Chris Sale

2010-16, Chicago White Sox; 2017-19, Boston Red Sox. Best Year: 2017 (2.90 ERA, 17 wins, 8 losses, 214.1 innings, 308 strikeouts, 43 walks)

Few pitchers of the time stoked more fear within opposing batters than the lanky southpaw, whose violent delivery evoked Randy Johnson while mixing in a nasty slider—and, often, a nasty temper. Chosen in the first round of the 2010 draft, Sale needed only a few months to make his way to the parent club, earning bullpen work at season’s end; he remained a reliver until 2012, when he transitioned to the rotation with instant success, recording a 17-8 record and 3.05 ERA—beginning a string of seven seasons in which he earned All-Star status and finished no lower than sixth in the AL Cy Young vote. An ERA crown appeared to be Sale’s in 2014, but Felix Hernandez snuck in to grab it when a scorer changed his mind and declared four runs allowed by the Seattle ace be reclassified from earned to unearned. Sale’s tantrums got the best of him in 2016; he literally went nose-to-nose with White Sox GM Kenny Williams in front of teammates over a bizarre spring training tiff involving the clubhouse presence of Adam LaRoche’s son, and before a midseason start was so incensed at having to wear collared throwback White Sox jerseys from the 1970s that he cut them all up with a knife, earning a five-game suspension.

At this point, White Sox management had enough of Sale—even as he had three years left on a team-friendly contract—and traded him to Boston, where his strikeout punch became more lethal. In 2017, he tied Pedro Martinez’s then season-record of eight straight games with 10 strikeouts, and became the first AL pitcher since Martinez (in 1999) to accumulate 300 Ks; in 2018, he produced a career-best 35.2 consecutive scoreless inning streak; and in 2019, he became the second pitcher ever (after Lefty Grove in 1928) to throw two immaculate innings (nine pitches, nine strikes, three outs) within one season. Sale grew increasingly fragile as the decade neared its end, and the Red Sox—who threw him a five-year, $145 million extension in 2019—are crossing their fingers that he holds and gains max value from the pact into the 2020s.

Corey Kluber

2011-19, Cleveland Indians. Best Year: 2017 (2.25 ERA, 18 wins, 4 losses, .818 win percentage, 265 strikeouts, 5 complete games, three shutouts, 0.87 WHIP)

Whether he’s thrown the last pitch of a shutout or had his arm broken by a comebacker, Kluber always gave the same nondescript, emotionless look—which is why teammates preferred to call him “Klubot.” But while he may have blended into the background from the perspective of a casual TV viewers, opposing hitters who faced the right-hander had a far different, more frustrating point of view. Bland results matched Klbuer’s bland personality early on; it wasn’t until 2014, at the age of 28, that he clicked into gear and won the first of two Cy Young Awards with an 18-9 record and 2.44 ERA. He won a second in 2017 while securing his first ERA crown with a terrific 2.25 figure, becoming the first multiple-Cy recipient in Indians history. This was all part of a four-year stretch in which he won 18 games three times, while losing an AL-high 16 the other year (2015) despite a 3.49 ERA; being given 3.3 runs per start had much to do with that luckless discrepancy. Relying on a loaded repertoire that included a quality fastball buffeted by a cutter, curve and change-up, Kluber exhibited great command and, in one eight-game stretch during a 2018 campaign in which he’d win 20 games for the first time, struck out 56 while walking just one. The later into the season it got, the better Kluber seemed to get; he was 44-36 through June, and 54-22 afterward. It didn’t matter what time of year it was at Progressive Field; his ERA at the Indians’ home park checked in at a formidable 2.71. Postseason-wise, Kluber was indomitable in 2016, posting a 1.83 ERA over six starts; he won his first two outings in that year’s World Series against the Cubs before running out of gas in the Indians’ fateful Game Seven loss, pitching on three days’ rest for a second straight start. He was awful in two postseasons to follow as he was brilliant in 2016, going 0-2 with a 10.64 ERA in three assignments.

Max Scherzer

2010-14, Detroit Tigers; 2015-19, Washington Nationals. Best Year: 2017 (2.51 ERA, 16 wins, 6 losses, 200.2 innings, 268 strikeouts, 0.90 WHIP)

Pitchers like Tim Lincecum and Jered Weaver, two flamethrowers who ran out of fuel before 30, will tell you that a 95-plus-MPH fastball doesn’t last forever. But good luck trying to convince Max Scherzer of that theory. The fiery right-hander bucked the burned-out trend and kept lighting up the speedometer from one end of the decade to the other; in 2019, at age 35, he recorded the highest average fastball velocity of his career at 94.9. Scherzer was a solid pitcher through 2012, but he promoted himself to greatness starting in 2013 when he introduced a curve; though he used it sparingly, it forced opponents to guess more on what he’d throw next. Thus, from that point to the end of the decade, Scherzer was at an absolute peak; he compiled a 118-47 record and paced his league four times in victories and three times in strikeouts—including a career-high 300 in 2018, reaching the milestone with the last batter he faced. Early durability appeared to be an issue as it took him an MLB-record 178 starts to throw his first complete game, but he’d go the distance 10 times before decade’s end—throwing two no-hitters, the latter on the last day of the 2015 season—and tied the all-time mark of 20 strikeouts in a nine-inning, complete-game effort against his former Detroit mates on May 11, 2016. From those results came the spoils; he won three Cy Young awards (including back-to-back honors from 2016-17), made the All-Star roster seven times, and was given a huge seven-year, $260 million contract ($50 million of it as a bonus) from the Nationals starting in 2015. Scherzer made up for some twitchy October performances to date in 2019 when he posted a 3-0 playoff record for the Nationals—and got a five-inning no-decision in the decisive Game Seven of the World Series, holding down the fort just enough to allow the Nationals to pull away and win their first-ever title.

Justin Verlander

2010-17, Detroit Tigers; 2017-19, Houston Astros. Best Year: 2011 (2.40 ERA, 24 wins, 5 losses, .828 win percentage, 251 innings, 250 strikeouts, 0.92 WHIP)

Like Scherzer, the tall, broad-shouldered righty began the decade as a member of the Tigers and, as he aged well into his 30s, was also able to maintain the zip on his fastball with average velocities sticking to the mid-90s. But Verlander’s ride through the 2010s took on something more of a rollercoaster effect. After a sensational start to the decade—highlighted with a sterling 2011 campaign (see Best Year, above) that earned him his first Cy Young Award and the first MVP won by a pitcher since Roger Clemens in 1986—Verlander hit a rough patch at mid-decade with a career-worst 4.54 ERA in 2014, followed a year later by injuries that limited his output to 20 starts and a 5-8 record. This suggested that Verlander, at 32, was flaming out—but he rebounded back to form in 2016 and maintained it all the way to decade’s end. For the Tigers, looking to financially scale back after years of success on a high payroll, that only increased Verlander’s value as they sought to trade him; in 2017, they agreed to deal him to the Astros—and, Verlander, whose contract gave him the final say, procrastinated until agreeing just two seconds before the trading deadline. It was a decision he wouldn’t regret. With the Astros, he went 12-2 over his first 17 regular season starts with a microscopic 1.09 ERA, helped lead them to their first-ever World Series title in 2017, and arguably threw better than ever to end the decade in 2019 as he pitched his third career no-hitter, struck out a personal-best 300 batters and took home his second Cy, scraping past teammate Gerrit Cole in the vote.

Along with the hits came the (near) misses. He was edged out three other times for the Cy, including a 2016 campaign in which he garnered six more first-place votes (14) than winner Rick Porcello, leading supermodel girlfriend (and future wife) Kate Upton to tweet, “I thought I was the only person allowed to f**k Justin Verlander.” On the mound, Verlander twice lost shots at other potential no-hitters in the ninth inning, and countless other times took no-nos past the fifth. Excellent in the first two rounds of the postseason (a career 14-5 record in ALDS/ALCS action), Verlander found frustration at the World Series, running his lifetime mark to 0-6; no one’s lost more without a win at the Fall Classic. Vocally, Verlander has not been afraid to speak his mind—publicly calling out cheats, juiced balls, reporters and domestic abusers.

Clayton Kershaw

2010-19, Los Angeles Dodgers. Best Year: 2014 (1.77 ERA, 21 wins, 3 losses, .875 win percentage, 6 complete games, 31 walks, 239 strikeouts, 0.86 WHIP)

And frankly, it’s not all that close. No one had a better ERA (2.31), better WHIP (0.96), threw more complete games (25) and more shutouts (15) during the 2010s than the Texan southpaw, igniting a debate between baseball fanatics as to whether he had taken the mantle from Sandy Koufax as the greatest Dodgers pitcher of all time. Kershaw began the decade posting a 13-10 record—the only time he’d record double-digit losses in a season; in fact, he only lost six or more games three additional times in the 2010s. He reached stardom in 2011 winning his first of three Cy Young Awards while capturing his first of four consecutive ERA crowns; he won another in 2017, and would have gained one more in 2016 had he not fallen 13 innings short of the minimum number of innings needed to qualify. His 2014 campaign in particular, which included a career-best 42-inning consecutive scoreless inning streak, earned him not only the NL MVP—the first for an NL pitcher since Don Newcombe in 1956—but also a prodigious contract from the Dodgers that made Kershaw the first $30 million/year pitcher. He said thanks to the Dodgers by striking out a career-high 301 batters in 2015—15 of them in his first (and, as of 2019, only) no-hitter against Colorado on September 2. By this point, Kershaw’s control was so good, his strikeout-to-walk rate reached an insane 15.64-to-1 ratio by 2016. Slowed up by injuries (mainly to the back) late in the decade, it began to look as if Kershaw’s best years were behind him as his fastball dimmed to an average of 90 MPH—but with a 55-18 record from 2016-19, it didn’t appear to affect his efficiency when healthy.

So what was Kershaw’s kryptonite? As it seems to be with many others on this list, it was the postseason. For the decade, Kershaw was 9-10 in 27 appearances (23 starts) with a 4.28 ERA—3-9 with a 5.20 ERA in series the Dodgers lost. Still, no pitcher from the decade is a more likely shoo-in for Cooperstown.