Dodger Thoughts

By Jon Weisman

So it’s the Dodgers’ official position that Clayton Kershaw is an All-Star, and it’s my personal position that Clayton Kershaw is an All-Star, and a lot of people in the baseball world outside of Los Angeles seem to agree that Clayton Kershaw is an All-Star, but at the end of the day, we’re all selling him short.

Clayton Kershaw is Clayton Kershaw. And whatever team he is on — that’s the team to be on.

In tonight’s 5-0 victory over Philadelphia, the No. 2 strikeout performance of his career, behind only his 15-K no-hitter, Kershaw faced 36 batters tonight, and threw 31 pitches out of the strike zone.

Photos: Jon SooHoo/Los Angeles Dodgers

By Jon Weisman

With one out in the first inning today at Miami, a few moments after the 11th home run of Justin Turner’s incredible 2015, Marlins left fielder Christian Yelich reached first base on an infield single.

The next batter, Adeiny Hechavarria, hit a blooper to right, and you thought, “Here we go again” with Clayton Kershaw.

That wasn’t even the half of it.

Andre Ethier’s throw to third base squirted past Turner and an admittedly poorly positioned Kershaw, allowing Yelich to score and Hechavarria to get three bases out of his hit.

Then came a wild pitch by Kershaw, and just like that, 210 feet of hits had yielded two runs.

In the next inning, Kershaw gave up a leadoff double but appeared ready to emerge unscathed three batters later, before Joc Pederson misjudged a drive to center by pitcher Tom Koehler. Pederson volleyball-set the ball into the air, but it spiked before he could find it, and the Marlins had a third run.

The kicker: The Dodgers had a franchise-record 13-game errorless streak entering the game. And Kershaw, who had been bitten by home runs recently, didn’t come close to allowing one out of the park.

And all it meant was the first three-start losing streak of Kershaw’s career, a 3-2 defeat, and the latest chapter of brilliance disguised.

Kershaw allowed five singles and two doubles, while walking none and striking out nine. No, Kershaw hasn’t been perfect. On the other hand, here’s his record over his past seven starts: 48 2/3 innings, 30 hits, nine walks, 67 strikeouts, 1.85 ERA. Even his maligned homer rate in that stretch is 0.9 per nine innings.

After Adrian Gonzalez’s RBI single (on a drive that befuddled Yelich about as much as Koehler’s confused Pederson) put Turner at second base with the tying run in the top of the fourth, Andre Ethier ripped a liner to second base that Dee Gordon snagged, and Hechecarria and Gordon than combined on a stylish double play off the bat of Yasmani Grandal.

Over the remaining five innings, the Dodgers got two baserunners, moved each of them to second base with two out, and stranded them there.

Kershaw kept the Dodgers close, even striking out the side after Marlins reached first and third with none out in the sixth, but the early fumbles were too much to overcome.

[mlbvideo id=”161597583″ width=”550″ height=”308″ /]

By Jon Weisman

001 300 40x — 8

That linescore above doesn’t represent the runs scored against Clayton Kershaw in Friday’s outing. It represents the runs scored against him in his past six outings.

In those six starts since May 15, through tonight’s 4-3 victory over San Diego, Kershaw has a 2.11 ERA. And for his past four starts, Kershaw has a 0.94 ERA period: 28 2/3 innings, 14 hits, six walks (0.70 WHIP), 39 strikeouts (12.2 K/9).

And yet when Kershaw gave up a solo home run in the seventh inning of a 117-pitch outing in which he allowed seven baserunners and struck out 11 — all despite being hit by a line drive in the first, it catalyzed a sequence of events that kept him from becoming the first pitcher in 72 years to win 10 consecutive June starts, and set up a collective heart attack for much of the Dodger fan base.

This was a mistake-filled performance by the Dodgers, as Don Mattingly was the first to say in the postgame interviews. (Mattingly, of course, would be ripped in equal parts for leaving Kershaw in too long and taking him out too soon.) But as long as humans are playing the game and not robots, mistakes are part of baseball. The expectation that players should be perfect mystifies me.

From the seventh inning on, the Dodgers had their leading All-Star vote-getter get ejected, made a critical error, gave up a two-run home run and made two outs on the basepaths.

The end result: They gained a game in the National League West on the Giants, who threw Madison Bumgarner against Arizona and still lost.

Despite all the baserunning misfortune, the offense scored four runs at Petco Park.

Despite the one bad pitch to Derek Norris, the bullpen faced 11 batters, allowed zero earned runs and held a one-run lead for final two innings.

Baseball, at its essence, is about overcoming the inevitable shortcomings of its players. That’s what the Dodgers did tonight.