Clayton Kershaw piling up the strikeouts

LOS ANGELES -- Clayton Kershaw gave up all of three hits in winning his 15th game on Thursday night against the Padres, and joked that because he allowed a hit to pitcher Tyson Ross, "I guess it just wasn't my night." But that was far from the truth for Kershaw, who turned in another brilliant performance.

Kershaw allowed just one run in his eight innings, the 10th time he has lasted at least eight innings in a start this season. Only David Price (15) and Johnny Cueto (11) have more such games in 2014, but neither missed five weeks on the disabled list like Kershaw.

The Dodgers ace is averaging 7.30 innings per start this season, which would be the highest mark over a full season by a Dodgers starter since Orel Hershiser averaged 7.51 innings per start in 1989.

Kershaw also struck out 10 Padres on Thursday, his fifth double-digit strikeout game of the season, two shy of his career high set in 2011. In his career Kershaw has 27 games of 10 or more strikeouts, tied for fourth-most ever by a Dodgers pitcher.

Kershaw's 27 games match Don Sutton and Fernando Valenzuela, who made 533 and 320 starts, respectively, for the Dodgers. Thursday was Kershaw's 203rd start as a Dodger.

Sandy Koufax stands far atop the leaderboard, with 97 double-digit strikeout games in his career. In case you were wondering, through his first 203 career starts (through all but his last start in 1963) Koufax had 51 double-digit strikeout games.

Amazingly, even though Kershaw missed five weeks on the disabled list in April and May, he ranks third in the National League with 184 strikeouts, within reasonable striking distance of Stephen Strasburg (198) and Johnny Cueto (191), each of whom have six more starts than Kershaw.