Time comes for all of us, even for Clayton Kershaw, the best pitcher of his generation, the pitcher who finished outside of the top 20 in NL MVP voting only once from 2011 to 2017. Though the lefthander only turned 30 in March, the Kershaw we saw in 2018 was not the Kershaw of previous years, not even the Kershaw of the recent past.
His average fastball was clocked at 90.9 mph (he had averaged 93.1 mph in 2016), and he threw the pitch a career-low 41% of the time. His diminished stuff and new approach resulted in more contact—he registered swinging strikes on only 11% of the pitches he threw.