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Alden Gonzalez
Clayton Kershaw might not have thrown his last pitch after all. Major League Baseball announced Thursday that Kershaw has committed to pitch for Team USA in the upcoming World Baseball Classic, the international tournament that will serve as a final send-off for an eventual Hall of Fame career. The WBC begins March 4.
“I just wanna be the insurance policy,” Kershaw told MLB Network. “If anybody needs a breather or they need me to pitch back-to-back-to-back or if they don’t need me to pitch at all, I’m just there to be there. I just wanna be a part of this group. I learned a long time ago, you just wanna be part of great things. This team seems like a really fun, awesome group. All these coaches I’ve played with are good teammates, good friends of mine, so it’ll be really fun.”
Kershaw, who will be 38 in March, previously announced that he would retire at the end of the 2025 season, which ended in a second straight championship for his Los Angeles Dodgers. His final appearance came in Game 3 of the World Series, when he came out of the bullpen with two outs and the bases loaded in the 12th inning and kept the Toronto Blue Jays scoreless, helping his Dodgers win six innings later.
Kershaw pitched with severely limited stuff in 2025 but was nonetheless effective, going 11-2 with a 3.36 ERA. As the postseason evolved, he was essentially an emergency option if the Dodgers needed someone to absorb innings. That is also expected to be his role for Team USA, which has outfitted its roster with some of the game’s most dominant starting pitchers.
Fellow starters Paul Skenes, Tarik Skubal, Logan Webb, Joe Ryan, Nolan McLean and Clay Holmes have also committed to pitch for Team USA during the World Baseball Classic, though all of them will be on strict pitch counts because the tournament takes place in the middle of spring training.
When Kershaw initially got a call from Team USA manager Mark DeRosa about the WBC, he thought it would be for a coaching role.
“I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t have a whole lot of interest in picking up a baseball again,” Kershaw told MLB Network. “But I started throwing 10, 12 days ago, and it doesn’t feel terrible. So I think I’ll be OK.”
Kershaw was lined up to pitch in the 2023 World Baseball Classic but had to opt out because he could not find somebody to insure his contract, likely because of his lengthy injury history.