Dodgers Clayton Kershaw tries to put Game 3 | College News
If Wednesday’s recreation proves to be the last one in a Dodgers uniform for Clayton Kershaw, it is going to do little to tarnish his legacy, said teammate Mookie Betts.
“He’s gonna have a statue, so we have to kind of keep that in mind,” Betts said. “In the grand scheme of things, Kershaw is a first-ballot Hall of Famer, one of the best pitchers to ever do it.
“So if you let two innings kind of ruin that, then you don’t know baseball.”
But, Betts confessed, Kershaw’s aid look in Game 3 of the National League Division Series was laborious to watch. In those two innings he gave up six hits, 5 runs, walked three and didn’t strike out a hitter, turning a tight recreation into an 8-2 rout for the Philadelphia Phillies, who staved off elimination and prolonged the best-of-five collection to a fourth recreation Thursday.
“He just didn’t have a great slider tonight,” Dodgers supervisor Dave Roberts said. “Clayton pitches off his slider. He was working behind, too. The command wasn’t there tonight.”
Clayton Kershaw bends over during a robust eighth inning.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Kershaw, who went 11-2 as a starter during the common season, was left off the roster for the wild-card collection and hadn’t pitched in 9 days when he began warming up in the sixth inning Wednesday. He hadn’t gone that long between appearances all 12 months.
“I did everything I could in between,” he said. “It’s been a while but, you know, I threw [off] flat ground as best I could. It wasn’t there tonight.”
That was apparent from the first batter he confronted. Kershaw, who walked a batter every 3.2 innings during the common season, threw three straight balls to Trea Turner before giving up a single. He would give up two more walks, one intentional, in the inning but escaped hurt thanks to a poor baserunning choice by the Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber and a good catch by proper fielder Teoscar Hernández.
But with Tanner Scott unavailable for personal causes and Alex Vesia having already pitched twice in the collection, Roberts had few other good choices against the left-handed-heavy Phillies. So he despatched Kershaw out for the eighth and that’s when issues actually acquired out of hand.
J.T. Realmuto led off the inning and drove Kershaw’s second pitch — a slider — over the wall in left-center. The Phillies would ship eight more males to the plate in the inning, scoring 4 more occasions, with two of those runs coming on Schwarber’s second homer of the evening.
Kershaw threw first-pitch strikes to just 4 of the 14 batters he confronted and missed the zone with 26 of the 48 pitches he threw total. That received’t stop the Dodgers from building a statue of him when he retires this fall but it didn’t transfer him any nearer to a second straight World Series ring either.
“I wasn’t throwing strikes, and it’s hard to pitch behind in the count,” he said.
Kershaw said he felt positive bodily but added, “I just wasn’t finding it.”
That wasn’t a downside for the top of the Philadelphia lineup, which discovered little success in the first two video games of the collection. The Phillies’ first 4 hitters — Turner, Schwarber, Bryce Harper and Alex Bohm mixed for just three hits, all singles — in 27 at-bats, putting out 12 occasions. They matched that hit whole against Dodger starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto in the span of 11 fourth-inning pitches Wednesday, with Schwarber homering off the roof of the right-field pavilion and Harper and Bohm following with singles.
They completed the evening 9 for 16 with 5 runs scored and 5 RBIs, with Schwarber’s two homers touring a mixed 863 toes.
“We just had a little quick meeting. Nothing crazy, but just focus on the game, win today,” Turner said. “We all know we were kind of pressing as a group in the first two games and wanting to win so bad.”
If Turner and the Phillies win again Thursday, the collection returns to Philadelphia and raucous Citizens Bank Park — where the Phillies had the best home document in baseball — for a decisive Game 5 on Saturday. If the Dodgers win, they transfer on to the NL Championship Series, where Kershaw may get a likelihood to end his profession on a more sonorous be aware than the clunker he performed Wednesday.
“That’s the great thing about baseball,” he said. “You get a new game every day.”
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