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Alden Gonzalez
LOS ANGELES — Tanner Scott was absent for what was later described as a personal matter, two other left-handed relievers had already been used, and Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts didn’t want to use his three best relievers — two of them converted starting pitchers — in a deficit.
And so, in the eighth inning of a two-run game Wednesday night, Clayton Kershaw spilled back onto the field hoping to keep a score manageable by providing his team with three additional outs — and that’s when Game 3 of the National League Division Series unraveled.
J.T. Realmuto led off with a home run, six other batters reached base, and by the end of it, the Philadelphia Phillies had tacked on five additional runs, cruising to the 8-2 victory that saved their season.
Kershaw, the future Hall of Fame left-hander who will retire at season’s end, was making his first postseason relief appearance since the decisive Game 5 of the 2019 NLDS, when he came back out for a second inning and surrendered back-to-back, score-tying home runs to Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto. His latest relief outing could have finished in a flourish, after recording the final out in a scoreless top of the seventh. Instead, it ended in despair.
“Just didn’t make enough good pitches,” said Kershaw, his team still leading this best-of-five series 2-1. “I was battling command. It’s hard when you’re trying to throw strikes as opposed to getting people out. Just wasn’t a fun thing.”
A sold-out crowd of 53,689 roared when the left-field-bullpen gates swung open, Kershaw’s entrance song blared and No. 22 himself jogged to the mound. He was tasked with taking down the top of the Phillies’ order, immediately after fellow lefties Anthony Banda and Jack Dreyer pitched scoreless innings to maintain the Dodgers’ two-run deficit.
Kershaw allowed the first two batters to reach, then benefited from some good fortune. Dodgers right fielder Teoscar Hernandez made a diving catch to steal a hit from Bryce Harper. Kyle Schwarber then got caught in between on a pitch in the dirt and was picked off first base. Two batters later, Brandon Marsh hit a 108 mph line drive directly into Hernandez’s glove. The crowd roared again, basking in another opportunity to celebrate one of the greatest players in franchise history — just before watching him absorb another nightmare inning in October.
Realmuto’s homer was followed by a Max Kepler walk, which was followed by an error on an in-between hop by Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy. After a sacrifice bunt moved both runners over, Trea Turner dumped a two-run single into a vacant portion of the outfield. Schwarber then provided the dagger with a sky-scraping two-run homer that bounced off the top of the right-field wall — four innings after his 455-foot home run nearly cleared the Dodger Stadium roof.
Had Enrique Hernandez not thrown Harper out trying to score from second on a single, and had Justin Dean not leapt against the fence to rob Marsh of extra bases, at least two additional runs would have scored.
“It was hard to watch,” Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts said. “But we can’t use two innings to — he’s going to have a statue out in front of Dodger Stadium. Kind of keep that in mind and understand that, in the grand scheme of things, Kershaw is a first-ballot Hall of Famer, one of the best to ever do it. So if you let two innings kind of ruin that, you don’t know baseball.”
That Kershaw was even placed in that position speaks volumes about the state of the Dodgers’ bullpen.
Dodgers relievers finished the regular season ranked 21st in the majors in ERA and didn’t inspire much additional confidence during the stretch run of the season. The Dodgers’ hope was to use the depth of their starting rotation to make up for the deficiencies in their bullpen during the postseason, but that has proved to have its limits.
Emmet Sheehan and Roki Sasakinow used to hold leads late, have come with restrictions, particularly as it relates to being used on back-to-back nights. Using Sheehan or Sasaki in Game 3 means they would have probably been unavailable in Game 4. Tyler Glasnow was used to bridge the gap in Game 1, but he’s the scheduled starter for Game 4 on Thursday. Scott, whose absence was not known until Roberts revealed it postgame, was not an option at all.
That left Blake Treinenwho wound up pitching the ninth inning of what had basically become a blowout, and Alex shuttersanother high-leverage reliever Roberts prefers to save for leads. Instead, Kershaw was asked to take on more than he should have and struggled because of it, a circumstance that has come to define his October career.
Kershaw faced nine batters in the eighth inning. Three of them put the first pitch in play. Against each of the other six, he fell behind in the count. Roberts said Kershaw “didn’t have a great slider tonight” and his overall command was shoddy, which was probably to be expected. The only time Kershaw had ever come out of the bullpen over these past six years was two weeks ago, on Sept. 24, in preparation for a role like this.
This time, Kershaw said, he did everything he could to ready himself while venturing outside of his typical pre-start routine, including throwing off flat ground before getting onto the bullpen mound.
It didn’t work, and when it became clear that it wouldn’t, nobody was there to save him.
“You don’t really think about that,” Kershaw said of being left out in the eighth inning. “You just try to make the next pitch. It’s not really for us to do. You just try to get people out. I wasn’t throwing strikes, and it’s hard to pitch behind in the count.”
