Clayton Kershaw and Max Scherzer Illustrious Careers By The Numbers

Clayton Kershaw, 37, and Max Scherzer, 41, are two of the greatest pitchers MLB has seen. They were once teammates briefly in 2021, but on Friday the future Hall of Famers, on the first-place Dodgers and Blue Jays respectively, will face off for a fifth time. 

Here's a look at the numbers behind each of their illustrious careers.

1. Scherzer and Kershaw are separated by just one regular-season win, with Scherzer having recorded 218 and Kershaw getting 217. Kershaw has led MLB in wins twice, while Scherzer did so once. 

2: The number of seasons in which Scherzer and Kershaw both hit a home run and won a Cy Young award: both of accomplished this once, which is all the more incredible because they each have just one career dinger.

2.85: The combined ERA of Scherzer and Kershaw, across over 5,700 innings, is just 2.85 – Kershaw leads all active players at 2.52, but Scherzer has been no slouch himself, at 3.18 despite pitching in plenty of offense-heavy parks in his career.

3: Between Kershaw and Scherzer, they've led the league in strikeouts on three occasions: Kershaw in 2015 when he logged his lone 300-strikeout campaign with 301, and Scherzer in 2016 with 284, and in 2018 with his own 300-K showing, with exactly that many. The two have also led at least their respective league in strikeouts a combined six times, three each.

4: Kershaw has two World Series rings – 2020 and 2024 – and Scherzer has a pair to match, from 2019 with the Nationals and 2023 with the Rangers after a midseason trade from the Mets.

6. Kershaw and Scherzer have each won three Cy Young awards, for a total of six. They won the award in the same season in 2013, which was Scherzer's first and Kershaw's second. Kershaw won it the following year, too, and