KERSHAW DOMINATES METS
Dodgers ace lefty proves he can excel in playoffs
Clayton Kershaw can
NEW YORK pitch in October.
The Los Angeles Dodgers’ three-time Cy Young Award winner entered Tuesday’s Game 4 against the New York Mets with a reputation for postseason struggles, one fostered mostly by a couple of lousy starts against the St. Louis Cardinals in 2013 and 2014.
In truth, Kershaw hasn’t often been awful in playoff starts, he has just too frequently been something less than his typically dominant self. He allowed three earned runs over six innings in a Game 4 loss at the Cardinals in 2014 and three earned runs over 62⁄3 innings in Game 1 against the Mets in this series.
Kershaw was every bit his typically dominant self in the Dodgers’ 3-1 win Tuesday, holding the Mets to one run on three hits over seven innings and striking out eight in the process.
With the series tied at two games apiece, the teams head back to Los Angeles for a winner-take-all Game 5 on Thursday. Jacob de Grom, dominant in beating Kershaw in Game 1, will start for the Mets against Zack Greinke.
Pitching on three days’ rest for the third time in his career and the third consecutive National League Division Series Game 4, 27-year-old lefty Kershaw looked very much the part of a future Hall of Famer, mixing a low- to mid-90s fastball with his signature curveball to induce awful and off-balanced swings from a Mets lineup that scored 13 runs in the team’s Game 3 win Monday.
Kershaw worked efficiently, needing only 94 pitches across seven innings and affording the Dodgers bullpen some rest after manager Don Mattingly needed five relievers to get through Monday’s loss. Chris Hatcher relieved Kershaw in the eighth before closer Kenley Jansen came on for a four-out save.
The Los Angeles ace even sparked the game’s decisive rally with a one-out single off Mets starter Steven Matz in the top of the third. Though Kershaw would be forced out at second on an Enrique Hernandez grounder, consecutive singles by Howie Kendrick and Adrian Gonzalez drove Hernandez home for the first run of the game before Justin Turner plated two more with a double.
Tuesday’s start was Kershaw’s best playoff performance since Game 2 of the 2013 NL Championship Series, when he held the Cardinals to one unearned run on two hits in six innings.
Daniel Murphy provided all the Mets’ offense in the game with a solo home run off Kershaw in the fourth. The lefty-hitting Murphy hit only one home run off a left-handed pitcher in the regular season but has two in two games against Kershaw in the NLDS.
Matz, making his seventh career big-league start, kept the Dodgers offense quiet outside of the third-inning rally. The lefty allowed three runs, all earned, on six hits and two walks while striking out four in five innings.