For Kershaw, fearlessness was the key
The victory didn’t erase the painful memories of previous Octobers. The performance didn’t guarantee anything more than a 1-0 lead for the Dodgers in a best-of-five National League division series.
What Kershaw earned Friday night in the 9-5 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks was another opportunity — specifically, another opportunity to fail, in the words of the well-traveled philosopher who will follow him in the Dodgers rotation.
“That’s basically what it is,” Game 2 starter Rich Hill said. “You’re going out there and you’re putting yourself in a position to fail, but in doing that, you’re giving it everything you can to succeed.”
And so it started again for Kershaw, who scaled the mound at Dodger Stadium and exposed himself to the possibility of another crushing ending in exchange for an opportunity to reach heights he’s never previously reached in his celebrated career.
It was this fearlessness that was behind each of the 100 pitches he delivered and each of the seven strikeouts he recorded over 61⁄3 innings. It was this fearlessness that made the Dodgers ignore whatever uncertainty crept into their minds over a frustrating five-week stretch to close the regular season.
“Any time you have someone out there exuding that passion for what they do, it’s a magnet,” Hill said. “You attract that intensity from other players.”
Kershaw will have to pitch better if the Dodgers are to win the World Series — he gave up four runs, each of them on a solo home run — but he also has a stronger group of players around him to pick him up, as it did Friday night.
“We’ve said that depth is a key word around here in Dodger Stadium,” Kershaw said.
Lost in the all of the talk about his fastball and slider, his conditioning and his competitiveness, is his emotional resilience. Every time the game has knocked him down, he has picked himself back up. He has experienced the worst postseason baseball has to offer, but always returned for more. “Thankful for another opportunity,” Kershaw said.
He welcomed the latest opportunity, knowing fully well this October could end how it did in 2013, when he melted down against the St. Louis Cardinals in the NL Championship Series.
Or how it did in 2014, when he and the Dodgers were knocked out again by the Cardinals, this time on a home run by Matt Adams.
Or how it did last year, when he lost an elimination game to the Chicago Cubs in the NLCS.
He entered Friday night with a career playoff earnedrun average of 4.55, which ranked 61st among the 67 pitchers with 10 or more postseason starts.
There were times Kershaw was combative with reporters in the aftermath of these defeats, but he was never dismissive of the media. He never pretended the failure didn’t bother him and he never told his critics they had “sorry lives,” as LeBron James once did after falling in the NBA Finals.
He recharged over the winter, regained his resolve and returned to work with as much intensity as he had the previous season.
On pretty much every day he doesn’t pitch, he is the first Dodgers player on the field, already running in the outfield when reporters start trickling into the pressbox.
And that was how he attacked the Diamondbacks. He was clearly amped up in the first inning, touching 96 mph with his fastball on the stadium radar gun. The Dodgers followed his lead, scoring four times in the bottom of the inning against rattled Diamondbacks starter Taijuan Walker.
But a familiar problem surfaced in the third inning, when A.J. Pollock homered to left-center field to cut the Dodgers’ lead to 4-1. Kershaw gave up a career-high 23 home runs this season, including five in the six starts he made after returning from the disabled list on Sept. 1.
J.D. Martinez sent the ball into the seats by the left-field foul pole in the sixth inning. Ketel Marte and Jeff Mathis hit back-toback homers in the seventh, reducing the Dodgers’ advantage to 7-4 and ending Kershaw’s night.
The blasts by Marte and Mathis inflated Kershaw’s postseason ERA in the seventh inning to 25.50 as a starter.
The four home runs were the most ever given up by a Dodgers pitcher in a postseason game.
But that won’t scare Kershaw. If the Cardinals and Cubs couldn’t break him, this won’t, either.
‘Any time you have someone out there exuding that passion for what they do, it’s a magnet.’ — Rich Hill