Last Night in Baseball: Clayton Kershaw Whiffs His Way to Almost 3,000 Ks

There is always baseball happening — almost too much baseball for one person to handle themselves.

That’s why we’re here to help, though, by sifting through the previous days’ games, and figuring out what you missed, but shouldn’t have. Here are all the best moments from last night in Major League Baseball:

Kershaw 3 shy of 3,000

Clayton Kershaw’s return to the mound started out a little iffy – he gave up five runs in four innings with more walks than strikeouts back on May 17 – but he’s been coming along since. Over his last six starts, Kershaw has thrown 32.2 innings and allowed eight runs, giving him a 2.20 ERA in that stretch, while striking out 26 batters. The last five of those strikeouts came against the Rockies on Thursday night, and gave Kershaw 2,997 for his career.

That’s right: Kershaw is now just three strikeouts away from becoming just the 20th pitcher ever to reach 3,000 strikeouts, and it’s something of a relief to watch him getting to that significant milestone while looking good on the mound, instead of having to limp over the finish line. Hey, the man had toe and knee surgeries that delayed his 2025 debut until mid-May, the limping thing isn’t even a metaphor.

Kershaw’s next start is unlikely to come before the second half of next week, given the Dodgers have a day off on Monday and are shuffling starting pitchers around trying not to overwork either the recently returned Shohei Ohtani and their bullpen. Whenever it happens, though, he’ll need just three more strikeouts to make history.

Speaking of notable pitching performances…

Hunter Brown’s 2024 campaign was a good one. A 114 ERA+ over 170 innings? That’s a well above-average pitcher, the kind you need to stock a rotation with if it’s to have any depth. Hunter Brown’s 2025 campaign, though? That’s an ace, not a mid-rotation arm on a contender, no question about it. 

Brown is leading the American League in pitcher wins above replacement and all of MLB in ERA after seven shutout innings against the Phillies on Thursday night. The Astros‘ lineup didn’t provide much offense – just two runs – but that was enough for Brown and Houston’s bullpen, the latter of which allowed a single run after the right-hander made his exit. 

Nine strikeouts in seven frames, no walks, and just three hits – that’s the kind of work Brown has been doing all season, to the point that it’s a bit incredible that his ERA – which sat at 1.88 to begin the day – could fall any lower. It’s at 1.74 now, though, through 98 innings, and with Brown’s adjusted ERA stats like FIP suggesting there’s legitimate growth here.  

Marlins win again, sweep Giants

The Marlins scored 12 runs for the first time since April 30 to win their fourth straight game, and the fifth in their last six tries. They completed a road sweep of their San Francisco Giants, just their second series sweep of the season, and find themselves not on pace for 100 losses any longer, but instead, in fourth place in the NL East, two games up on the Washington Nationals. 

Part of that is the Nats completely collapsing for a couple of weeks there, sure, when they dropped 11 in a row, but the Marlins finished up May going 4-3 in their final week of the month, and are 11-12 in June to this point. Not exactly inspiring, no, but that’s a month of .500 ball, compared to the aforementioned 100-loss pace. 

Rookie Agustín Ramirez helped lead Miami against the Giants in the series, as he went 8-for-13 with three RBIs and a home run, with the latter two of those both coming on Thursday. His line isn’t perfect by any means, but offense for catchers who aren’t named Cal Raleigh isn’t exactly in an inspiring place, anyway: a catcher who can slug .466, as Ramirez has, is one you’ll happily pencil in as often as possible.

Rays pull within half-a-game of the Yankees 

The American League East continues to be a lot more interesting to watch than the New York Yankees had hoped. With an off-day for the Yanks and the Rays winning their third in a row, Tampa Bay pulled within half-a-game of New York in the standings, as they’ve played one more game – and have one more loss – than the Bronx Bombers. 

The Rays took down the Royals 4-0, on the backs of two notable performances. First, there was Brandon Lowe and Junior Caminero going back to back in the sixth inning. Sure, they ended up just being insurance runs, but back-to-back jacks in what is still a very winnable game is both impressive and deflating.

Caminero, by the way, is now up to 20 homers on the season, and is batting .260/.304/.520 in his first full campaign. Pretty alright for a 21-year-old who still has notable potential within reach. 

The other performance of note came from starting pitcher Shane Baz, who went eight innings scattering three hits and a walk, while striking out nine Royals. Baz hasn’t had the most impressive season – this start brought his ERA for the season down to 4.37 – but you can’t say a bad thing about the quality of this outing. 

The Rockies are the worst once more

They did it! The Rockies had improved a bit in June, making it look as if maybe they wouldn’t end up losing the most games in the modern era after all, so long as they could keep it going. Then they came up against the Dodgers and were swept, which changed things once more. The Rockies even said as much after the game, announcing that “The Colorado Rockies dropped to 18-63, the most losses by a Major League team through the first 81 games of a season in the modern era. The 1927 Red Sox, 1932 Red Sox and 1907 Cardinals all went 19-62 through their first 81 games.”

Thanks for the legwork there, Colorado. Now, there’s still a lot of season left — the last few days of June, then all of July, August and September, so things could change again in a number of directions. The Rockies are on pace to go 36-126, which would be the most losses in the modern era by five, as the 2024 White Sox went 41-121. They don’t have a lot of room left for another catastrophe month, because they’ve already got 63 losses in the bank. As said when June got going, even if the Rockies managed to split the rest of their games evenly for the rest of the season, they’d still lose 100 games on the year. It’s going to take more months like June — where they’re awful, but not historically so — to avoid their fate. 

Then again, June isn’t over yet, either: if the Milwaukee Brewers win two of three or sweep the weekend series to close out the month, then Colorado’s best month of the year is, respectively, still at a 100-loss pace, or a 106-loss one. Which is to say that these small samples can bounce around a lot of things, and the most accurate picture we have of the Rockies at the moment is the larger, season-long one until proven otherwise.

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