Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw easily wins NL Cy Young

Clayton Kershaw might be the only one not comparing him with Sandy Koufax.

Both lefthanded aces for the Los Angeles Dodgers. And now both Cy Young Award winners.

"I'm still uncomfortable with it," Kershaw, 23, said yesterday after winning his first NL Cy Young Award. "I don't want to have any disrespect for Mr. Koufax. He did it for a long time. He won a lot of awards and he won World Series. He threw no-hitters. Just a lot of things I'm not anywhere close to accomplishing yet. I have tremendous respect for him and would never want to ever put myself in the same category as him."

With a big curveball that might be the best in baseball -- you could have said that about three-time Cy Young winner Koufax, too -- Kershaw won the NL's pitching triple crown. Pitching for a team that went 82-79, he led the league with a 2.28 ERA and 248 strikeouts, and at 21-5, he tied Arizona's Ian Kennedy for most wins.

Kershaw went 8-0 with a 0.96 ERA in his final nine starts. He was 5-0 against the defending world champion Giants, going 4-0 with a 0.30 ERA in head-to-head matchups with Tim Lincecum, the 2008 and 2009 winner. His .207 opponents' batting average was the second-lowest in the majors among qualified pitchers, trailing Detroit's Justin Verlander (.192), the unanimous AL Cy Young winner.

Kershaw received 27 of 32 first-place votes and 207 points in voting by the Baseball Writers Association of America. The Phillies' Roy Halladay, last year's winner, was second with 133 points. The Phillies' Cliff Lee was third with 90, followed by Kennedy with 76.

Orel Hershiser, who won the 1988 Cy Young Award for the Dodgers, said Kershaw moved from "'good to great. He's just scratching the surface of what he can become, and I know he can reach much higher limits."