A quick KO and a lot of punch

Off-form Kershaw exits early but Dodgers hit four homers to finish off sweep of Cubs.

The ball was flying on Sunday in Dodger Stadium, where a highly anticipated pitcher’s duel between Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw and Chicago Cubs lefthander Jon Lester turned into a power-point presentation, the teams combining to club seven home runs, and neither esteemed starter lasting five innings.

The Dodgers weathered one of the worst regular-season starts of Kershaw’s career, riding homers by Cody Bellinger, Enrique Hernandez, Austin Barnes and Yasiel Puig to a 9-4 victory and a three-game sweep of the World Series champions.

A three-time Cy Young Award winner often hailed as “the best pitcher on the planet,” Kershaw is used to stifling opponents and pitching deep into games.

He was in no mood afterward to dissect a 41⁄3-inning effort in which he had sporadic command of his fastball, slider and curve and was rocked for four earned runs and a career high-tying 11 hits, including three homers.

Did he look at this as a one-game anomaly? “Sure,” Kershaw said.

Just one of those bizarre games you see every so often? “I guess so.”

How was his feel for the slider? “Fine.”

Was fastball command an issue? “Anybody else?”

And so it went. Kershaw, who entered with a 7-2 record and 2.01 ERA, ran his pitch count to 70 through three innings, 99 through four, and it was at 109 when manager Dave Roberts was forced to pull him with a 6-4 lead, two outs shy of a potential win.

It was the first time Kershaw had allowed at least 10 hits, four earned runs and three homers in a regularseason or postseason game.

“It was getting a little haywire there,” Roberts said.

The Dodgers shut out the Cubs on a total of five hits in the first two games of the series. Kershaw had a feeling it might be a strange day when his first two pitches went for broken-bat singles by Javier Baez and Kris Bryant.

“Yeah, it’s part of baseball,” he said. “I made a couple of OK pitches to start the game, and they ended up with hits. So yeah, it was one of those days.”

Kershaw escaped the first unscathed. Willson Contreras capped a 12-pitch at-bat with a homer to rightcenter for a 1-0 Cubs lead in the second, an inning that ended with Kershaw striking out Bryant with two on.

With two on and no outs in the bottom of the second, Bellinger, two pitches after attempting to bunt, jumped on a hanging 1-and-2 slider from Lester and drove his team-leading 10th home run to right for a 3-1 lead.

Hernandez, with two aboard in the third, drove a 3-0 fastball over the left-field wall for a 6-1 lead. Of his 25 hits this season, 19 have gone for extra bases — 14 doubles, one triple and four homers.

Kershaw escaped a bases-loaded jam in the third, but he was tagged for two homers in the fourth, Baez’s solo shot to left and Anthony Rizzo’s long tworun drive to right that pulled the Cubs to within 6-4.

Kershaw convinced Roberts to keep him in the game. Then Addison Russell and Albert Almora Jr. opened the fifth with singles and advanced on Mike Montgomery’s sacrifice bunt.

Roberts called in reliever Josh Fields, who struck out Baez and Bryant with runners on second and third to snuff out the threat. Fields retired the side in order in the sixth to earn the victory.

Lester, who entered with a 3-2 record and 3.19 ERA, gave up six earned runs and seven hits in 31⁄3 innings.

Barnes’ solo shot to leftcenter off Montgomery pushed the lead to 7-4 in the fifth. Puig, who entered in the first inning for ailing outfielder Franklin Gutierrez, sent a 450-foot blast into the left-center-field seats off reliever Hector Rondon to make it 9-4 in the seventh.

“The offense was great,” Kershaw said. “. . . No one gave up a run in this series but me, so it was a good series for us.”