let's talk about stats

i've been keeping an eye on clayton kershaw's strikeout totals for a while now. when last season ended, it was a sure thing that he would pass don drysdale on the all-time dodger strikeout leaderboard early in 2020, followed shortly by surpassing the 2,500 career k mark.  i dared to think that he would hit 3,000 strikeouts in 2022 or 2023 at the latest.

with the shortened season this year combined with his delayed start, kershaw has accomplished the first two milestones, but 3,000 is not going to happen in 2022.  still, i've enjoyed following along as he had a strong run of starts in august and in to september.  in fact, kershaw was heralded with this 2020 topps now card

as he became the winningest left-handed pitcher (by winning percentage) in major  league history. here's the back:

i thought this was such a weird card, as he is still active and if he were to unfortunately lose a bunch of games later in the season, his winning percentage would drop and he would no longer be the winningest left-handed pitcher (by winning percentage) in major league history. it's not a counting stat.  i also bought the card because i was interested to see if topps corrected themselves (spoiler alert - they did not).  here's the back of the card as it was the day that the card was offered for sale:

the text is exactly the same. it notes that kershaw and his new .696 (based on the front) or .700 (based on the back) winning percentage (it was actually 0.698 after his win referenced on the card if you do the math) passed warren spahn for the best career winning percentage among left-handed pitchers.  however, spahn's winning percentage, according to baseball reference, is .597, which is 39th among left-handed pitchers. whitey ford, however, had a winning percentage of .690, and kershaw passed that with his first win of the season. just topps being topps, i guess.

speaking of kershaw and stats, at one point during the season, my dad and i were talking about kershaw approaching don drysdale (2,486) on the all-time leader board. we knew that kershaw soon would pass big d and move in to second place among all-time dodger pitchers in k's, trailing only don sutton (2,696) in that regard. the first hall of famer kershaw passed in 2020 was jack morris, and it was drysdale after that. next on the list was christy mathewson.

i knew from baseball reference that mathewson had 2,507 strikeouts, so i was surprised as i was watching a dodger telecast on september 3rd and a graphic popped up stating that kershaw had just moved past mathewson with career strikeout number 2,503.  it turns out that major league baseball has mathewson's career total at 2,502. i guess the good news is that the two sites agree on the totals of everyone else ahead of kershaw on the all-time list, including old-timey pitchers tim keefe and cy young.

those numbers, however, are different than those that i saw for the first time on the back of this 1979 topps card

here on the back

here, cy young has 2,819 strikeouts and tim keefe 2,538. 

back in 1973, according to the back this card,

cy young's total was also 2,819, but tim keefe had 2,542 strikeouts

and mathewson was at 2,505.

today, both baseball reference and mlb.com have totals of 2,803 and 2,564 for young and keefe, respectively.  kershaw, who finished 2020 with 2,526 strikeouts should pass keefe early next season, and he should also pass some big name lefties - glavine, spahn, koosman, and finley - as well.

these types of statistical discrepancies are not new, as one of the most famous examples is ty cobb's career hits total. pete rose breaking cobb's record with hit number 4,192 in 1985 was such a big deal that the major networks (nbc at least) broke in to their regular programming to show his at bats that night live.  a few years later, it was determined that cobb only had 4,189 hits and so rose actually broke the record a few days earlier on the road at wrigley field.  i'm not complaining, as i have some cards in my steve garvey collection because of hit number 4,192. 

postscript - there was another card i saw on topps' website that i was curious about regarding an error

it's a turn back the clock card that features the braves' john smoltz celebrating his first ever relief appearance that came in the second game of the 1999 nlcs. topps has it as the alcs. i'd be interested to know if anyone bought this card and whether or not the error was corrected.