The date was May 4th.  Clayton Kershaw had just let a three-run lead slip against the Milwaukee Brewers, and he was not happy. The usually friendly Kershaw was in no mood to discuss his performance, either.

“I don’t feel like answering questions right now,” Kershaw said via Ken Gurnick of MLB.com. “I don’t want to analyze it right now. Thanks.”

His ERA sat at 3.72 after that start, and the common belief was that he was experiencing a huge letdown from the past four seasons when he won three Cy Young awards, one MVP award and led the league in ERA and WHIP (walks plus hits per inning pitched) every year.

And that wasn’t even the end of Kershaw’s struggles.  After the loss to the Brewers, he was tagged for five, three and four runs, respectively, in three consecutive starts after that to raise his ERA to a very un-Kershaw-like 4.32.

It reached rock bottom when he wasn't selected by National League manager Bruce Bochy to pitch in the All-Star Game. Kershaw was diplomatic about the whole thing, but it was still a tremendous injustice.

However, as should have been expected, Kershaw turned things around in a big way. A way that only the best pitcher in the game could.

The first step in the right direction was a seven-inning, 10-strikeout scoreless effort against the Atlanta Braves. And after a few other solid starts, he has absolutely dominated in all four of his July outings, especially the last three.

He has not given up a run in any of the three gems, two complete games sandwiched around an eight-inning masterpiece. Kershaw has even made a bit of history along the way.

After stifling the New York Mets for nine innings on July 23rd – he took a perfect game into the seventh – he has now recorded three straight scoreless starts with no walks and at least 10 strikeouts.  According to Ted Berg of USA Today, the only other pitcher to do that in MLB history is Cy Young back in 1905.

He leads Major League Baseball in strikeouts and Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP), an advanced stat that measures what a pitcher’s ERA would look like with league-average results on balls in play. FIP isolates the pitcher’s actual body of work and eliminates the flukiness that batting average on balls in play sometimes poses.

Furthermore, Kershaw still is arguably the most uncomfortable pitcher for hitters to hit against. With his arsenal consisting of a low-to-mid 90's fastball, a devastating curveball and a sharp slider, he makes it nearly impossible for hitters to square up his pitches.

Despite the rocky beginning to the 2015 season, Clayton Kershaw is still the best pitcher in baseball, and by the end of the year his numbers will likely be back to where we are used to seeing them.