NL Division Series
Kershaw gives up four solo homers, but Dodgers regain their summer swagger
Complete coverage of Game 1 between the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks.
The night felt like June or July or August, those glorious months when the Dodgers ruled the sport like preordained kings. But it was October, the proving ground for prospective monarchs, and that mattered all the more.
In the first game of the first round of 2017 playoffs, the Dodgers pulped the Arizona Diamondbacks early, galvanized a capacity crowd of 54,707 at Dodger Stadium and took a 9-5 victory Friday night.
A four-run, first-inning blitz against a jittery pitcher set the tone. Justin Turner bashed a three-run homer. Yasiel Puig licked his bat and cracked an RBI double. Handed the lead, Clayton Kershaw towed his team into the seventh inning before a fusillade ended his night.
Arizona walloped a quartet of solo home runs against Kershaw, the most given up by any Dodger in postseason franchise history. Two came in the seventh, on back-toback pitches to shortstop Ketel Marte and catcher Jeff Mathis. He finished with seven strikeouts in 61⁄3 innings.
The barrage sent a scare through the ballpark, but could not offset the Dodgers’
early charge.
The performance eased the mind of manager Dave Roberts. Roberts managed this season while harboring grief. Seventeen days before the start of the season, Roberts lost his father, Waymon, a 30-year veteran of the Marines who settled his family outside of San Diego in the 1980s. The loss was unexpected. Roberts spent a few days at home before rejoining the Dodgers to finish spring training.
On Friday morning, Roberts was writing in his journal when he started to think about his father. He broke down as he looked at family photographs. The outburst felt therapeutic, a few hours before entering the playoff crucible. “It felt good to get it out of my system,” Roberts said.
On the scoreboard during batting practice, a video package played highlights from the first five months of the season: Kyle Farmer’s game-winning debut hit, Puig pegging runners at third base, a slew of blasts from rookie sensation Cody Bellinger. The plays looked like dispatches from another decade, from the halcyon days before the team went 1-16 to stumble toward the finish line.
So the first inning felt like a f lashback. On the mound for Arizona was Taijuan Walker, a hulking, 25-year-old right-hander making his first postseason start. He admitted a day earlier that this was the biggest outing of his career — after he admitted he felt so nervous during Wednesday’s wild-card game that he could not even watch.
Friday was far worse. A leadoff single by Chris Taylor opened the bottom of the inning. Corey Seager took a walk, passing on splitters inside and fastballs away. After a pitiable September, the patience shown by Seager offered encouragement for the rest of this month. So did what came next, from Turner.
Walker did not hold back. He challenged Turner with a cutter and a fastball at the waist. Turner fouled off both. He settled in to even the count. A 2-2 fastball hummed at Turner’s thighs. Turner parked it 10 rows deep in the leftfield bleachers.
On the mound, Walker muttered expletives. In the on-deck circle, Puig celebrated. The two would soon meet, after a single by Bellinger.
Puig saw nine pitches from Walker. He fouled off four of them. After one pitch sprayed out of play, Puig dabbed his tongue on the barrel of his bat. A moment later, he grimaced as the pine tar coursed through his taste buds.
As Puig experimented with different food groups, Walker stuck with fastballs. He left a 95-mph heater on the outer half of the plate. Puig ripped it into right-center field, setting Bellinger free from first base. Bellinger swam across the plate as Puig partied at second base to expand the lead to four.
It took Walker 38 pitches to record an out. He threw 48 pitches in the inning. He would not return from the dugout. Zack Godley, a potential Game 4 starter, replaced Walker.
Kershaw wobbled in the third. All evening, he flirted with trouble. His curveball was uncooperative. His slider stayed hidden. He leaned on his fastball, which touched 95-96 mph in the first inning. By the third, his velocity had dipped, ever so slightly, and Arizona outfielder A.J. Pollock smashed a 93-mph fastball into the left-field pavilion.
The offense eased Kershaw’s tension in the fourth. Forsythe led off with a single against Godley. Kershaw bunted him to second base. After a walk by Taylor, Seager chopped a grounder to the left side of the infield. The baseball eluded the glove of Arizona shortstop Ketel Marte by inches. The distance proved large enough for Forsythe to jet home. Two more runs scored on a looping single by Turner and a groundout by Puig.
Kershaw needed the cushion. In the sixth, he hung a curveball to outfielder J.D. Martinez. The ball disappeared into the left-field seats. He finished the sixth with 92 pitches.
The five-run lead enticed Roberts to stick with Kershaw for one more inning. The decision backfired.
Marte laced an elevated slider over the left-field fence. Roberts stuck with Kershaw against Mathis, a light-hitting former Angels catcher with 13 home runs since 2013. Mathis swatted his firstever postseason homer on a firstpitch fastball.
The Dodgers turned to the bullpen from that point, with Tony Watson and Brandon Morrow escaping more trouble in the seventh and eighth innings. Kenley Jansen worked the ninth, giving up an unearned run.
Seager added an run-scoring triple in the eighth inning, a very good sign after his late-season slump and elbow problems, and Turner made it a five-RBI night for him by driving in Seager with a single.