Inside: McKinstry settles the matchup of pitching greats with a 3-RBI day.
LOS ANGELES » Clayton Kershaw and Max Scherzer are grizzled veterans, two of only 10 pitchers in baseball history with three or more Cy Young awards and certain to be Hall of Famers.
Zach McKinstry looks like he delivers their newspaper.
But it was McKinstry who played the starring role Sunday afternoon, driving in all three runs in a 3-0 Dodgers victory over the Washington Nationals.
McKinstry drove in one run with a sun-aided double off Scherzer, then hit a tworun home run off Nationals reliever Tanner Rainey.
With Mookie Betts and Cody Bellinger both out injured, the rookie utilityman has started seven games. In 28 at-bats, McKinstry has four doubles and two home runs and leads the Dodgers with 10 RBIs.
“He’s a baseball player, man. I just think that’s the best compliment you can give somebody that plays our game. He really is,” Kershaw said of McKinstry, a 33rd-round draft pick (a round that no longer exists) out of Central Michigan. “He has a great feel for the game, can play multiple positions, has a great arm. He’s like the left-handed Kiké (Hernandez), doing things that Kiké used to do.
“He’s filled in with Belli and Mookie being out, having to play every day. He’s done such a great job. He’s got some thump to him. He can really hit.”
McKinstry certainly believed all of those things about himself all along. But “you don’t really know until you get there,” he admitted Sunday.
“Once you get there, the nerves are always going to be there,” he said. “You have to find a way to cope with those and just try to win a game. Don’t try to make it too big. Never make a moment too big and kind of play the same game you’ve been playing your whole life.”
When he got to the park Sunday, McKinstry didn’t really know how big this moment was going to be — he thought Dustin May was starting for the Dodgers. McKinstry hadn’t heard about Kershaw moving up to take May’s start against Scherzer.
“That’s my fault,” McKinstry said. “But I knew Max was going for them. I knew I had to bring my ‘A’ game. See a few pitches in that first at-bat, try to work a count. Just try to battle with one of the game’s best right now.”
Kershaw’s ‘A’ game has returned since his reunion with his slider after a loss on opening day. He allowed five hits while striking out six in his six innings.
“The stuff was good,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I thought the curveball second pitch of the game was really good. I thought the fastball had life, using it to all quadrants. And the slider was good. I think that with Clayton, when the slider is good, he’s getting swing and miss, you know he’s going to pitch well and that’s what he did today.”
After going 4 for 8 with a pair of home runs in the first two games of the series, Washington’s Juan Soto was hitless in three at-bats against Kershaw Sunday, coming up with a runner on base each time. Blake Treinen got him to fly out with two runners on in the eighth inning.
Scherzer held up his end in the matchup of future Hall of Famers. He allowed just three hits in his six innings and retired 10 in a row at one point, half on strikeouts.
But in the second inning, he gave up a leadoff single to Max Muncy. After two fly outs, McKinstry lofted another a ball into the sky over left center field. Center fielder Victor Robles tracked it back to the warning track but was struggling to find it in the sun. The ball landed behind him at the base of the outfield wall and McKinstry had a two-out RBI double.
“It was tough. High sky. Hard to see the ball off the bat with the yellow and the baby blue seats behind home plate,” said McKinstry, who started the day in left field and finished it in right.
Rainey replaced Scherzer in the seventh and McKinstry turned on a 2-and-1 fastball from him, driving it into the right-field pavilion. All three of McKinstry’s RBIs Sunday came with two outs.
“It was a fastball. Just trying to get on top of it because he’s got good ride on his fastball,” McKinstry said, adding that the scouting report had him looking for something hard. “Either it’s a fastball or a slider. You’ve just got to beat it to its spot. I did, I guess.”
Pitching for the first time since his blown save on Wednesday in Oakland, Kenley Jansen closed it out emphatically in the ninth, striking out two and hitting 95 mph on the stadium radar gun.