Feeling like 1988?
L.A. thrived in his absence, but ace is key
The Dodgers’ magical season and one-of-a-kind ace could rekindle thoughts of their last title run.
The path for the Los Angeles Dodgers to finally win another World Series title sure looks like the same pixie-dust lane traveled by the last Dodgers team to win a World Series title.
Great pitcher gets hot, and stays hot.
Unheralded teammates join in. Champagne is uncorked.
Just substitute Clayton Kershaw for Orel Hershiser, the 1988 version, and this blue-tinged fantasy gains traction.
Peak-performance Clayton is no less dominant than Peak Orel.
Heck, Kershaw, at his best, might be a smidge better. Prone to strikeout binges, he’s less reliant on defense and luck.
As it relates to October, the overarching difference between the two is that while in 1988 Hershiser went from posting a Cy Young Award-winning season to capturing the National League Championship Series and World Series MVP awards, Kershaw has never carried his regular-season mastery into a prolonged stretch of postseason dominance.
Not yet a Mr. October, he’s 2-6 with a 4.59 ERA over 13 playoff appearances, 10 of them starts, but the mountain of evidence he’s built up over his nine-year career points toward the four-time ERA champion going on an October roll at some point.
At 28, he’s a year younger than ’88 Orel, who in his two postseason series assembled ERAs of 1.09 and 1.00 over a total of 422⁄ innings.
Kershaw himself said he’s doesn’t have a great feel for how he’ll perform in this postseason despite having gone to the playoffs the previous three years.
There’s a big new wrinkle this time: He spent two months on the disabled list this summer, recovering from a herniated disk in his back, returning in early September.
He was able to build his arm strength back up to 91 pitches thrown, on Sept. 24, over seven innings while allowing the Colorado Rockies no runs and slicing his post-DL ERA to 1.65.
An optimistic theory is that Kerhaw, having pitched about 80 innings fewer than his norm for a season, could have more energy at his disposal than in other Octobers. Well, it’s a pleasant thought. “Every postseason that I’ve ever pitched in, I’ve never felt