Clayton Kerhsaw becomes the Dodgers' all-time strikeout leader

[True Dough]

With his 2,697th career strikeout, Kershaw passed Hall of Famer Don Sutton for the most career strikeouts in Dodgers franchise history.

Sutton had held the record since the 1979 season when he passed Don Drysdale, who is now third on the franchise’s all-time strikeout list. Kershaw tallied seven strikeouts in six innings Saturday, raising his career total to 2,700 and becoming the 26th in AL/NL history to reach that number.

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[True Dough]

1. Now for some additional context...

Kershaw sits at #26 in MLB's all-time strikeout list overall. Sutton is still ahead of him there (at #7), with 3,574 career strikeouts because Sutton also played for Houston, Milwaukee, Oakland and the California Angels.

Then again, Sutton pitched 5,282 innings in total, compared to just 2,477 for Kershaw so far (Kershaw is 34 years old).

But Nolan Ryan sits atop them all, of course. And he looks untouchable at 5,714 career strikeouts. Good luck to anyone catching him, especially the way starting pitchers are limited in today's game.

[LenaBaby61]

2. He's a very good pitcher .....

And Dave Roberts taking him out during a No No But he never had to pitch against the greats of the game ..... And Ryan complied those numbers against many of the most talented players that ever played baseball. Many of these modern-era sports records don't really carry much weight with me to be honest. LeBron James is a phenom, and could have played during the NBA heydays and he is one of the greats of the game, and he's about to pass Kareem in all-time scoring. Thing is, LeBron never played against the talent Kareem had to and the rules are far different now, plus there were many nights when Kareem was on the bench in the 3rd and especially Fourth quarters because the Lakers had already mauled their opponents during the Show Time era, and even before then when it was just Kareem and Michael Cooper (before Magic Worthy etc.) in the mid to late 70's with the Lakers Kareem used to ride the bench because those Lakers teams weren't challenge-worthy as in winning a championship, so why play him if he could get hurt in meaningless game during the regular season?

[True Dough]

3. It's true that it's difficult to compare sports over different eras

And that applies to all of them. Makes for interesting debate, I suppose, because we'll never really know for sure how one player would stack up if you could teleport him/her 50 years into the future or past.

One thing modern players have going for them, a considerable advantage over athletes of yesterday, is advances in technology and nutrition.