Franchise legend Clayton Kershaw has returned with the Los Angeles Dodgers for the 2025 season. He wins $7.5 million, earning an active roster start and daily incentives.
Kershaw, who turned 37 in March, is away from his 2024 season, where he compromised with a 2024 injury that pitched an ERA 4.50 in 30 innings that stretched out in seven starts. In recent years, injuries have been the norm for him, but despite the results from last season, he was almost very effective when he could take the mound. For example, over the past three seasons, the Car Show’s ERA+ is 160 and the FIP is 3.34 with a total start of 53. The three Cy Young winners enter the 2025 season with 212 wins and a 76.5 war. Kershaw has been part of the Dodgers’ organization since drafting him with the 7th overall pick in 2006.
Returning to the surviving champion Dodgers, Kershaw joins a packed spin. Currently, their six-man arrangements include Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Saga roki, Tony Gonsorin and Dustin May. Similarly, the control of NL MVP Shohei Ohtani, who emerged from the Hybrid Tommy John procedure, may be ready to return to the mound by May. It’s an unusual depth, but it’s a spinning that also comes with a risk of injury. That, of course, also explains the Car Show at this stage of his career.
The expectation is that his body won’t allow him to carry heavy work, but the Dodgers probably won’t need it from him.
Thanks to the Dodgers’ return core and the addition of offseasons with talent like Snell and Sasaki, Kershaw has its third career World Series ring in 2025.
