The Dodgers and Clayton Kershaw agreed on a seven-year, $215 million contract this week. And I have been thinking about it, doing a bit of pro-and-conning.

And where I have finally landed?

I am OK with this. I like it, even.

Obvious considerations include.

–It probably is a good rule of thumb never to give a pitcher a seven-year contract.

–It probably is a good rule of thumb never to give anyone a seven-year contract.

–The Dodgers payroll already is too large, something like $240 million in 2013.

But Kershaw is worth the risk/trouble for several reasons.

–He pretty clearly is the best pitcher in baseball, and aces, let alone The Best in the Game, is not something a franchise bumps into often.

–Kershaw could have been a free agent after this season, and he would have been a hot item. The Dodgers wanted to short-circuit that by signing him now — and also ahead of the arbitration process, where a team’s job/duty before an arbitrator is to minimize the value of their own player. Which leaves bruises every time.

–The Dodgers want to Win Now. You don’t move forward with that by risking the loss of an elite pitcher later in the year.

–He is only 25, 26 when the season begins. He has proven to be fairly durable, so far, and let’s be optimistic and guess he is something close to the pitcher he has been, the past three years, for the next two.

–Then let’s be pessimistic and guess his arm will explode, eventually. Along about 2016, 2017. Something like one-third of all Major League Baseball pitchers have had Tommy John surgery.

So, Kershaw takes a year off, decides to stay with the club (not invoking the fifth-year opt out) and then he comes back. Perhaps as strong as ever, and he is effective through the seventh year, which would be 2020.

–And if the Dodgers can promise $85 million for five years of Andre Ethier through 2017, isn’t Kershaw worth more than twice that? Don’t think of it as reinforcing a tendency to overpay as much as “understanding the market value of their left-hander.”

See? It makes sense, even when we factor in a lost year for injury. (And Dodgers fans would hope it would be just the one.)

He is the face of the franchise. A left-handed ace, already a two-time Cy Young winner, heading into his age 26 season for a franchise with great ambitions.

It had to be done. Even factoring in the near certainty of a major injury.