Dodger Thoughts

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By Jon Weisman

So that’s what it’s like to stare into the sun.

Clayton Kershaw lassoed the brilliant light of 191 previous Major League starts and unleashed it on a Colorado Rockies team that had no shield, no defense. And baseball fans around the world could only gaze in wonder.

Striking out a career-high 15 batters, Kershaw pitched his first career no-hitter — and of course, the second by a Dodger in less than a month — wiping out the Colorado Rockies, 8-0.

Kershaw had taken one previous no-hitter into the eighth inning, on May 17, 2009, before Cody Ross broke it up with a double.

Tonight’s was a perfect game before Hanley Ramirez’s throwing error to lead off the seventh inning. Undaunted, Kershaw retired the final nine Rockies, needing only one outstanding defensive play, a deep throw from back of third base by Miguel Rojas.

By Jon Weisman

Clayton Kershaw struck out nine for the fourth time in six Major League starts this season tonight and would have left tied, 2-2, if not for a sixth-inning wild pitch that could have been ruled a passed ball on Drew Butera.

But Kershaw has allowed extra-base hits at an unusual rate in May. Put it this way: Cincinnati had five extra-base hits this evening (four doubles and Brandon Phillips’ two-run, first-inning home run), a total that matches the number of extra-base hits Kershaw allowed in all of April 2013.

With the Reds racking up 14 total bases in 28 at-bats against Kershaw tonight, opponents have slugged .464 (52 for 112) against the lefty this month, compared with a career opponents’ slugging of .314 and .277 last season. Of course, this month’s figure was influenced by the highly unusual second inning at Arizona on May, when he allowed three triples and a double in a stretch of six batters.

Overall, Kershaw was a strong pitcher in May, throwing four quality starts with a 2.00 ERA in non-Arizona games and striking out 39 in 28 2/3 innings (12.2 K/9). His strikeout-walk ratio of 6.6 to date is the best of his career. It’s that remarkable when opponents can touch him at all.

As for the Dodgers themselves, they scratched across a run in the fifth and got a Yasiel Puig homer in the sixth, but twice stranded Dee Gordon at third base with one out, in the first and eighth innings. Aroldis Chapman, throwing his fastball in the triple digits, put out the Dodgers in the ninth.

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By Jon Weisman

Clayton Kershaw came back from a 6 1/2-week absence and kept the Washington Nationals as quiet as a Sunday morning snow flurry.

He blanketed them. He turned Nationals Park into the house on the Night Before Christmas. He pitched in such a way that I wouldn’t have trouble believing that Kershaw could bound from chimney to chimney, delivering toys to every home on the globe, while also making compensatory adjustments for non-participating households.

There were nine hits against him. I’m trying to reconcile the nine hits against him. I may actually be having an existential crisis over the nine hits against him. I’m not trying to deny them, not trying to deny that in a game that was scoreless until the sixth inning, there was actual peril – the same way there was peril in not knowing whether Rudolph’s nose might conk out somewhere over Greenland.

There was even this. Comedy.

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Still, still, it was the way Kershaw made you feel watching him, the way from the first strike he made you feel safe and secure, that baseball was once again a gift, that the stray brushstrokes were all part of the show, that even in a busy and converging world, there can be peace.

It doesn’t stay that way. But that it circles back that way, maybe that’s enough.