LOS ANGELES -- One guy is peacefully departing, while the other is still raging against that good night and anyone left in his way.
That Clayton Kershaw and Max Scherzer both find themselves here, against each other, one more time -- impacting this 2025 World Series either through their performance on the mound or their presence off it -- is an appropriate conclusion to the connected professional baseball story of these two future Hall of Famers.
“We’ve been linked,” said Kershaw, “all the way through.”
“You know, same Draft class, everything,” Scherzer added. “It’s been awesome to compete against [Kershaw] my entire career, and we even got to be teammates [in 2021]. It’s been great going toe-to-toe, and it’s fitting for him to be at the end here and we get to face each other on the way out.”
While Kershaw and his admittedly diminished raw stuff continue to sit primarily unused in the Dodgers' bullpen in a postseason in which their starters have routinely worked deep into games, Scherzer is starting Game 3 for the Blue Jays on Monday night at Dodger Stadium.
“He's still throwing 95 [mph], you know?” Kershaw said. “So he’s still got a few years left in the tank, if he wants it.”
The World Series outing could conceivably go a long way toward determining that.
After a 2025 regular season in which he was limited to 17 starts and posted a career-worst 5.19 ERA, Scherzer has an opportunity to show that his vintage performance in Seattle during the ALCS -- when he barked at manager John Schneider to let him finish the fifth and came away with his first win in a postseason game since the 2019 World Series -- was no fluke and that he can still make meaningful contributions to a club.
When Scherzer was warming in the bullpen prior to Game 4 of the ALCS, after a 22-day layoff between outings, Toronto pitching coach Pete Walker observed. Walker heard the pops in the mitt Scherzer was creating, and his arms began to tingle.
“It was like … I don't know how he did it, but he did it,” Walker said. “He just became that guy again.”
Scherzer, 41, said the thumb issue that had bothered him this year is now under control. And so he doesn’t talk like a guy ready to say goodbye to the game.
“I just keep the blinders up,” Scherzer said. “As long as I can be a starter on a championship-caliber team, I want to keep playing. If my body's healthy, I want to keep playing. And ever since I got over this thumb issue, it really kind of put a jolt in me that I can still pitch at this level.”
Kershaw, at 37, is four years Scherzer’s junior but in a much different place, mentally and physically. His fifth (yes, fifth) child is on the way, he’s pondered retirement multiple times in recent years, and, on the heels of a season in which he notched his 3,000th strikeout, he expresses nothing but readiness to retire.
“I'm just so grateful for this whole season,” Kershaw said. “You know, the way it's played out, I'm at peace with the decision for this to be my last one. … I'm not good at expressing emotion, really, but there are a lot of them, and it's been really special, and I'm going to try and enjoy it as best I can.”
You’ve probably seen the images from a Sept. 7, 2008, Dodgers-Diamondbacks game, when fans were initially expecting a Greg Maddux-Randy Johnson matchup and instead got Kershaw and Scherzer.
No one could have known then that two Hall of Famers were replaced by two Hall of Famers. When all is said and done, Scherzer and Kershaw will have been only the third pair of Hall of Famers who opposed each other as rookie starting pitchers -- and the only pair since 1890 (when there were matchups between Kid Nichols and Cy Young and Nichols and Jesse Burkett)!
Kershaw and Scherzer had one last start opposite each other on Aug. 8 of this year. Afterward, they exchanged jerseys. It was a show of respect between two legends of their time -- Scherzer a vagabond who is now the first pitcher to reach the World Series with four different teams and Kershaw a blue-blooded Dodger for the long haul.
Back in 2006, they were drafted just four picks apart -- Kershaw out of his Dallas high school to the Dodgers at No. 7 overall, Scherzer out of the University of Missouri to the D-backs at No. 11.
Then, they debuted within a month of each other in 2008 -- Scherzer on April 29, 2008, and Kershaw on May 25. In 2013, by which point Scherzer had been traded to the Tigers, they were the AL and NL Cy Young winners. They both won the Cy Young three times. In fact, when Scherzer last won it with the Nationals in 2017, Kershaw finished second to him in the voting.
Now, all these years later, Kershaw has completed his career with 223 wins, and Scherzer is right there behind him at 221.
Someone like Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior, a one-time top prospect whose career was famously marred by injuries, can particularly appreciate what Kershaw and Scherzer represent.
“The durability, the presence that they’ve carried, the expectation that when they step on the mound, everybody's level of play will match the level of play that they're bringing to the field and their intensity,” Prior said. “Their impact is something you can't really quantify, but I think it's just the body of work that’s so impressive.”
Their work is different these days. This was Scherzer’s second straight season with less than 100 innings, and Kershaw’s start to the year was delayed by knee and toe surgeries.
But members of both World Series clubs rave about what these two pitchers have accomplished away from the field on the path to the pennant.
For the Blue Jays, Scherzer brought an intensity to a team that finished in last place in the AL East last year. He showed up talking about the World Series and what it would take to get there.
“He is the epitome of a team player,” Walker said. “He’s been gracious and awesome to the staff. He’s in our coach’s office every day, he sits in with Schneid for a half an hour every day and he’s with our pitching department, talking with our guys and asking questions and always looking for some way to get better, whether it’s him or someone else on the staff. We had no idea what to expect from him coming in, but he’s been so awesome and genuinely happy here this year.”
Kershaw has long held the role of elder statesman in the Dodgers’ clubhouse. And evolving from the flamethrower he once was into the crafty vet with the 89-mph fastball in the present day has earned him wisdom.
“What makes him special,” said Prior, “is that guys want to play with him.”
Guys like 26-year-old reliever Jack Dreyer, a fellow lefty who grew up idolizing Kershaw and attempting to replicate his mechanics.
“In terms of like foot plants and arm angles and stuff like that, yeah,” said Dreyer, “I was 100 percent trying to mimic that.”
Dreyer and the rest of the Dodgers know that mimicking Kershaw’s presence come 2026 will be impossible.
“There’s going to be a huge hole without him in the clubhouse,” Dreyer said. “It's something that you can't really replicate. So we're just really thankful that we have such a good person and attitude in the clubhouse. I think one of the coolest things about this World Series is he gets the opportunity to go out on top. And then, across the way, they’ve got Max Scherzer, and he’s still throwing 95 and yelling at his manager and all that. Those two guys are forever linked, two of the greats.”