Sanders from Jackson State, led by Shedeur Sanders, Deion’s son and CU’s starting QB, and Travis Hunter, the No. 2 overall recruit in the 2022 class. According to ESPN Stats & Information, it’s the most incoming players to an FBS roster since the inception of the transfer portal in 2018.
“I know it’s a huge overhaul,” Sanders said. “But it had to be done.”
No coach has ever been so brash about wanting to force out so many of the players he inherited. Even though it became easier in 2021 to transfer, once the rules had changed and players did not have to sit out for a season, the extent of Sanders’ undertaking is unprecedented in college football.
Colorado’s 53 incoming transfers — including roughly two dozen since the end of spring practice — is the most any team has ever added in an offseason.
While some coaches might have reservations about how this unorthodox approach could impact team chemistry, Sanders could not care less.
“I don’t care about culture. I don’t care. I don’t care if they like each other, man. I want to win,” he said. “I’ve been on some teams where the quarterback didn’t like the receiver, but they darn sure made harmony when the ball was snapped.”
Sanders said that doesn’t mean his players don’t get along. He said there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. However, it does illustrate how his long professional playing career has influenced his priorities as he attempts to resuscitate a once-proud program.
“He understands the business,” a team source told ESPN. “If he doesn’t win, they’re going to get rid of him like they have the previous staffs, so you better be confident enough to make the moves you feel fit within the vision you have for that program. The one thing that no one can deny — you may agree or not agree with what he says — Deion Sanders has been a winner his entire life.”
After Colorado spent most of the past two decades mired in irrelevance, Sanders has put the school squarely in the spotlight. Historic numbers of players have transferred in and out. Season tickets are sold out. Merchandise sales have spiked, with sales of Colorado gear in December — the month Sanders was hired — up 505% over the previous year, according to the university. The Buffs have been one of the most talked-about teams in the country.
Now it’s time to play football.
ESPN spoke to several players who transferred after Sanders’ arrival, as well current players and coaches, to find out what actually happened during the spring roster overhaul, what kind of a team Sanders is attempting to build and, ultimately, whether one of the most fascinating offseasons in the sport’s history will pay off.
On Saturday, April 22, the day after a spring snowstorm, nearly 50,000 people made their way to Folsom Field for Coach Prime’s first spring game. The crowd was bigger than all but two of the team’s regular-season home games last season and marked the first time the school sold tickets to the event since the 1970s.
“This was the beginning of everything in the direction that we go right now,” Sanders said afterward. “You all know that we’re going to move on from some of the team members and we’re going to reload and get some kids that we really identify with. This process is going to be quick, it’s going to be fast, but we’re going to get it done.”
The Sunday and Monday following the spring game were uncomfortably quiet around the UCHealth Champions Center, headquarters of the Buffaloes football program. Players had been summoned to meet with their position coaches and, in some cases, Sanders as well.
They came and went, some never to return. Sanders’ proclamation at Colorado’s first team meeting back in December — “I want y’all to get ready to jump in that portal” — had gone into full effect, just a bit later than many had expected.
Former Colorado linebacker Mister Williams remembered entering a mostly empty building for a Sunday meeting with both Sanders and linebackers coach Andre’ Hart. The coaches reviewed Williams’ performance and told him he ultimately didn’t fit with the direction Colorado wanted to go.
“Coach Prime asked me, do I know what that means?” Williams said. “Like, do I know what I need to work on so that whenever I do find a new place, that won’t be an issue?”
Williams, who originally had no intention of transferring from Colorado, mostly listened during the meeting. He thanked the coaches for the opportunity as they parted ways. He then went to the locker room and gathered his things. He eventually transferred to the University of the Incarnate Word.
“Some people, they don’t plan on transferring the whole time that they’re in college,” said Jason Oliver, who transferred from Colorado to Sacramento State after the spring game. “The fact you can get cut like that, it kind of sucks, but that’s what college football is nowadays. It’s just a business, so you’ve got to start to understand it.”
Wide receiver Jordyn Tyson led CU in receiving yards, receiving touchdowns and total touchdowns in 2022 before sustaining a season-ending knee injury in early November that required surgery. He had spent the winter and spring rehabbing, which limited his interactions with Sanders and the new coaching staff. But Tyson planned to stay and remain a significant contributor, until his meeting with Sanders and wide receivers coach Brett Bartolone.
“I just wasn’t wanted, basically,” Jordyn Tyson said. “They basically said that.”
It was harsh, like an NFL cutdown day, except for players who mostly arrived in Boulder under the assumption they had a home until they exhausted their eligibility. Their scholarships would have been honored if they wanted to remain at CU as students, but the whole process came across as impersonal, multiple players told ESPN. If the initial wave of more than two dozen incoming transfers before spring practice was Phase 1 of Sanders’ transformation, Phase 2 commenced during the post-spring exit interviews.
“Sometimes when you’re telling somebody what they want to hear, it is worse than just telling people the truth,” said Colorado defensive coordinator Charles Kelly, who joined Colorado in December after four years on staff at Alabama. “The one thing that [Sanders] firmly believes in is he’s going to tell people the truth. He has not done anything since he’s been the head coach that he didn’t say he was going to do. He spelled it out exactly what his plan was.”
Sanders might say he doesn’t care about culture, but his coaching philosophy is built on the same core principles he learned as a player at Florida State under Bobby Bowden and defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews.
In an interview last year with ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, Sanders said, “I’m pretty much a version of Mickey Andrews right now, the way I go about my job.”
He made similar comments to The Ledger newspaper when Andrews retired in 2009: “Not a day goes by when I am coaching, mentoring or teaching somebody that I don’t use things coach Andrews taught me. He is one of the all-time great defensive coaches in college football history.”
Andrews spent 26 years as defensive coordinator with the Seminoles, and molded Sanders into a two-time All-American in 1987-88. Andrews’ relentlessness with his players, tough love and emphasis on hard work and discipline are core tenets Sanders has taken with him as a coach. Andrews told ESPN from his home in Tallahassee, Florida, that he and Sanders have talked at length about their similar approach to coaching.
“He has told me a lot of times that he finds himself repeating some of the language I used, and the way I went about talking with players and trying to challenge them,” Andrews said. “Deion is a very honest person. I tried to be the same way with the players. I was tough on them, and I understand he is. I tried to create self-discipline. That’s how you become disciplined. You have to take ownership of that.”
Andrews said the first team meeting that Sanders held at Colorado — when he sent an eye-opening message about his expectations — reminded him of his freshman year at Alabama under Paul “Bear” Bryant in 1959.
“I saw the players were sitting around expecting a guy to come in there being jovial. He pinned their ears to the wall right off the bat,” Andrews said. “It reminded me so much of Coach Bryant. His deal was you get in or you get out. He wasn’t going to have a meeting and try to encourage you to join his team. He told us the first step to winning is to keep from losing, and he said you guys in here that can’t abide by that need to find another place to go to school. He was going to force you to make a decision. Deion kind of did the same thing.”
Sanders often points to five qualities he’s looking for in his players: smart, tough, fast, disciplined, great character. Those close to Sanders describe an approach that prioritizes similar qualities that Bowden valued while building Florida State into a national power, but Sanders has taken full advantage of modern NCAA rules.
First-year head coaches, like Sanders, have access to the NCAA’s “Aid After Departure of Head Coach” rule, which allows them to cut scholarship players and not have them count against the 85-scholarship limit, so long as those players remain on scholarship through the university. The transfer eligibility rules that went into effect in 2021 allowed this to become a mechanism for clearing roster space. Additionally, the NCAA Division I Council announced last year a two-year waiver for initial counter limits, which previously capped the amount of incoming scholarship players — high school recruits and transfers — in the offseason at 25. These rules make it possible for Sanders and other first-year coaches to revamp their rosters in ways they couldn’t before.
For a losing program like Colorado, Sanders’ approach, while callous to some, is a welcome change for others. Former Colorado and NFL offensive lineman Matt McChesney trains college athletes in a gym near Denver, including about 10 former Colorado players who transferred in the offseason. He welcomes the “unapologetic” and “business-related” approach Sanders has taken so far at his alma mater.
McChesney admitted Colorado’s offseason overhaul included some players the team wanted to keep but said some of the negative feedback — ranging from criticism from other college football coaches to those in media — was misplaced.
“I don’t have an issue with what he did at all. In fact, I dig it and I hope he does more of it,” McChesney said. “Honestly, I want it to be as cutthroat as humanly possible. I want everybody walking on eggshells. I want guys to fear for their jobs, so they do it at a high level. The perception that somehow this is dirty, I don’t understand how people can feel like that.”
McChesney attributes Colorado’s decline to a less-demanding environment and not living up to the words that came to define the program.
“It’s embarrassing when people in the state look at the logo and they’re like, ‘Hey, you should be in the Mountain West,'” McChesney said. “So the fact that he’s brought the pride back to the university when our motto is ‘The pride and tradition of the Colorado Buffaloes will not be entrusted to the timid or the f—ing weak,’ it resonates.”
Receiver-turned-tight-end Mikey Harrison is one of the 10 scholarship players returning from last season. As some teammates talked of transferring after the coaching change, Harrison was convinced he wanted to stick it out.
“I knew he was going to bring guys here, and to me, I’ve always believed in myself and believed in my abilities on the field,” Harrison said. “I even thought, this is one of the greatest football players of all time. … I feel like he’ll be able to see my ability.”
Harrison’s exit interview went better than many other returners, and he went into the summer believing he had a good shot at playing time this fall. Still, it marked a kind of awkward transition as many close friends departed.
“It kind of sucks in the moment. You build relationships with the guys you’ve been here with forever and then you see ’em go,” Harrison said. “Some guys are ending up in better positions for themselves, which obviously as a friend and as a teammate, that’s what you want for them.
“And then the guys coming in like any other team, you just embrace them because you know that these are the guys you’re going to go play with on Saturday. There’s no other option but to accept them and embrace into our team and into our community at CU.”
For the incoming players, like former Florida State defensive back Omarion Cooper, the opportunity to head to Boulder was similar to signing as a free agent for an expansion team. They weren’t transferring to play for a team that just went 1-11. That team no longer existed. They were signing up for the chance to play for one of football’s all-time best players as he built a team from scratch.
Cooper didn’t arrive until after spring practice. It wasn’t ideal timing given all the missed reps from the spring, but there’s a confidence that comes from having played major college football that eases the learning curve.
“It was a little challenging [coming in late], but having that college experience, being through workouts and stuff like that, you kind of know what to expect,” he said. “So, it was a little challenging, but we got adjusted pretty well.”
Given all the moving pieces, it might be hard to get a firm grasp on what the Buffaloes’ season will look like. But expectations are not high. They are projected to finish second to last in the conference with Las Vegas odds ranging from +5,000 to +15,000 to win the conference in their last Pac-12 season before the Buffaloes return to the Big 12.
“I really don’t even too much care about that,” quarterback Shedeur Sanders said at Pac-12 media day. “Because that’s what [media is] supposed to do. They’re supposed to hype things up and create chaos. That’s what media is.”
Of course, the Buffs haven’t won a conference title since 2001. The old way decidedly wasn’t working.
So Colorado is trying something different — something that has never been done in the modern history of the sport. It took a perfect storm of a one-of-a-kind coach, an overhaul of NCAA rules and a program desperate for respectability.
Will it work this year? Will it work at all?
That might be impossible to say right now. But either way, don’t expect Sanders to assign credit or blame to the team’s culture. That’s not what scores points or makes tackles.
ESPN reporters Tom VanHaaren and Mark Schlabach contributed to this story.
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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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