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The narrative around Clayton Kershaw is more entrenched than deserved.
Has he been stellar in his postseason career? Hardly — not by his incredible standards, at least — but his postseason performances haven’t been all terrible, either.
This is a guy who won Game 4 of last year’s NLDS with a three-hit, one-run outing, after all.
Still, the best pitcher in the world had something to prove in Game 4 of this year’s NLDS. On three days rest, the Dodgers turned to Kershaw to keep their season alive Tuesday.
Kershaw did his job. Was it a stellar performance? Hardly. But Kershaw didn’t put the Dodgers in a position to lose Tuesday, and despite the high expectations, that’s all he needed to do.
And Kershaw finally got some help from his teammates, and that’s why the Dodgers are heading to a winner-take-all Game 5.
Pitching is a lonely enterprise. You can have a great game and lose or a terrible game and win. Your individual performance is critical to the team's success, but it's not all on you, either. Few have toed this line more than Kershaw in the postseason. When he's bad, he's really bad, and when he's good, he's found tough luck.
It was easy to think “here we go again” when Kershaw exited after walking the bases loaded with two outs in the seventh, but the situation wasn’t as perilous as it seemed. Kershaw had allowed seven hits and two earned runs over 6 2/3 innings, walking two and striking out 11. The Dodgers still had a three-run lead.
It just so happened that the worst-case scenario came to pass, with Pedro Baez and Luis Avilan following Kershaw and allowing all three runners on base to score without registering the third out of the inning.
Even with those runs being charged to Kershaw, he had put the Dodgers on equal footing after seven innings of play. If it wasn’t Kershaw, that would be considered an adequate performance on short rest.
The Dodgers’ success, or lack thereof in the playoffs, has never been a direct reflection of Kershaw’s pitching — baseball is a team sport, after all. Kershaw has been culpable for not putting his team in a good position to win at times in the postseason, yes, but Tuesday was not one of those times. The Dodgers had nine outs and home field advantage to work with after Kershaw exited. The bullpen was going to get a short day.
Could you really ask for more?
It was some not-so-great fielding and an excellent at-bat by Bryce Harper (that third pitch was a strike, by the way) that put the Dodgers in the predicament they found themselves in on Tuesday. Kershaw was a party to the incident, but he wasn’t totally culpable.
To hold the five runs allowed against Kershaw, fully, would be to expect perfection — something that only sounds rational in regards to the three-time Cy Young winner.
The Dodgers needed to help their guy out Tuesday. They did.
You could feel the relief of millions of Dodgers fans when Chase Utley’s RBI single scored Andrew Toles in the bottom of the eighth inning. You could feel the Dodgers’ confidence grow when closer Kenley Jansen, a day after getting shelled, came in for the ninth inning and was dominant.
There’s momentum behind the Dodgers now — they took a not-quite-perfect performance and turned it into a win. They’ll head back to Washington with a blank slate and the knowledge that they can bounce back from deflating blows.
It’s teams that never say die that survive in the playoffs. The Dodgers can count themselves in that category now.
