National League pitching leaders for the 2014 season

Sunday marked the final day of Major League Baseball’s regular season. Baseball sesason always seems like a lengthy amount of time when it is April or you are enjoying the sun at spring training in Arizona or Florida. Then suddenly one day you wake up and it’s September. Players have emerged as individual leaders have for awards and recognition. Most prominent of these ways of recognition are the MVP Award and the most prestigious award for pitching the Cy Young Award.

Mandatory Credit: David Kohl-USA TODAY Sports

Yet, other recognitions, like the player who has the highest batting average wins the batting title and the ERA title goes to the pitcher in each league with the lowest ERA, are also important to note.

Here we’re going to take a look at the pitching leaders in the National League over the course of the 2014 season.

ERA

Not surprisingly the leader in most of these categories is the basically a household name, well, at least among baseball fans. After the final baseball game ended on Sunday, Los Angeles Dodgers left-handed ace, Clayton Kershaw became the first pitcher to lead all of Major League Baseball for four straight seasons in earned run average since Sandy Koufax lead the Majors in ERA from 1962-1967.

Kershaw finished the season with a 1.77 ERA. Kershaw has won the National League Cy Young Award twice in the past three seasons (finishing second to former New York Mets’ pitcher R.A. Dickey in 2012) and is well on his way to his third Cy Young Award in four years. It is also the lowest ERA he has posted in those four years. Position players beware because it appears he may be on the path for this year’s Most Valuable Player Award along with the 2014 Cy Young award.

Wins

Once again not shockingly the name atop the wins list in the National League, no wait, the entire Major Leagues (again) is Clayton Kershaw. Kershaw secured 21 wins on the season and suffered just three losses.

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San Francisco Giants’ pitcher Madison Bumgarner came in third in the N.L. with 18 wins (the highest total in the American League) and 10 losses. The only two pitchers to get close to Kershaw in the wins column were the St. Louis Cardinals’ Adam Wainwright and the Cincinnati Reds’ Johnny Cueto who both won an admirable 20 games. However, they each also had nine losses to Kershaw’s three, leaving Kershaw the undoubted standout for wins in the National League in 2014.

Since I won’t have any other place to mention just a couple of Kershaw’s other 2014 accomplishments I will here. The southpaw also pitched a MLB leading six complete games, two of which were shutouts and one of which was a no-hitter. He also participated in his fourth straight All-Star game.

Strikeouts

Ah, finally, a category where the first words out of my mouth won’t be “Clayton Kershaw.” (They just were weren’t they?) In this column of statistics we have a tie. The Washington Nationals’ Stephen Strausburg and the Reds’ Johnny Cueto both accumulated 242 strikeouts in 2014. Both had struck out three more batters that the runner up, Kershaw. I know, I was completely caught off guard by that one too.

Rounding out the top ten are Madison Bumgarner with significantly fewer strikeouts than Kershaw with 219, Zach Greinke and Ian Kennedy with 207, Cole Hamels with 198, Tyson Ross with 195, A.J. Burnett with 190 and Zach Wheeler with 187.

Saves

Mandatory Credit: Jason Getz-USA TODAY Sports

This year’s saves leader absolutely cannot be Clayton Kershaw but if you don’t already know this name you’ve likely been living under a baseball rock (base?) for the past four seasons. Craig Kimbrel of the Atlanta Braves recorded the most saves in the National League with 47, just one save behind the American League’s saves leader Fernando Rodney.

In just five years in the big leagues Kimbrel has led the N.L. in saves for four of them, also making four All-Star appearances. The 2011 National League Rookie of the Year posted the second highest ERA of his career at a whopping 1.61 and blew four save opportunities on the season.