Los Angeles Dodgers: Why Clayton Kershaw will be better in 2019

1. Clayton Kershaw is still only 30 years old

We already alluded to this in the last slide about Kershaw being a 30-year-old pitcher that feels like he is 37. That is a fair assessment for Kershaw; because of the injuries and the drastic dip in velocity, it feels as if we are nearing the end of his dominance.

These are the same signs we see from older pitchers when they start to regress. Thus, it is only fair to make the same connections when Kershaw shows the same kind of regressions.

However, the difference with Kershaw is that he is still only 30 years old and we get so caught up on his reduced fastball velocity and injury history that we forget that he still has a lot in the tank, especially for a pitcher.

Some of the greatest pitchers ever threw their best baseball after the age of 30. Randy Johnson was electric in his later years, Roger Clemens had four Cy Youngs after the age of 34.

Heck, the pitcher that has gone toe-to-toe with Kershaw the last several years, Max Scherzer, is 34 years old.

Kershaw was so elite at such a young age, which is hard to come by, that it is hard to imagine him still potentially having ten years of productive baseball left in the tank.

If he was 34 or 35 and was showing these signs that would be one thing. However, at 30, he is just entering the cusp of his athletic prime and has plenty left in the tank.