Clayton Kershaw Announces Retirement After 2025 Season, Ending Hall Of Fame Career

Los Angeles Dodgers legend Clayton Kershaw is set to announce his retirement on Thursday, ending a long, storied career played entirely with one organization. 

The Dodgers official account on X posted Thursday afternoon that Kershaw would announce that he's retiring at the end of the 2025 season. That makes Friday night's scheduled start against the San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium the last of his regular season career, in a fitting conclusion to his legendary run. 

As their post says, Kershaw has won the NL Cy Young Award three times in his career, won the 2014 NL MVP Award, a remarkable achievement as a pitcher, and has made 11 All-Star teams. That's just the start of his accomplishments.

Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Photo: Jordan Godfree-Imagn Images

Kershaw's Career Unlikely To Be Matched

After the announcement, Dodgers owner Mark Walter issued his own statement: "On behalf of the Dodgers, I congratulate Clayton on a fabulous career and thank him for the many moments he gave to Dodger fans and baseball fans everywhere, as well as for all of his profound charitable endeavors. His is a truly legendary career, one that we know will lead to his induction in the Baseball Hall Of Fame."

The list of Kershaw's accomplishments is virtually endless. Among pitchers since 1950, Kershaw has the lowest career ERA, 2.54, of anyone making at least 300 starts, and it isn't close. His ERA+, which adjusts for the offensive environment in a given year, is the best of any starting pitcher in baseball history. 

He has 222 career wins, became the 20th pitcher to reach 3,000 strikeouts earlier in 2025, and ranks 24th in career pitching wins above replacement, per Fangraphs. That's made even more impressive by the fact that he has fewer innings than anyone ahead of him, roughly 400 innings behind the next lowest number. 

He's also a two-time World Champion, and added more than an entire season's worth of innings in the postseason. Though the headline stats in his playoff record aren't impressive, a deeper dive into his individual starts, and poor batted ball luck, shows that he's outperformed peers like Justin Verlander or Max Scherzer based on fielding independent pitching (FIP) in the playoffs. 

Kershaw is the closest thing to a surefire first ballot Hall of Famer as there can possibly be – he was unquestionably the best pitcher in baseball during his peak, and his Cy Youngs and MVP win highlight the value he had to his team. Kerhsaw almost singlehandedly elevated the Dodgers to the playoffs year after year, until new ownership fully committed to spending more money towards the back half of his career. 

From 2014-2016, he was 49-14 with a 1.89 ERA, had 13 complete games and eight shutouts and had a no-hitter. He pitched 580 innings, with a miniscule 6.19 hits per nine innings, along with 1.30 BB/9 for a remarkable 0.83 WHIP. He struck out 712 hitters, 11.05 K/9, making for a 8.48 K/BB rate, allowing just 0.50 homers per nine too.

Given increasing velocities and the inevitable injuries that result, it's unlikely we'll see many, if any, pitchers match Kershaw's legacy of longevity and quality.