Baseball history is full of what-ifs. One of those: Clayton Kershaw, Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer could have all been teammates with the Detroit Tigers.
The Tigers, selecting sixth in the 2006 draft, were poised to take Kershaw, the top high school pitcher available. University of North Carolina left-hander Andrew Miller was regarded as the consensus top player in the draft, but the Kansas City Royals, holders of the top pick, were reluctant to meet Miller’s bonus demands, so the Royals instead drafted Luke Hochevar. Four other teams passed on Miller as well, leaving the Tigers to change course and take him.
With the seventh pick, the Los Angeles Dodgers selected Kershaw.
Less than two years later, the 20-year-old made his major league debut, giving up two runs and striking out seven in six innings as he fired 97 mph fastballs and a big curveball, impressing then-Dodgers manager Joe Torre. “He’s the real deal,” the Hall of Fame skipper said. Kershaw was still a work in progress, working on his command and relying almost exclusively on only those two pitches until he started throwing his slider the following season. He had a 4.26 ERA as a rookie, but it would remain below 3.00 in 13 of his next 15 seasons.
With the 10th pick of that 2006 draft, the Arizona Diamondbacks took Scherzer. Concerned that his violent delivery would eventually lead to arm problems, the Diamondbacks later traded him to the Tigers, where he and Verlander — whom Detroit selected with the No. 2 pick in the 2004 draft — teamed up for five seasons, from 2010 to 2014. That team would win four consecutive American League Central titles and reach a World Series. Imagine the potential heights if Kershaw also had been in the rotation.
Kershaw is retired now, of course, going out on top with a World Series victory last fall after spending his entire 18-season career with the Dodgers. He faced only one batter in the World Series, but it was one of the biggest outs of the seven-game series, getting Nathan Lukes to ground out with the bases loaded in the 12th inning of Game 3, which the Dodgers eventually won in 18 innings.
Verlander and Scherzer, meanwhile, intend to play at least one more season, still surviving in their 40s, their fastballs no longer the dominant forces they once were. As Scherzer showed in Game 7 of the World Series, when he left in the fifth inning with his Toronto Blue Jays leading, he’s still capable of a big moment and a clutch performance — just as he, Verlander and Kershaw showed over the past two decades as they dominated much of the pitching conversation.
With the Hall of Fame announcement coming up next week for the class of 2026, it seems like a fun time to ask: Which of these three future Hall of Famers was the ultimate ace, the king of the hill, of this generation? And furthermore … is there even a correct answer?
Career pitching value
We’ll examine a few different categories. First, however, the basics:
That WAR figure is the average of Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs, although both sites produced similar totals for all three pitchers. It’s no surprise that Verlander has the advantage here in both WAR and wins. WAR is a cumulative statistic and Verlander has pitched 600 more innings than Scherzer and 700 more than Kershaw, even though Verlander made only one start in 2020 and sat out all of 2021 after Tommy John surgery. He has more 200-inning seasons (12) than Scherzer (6) and Kershaw (5) combined. That durability and workload is a big plus in his favor.
On the other hand, it’s hard to ignore Kershaw’s advantage in ERA. Among pitchers with at least 2,000 innings since 1920, the start of the live-ball era, only reliever Hoyt Wilhelm has a lower ERA — and just barely, at 2.52. Among pitchers with 2,000 innings from any era, Kershaw is tied with Pedro Martinez for the best adjusted ERA (ERA+) at 154.
