Former Loon Named NL MVP

The National League's best pitcher is also its best player - and a former Loon.

Los Angeles Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw, who Wednesday was named the NL Cy Young Award winner as the league's premier pitcher, was named its Most Valuable Player Thursday in a vote by the Baseball Writer's Association.

In doing so, Kershaw becomes the first National League pitcher to win both awards since former St. Louis Cardinals great Bob Gibson did it in 1968.

Kershaw received 18 of the 30 first-place votes and 355 total points to beat fellow finalist Giancarlo Stanton of the Marlins and Andrew McCutchen of the Pirates.

At age 26, Kershaw already has won three Cy Young Awards - the youngest pitcher ever to do so - and can now add an MVP award to his collection. But after a dominant 2014 season, which may have been his best, it doesn't come as a big surprise.

Kershaw was 21-3 (the 21 wins tying a career-high), led the league in earned run average (1.77) for the fourth straight year, and struck out 239 batters in 198 1/3 innings pitched. Never mind that he missed almost all of April with a shoulder muscle injury.

The Dodgers were 19 games above .500 (23-4) in Kershaw's 27 starts, and seven games above in everybody else's.

The four consecutive ERA titles is a league record, and on June 18 he threw the only no-hitter in MLB history with 15 or more strikeouts and zero walks or hit batsmen.

Consistent excellence has become Kershaw's modus operandi; he made 17 consecutive starts in 2014 in which he pitched at least seven innings without allowing more than three earned runs. He is now 98-49 with a 2.48 ERA for his career, with 1,445 strikeouts in 1,378 1/3 innings pitched.

He is the first Dodgers player to win the MVP award since Kirk Gibson in 1988, and the first Dodgers pitcher to win it since Sandy Koufax in 1963. Detroit Tigers ace Justin Verlander (2011) is the last pitcher to win both the Cy Young and MVP.

For Loons fans, who saw Kershaw at age 19 in the franchise's inaugural season, sustained brilliance from the Dodgers 2006 first-round draft pick is nothing new. Kershaw made 20 starts for the Loons in 2007 - including in the team's first game ever - and went 7-5 with a 2.77 ERA while striking out 134 batters in 97 1/3 innings before being promoted to Double-A Jacksonville.

But as Kershaw told national media outlets Wednesday night, he never envisioned the kind of brilliant major leaguer career that he's already had.

"I sit back and try to think about where I was five years ago, six years ago, I was just starting out and if you told me I'd be in that kind of company, I'd laugh at you," he said.

"I just wanted to make it."