When I was growing up, Clayton Kershaw was the best starter in baseball, pretty much without question. He seemed to be the hope for a Los Angeles Dodgers franchise hungry for postseason success and a player with one of those unique wills to win. I remember doing fantasy baseball my freshman year of high school and having him be the engine of my team.

A decade later, Kershaw –– who last week announced he is retiring after the season –– has much more than fantasy numbers to exemplify his greatness. He has over 3,000 regular season strikeouts. He has 25 complete games in an era where complete games have become obsolete. And throughout his career, hitters had a .211 batting average when facing him, not to mention he has the fifth-lowest WHIP in MLB history.

But even those numbers don’t fully encapsulate what has made Kershaw so unique and so great for so long. I watched him earlier this year in a random July game as he donned his graying beard, and I thought, “it’s astonishing he’s still striking guys out.” Moments of dominance from him and LeBron James have linked my childhood to my early adult years and reminded me of why I love sports in the process.

But it’s also how he dominated that impressed me. He was never a top-of-the-notch flamethrower — he never averaged more than 95 miles an hour on a pitch he threw consistently. Instead, he proved that velocity isn’t the only way to be effective on the mound. He used command and deception in a way many pitchers fantasize about. He developed a curveball that has long been among the best ever, seemingly unhittable at its best.

And the advanced metrics show that the southpaw has forced more hitters to chase outside the zone and swing at the first pitch than most pitchers. Since the MLB started tracking advanced stats a decade ago, Kershaw has a 31.6 percent chase rate, above the league average of 28.4 percent, and he has thrown first pitch strikes about 68 percent of the time, again notably higher than the league average — 61 percent. 

Together, these metrics explain what made Kershaw lethal; they give context to his success. 

Research has shown how much of an advantage pitchers have when they come out throwing strikes batter after batter. One study from 2018 found that first-pitch strikes have about a 93 percent chance of leading to an out or strike one. Moreover, hitters in 0-1 counts have a .239 batting average and percent of strikeouts begin with first-pitch strikes and 70 percent of walks begin with first-pitch balls, the same study found. And in the context of Kershaw, these numbers make sense, especially because of his historically-low walk rate.

But deeper than these numbers, starting with an 0-1 count simply gave Kershaw an open playbook on the mound. He could consistently explore what pitches worked and which ones didn’t on a given night. He didn’t have to worry about throwing the perfect pitch — because most of the time, he was already ahead. And he could serve pitches that were outside the zone but forced hitters to chase. 

And that’s where Kershaw was great. He had a knack for ushering swings on pitches outside the zone. He has been elite in terms of delivering pitches that seem to be hittable as they leave his hand but then dive as soon as hitters commit to swinging. And even though those didn’t always end up being strikeouts, they often ended up as weak pop ups or easy ground balls. That’s the essence of his command — not just throwing strikes, but dictating the terms of contact, forcing hitters to play his game instead of theirs.