LOS ANGELES — It was like old times Saturday night at Dodger Stadium – briefly.
Clayton Kershaw, three-time Cy Young Award winner, future Hall of Famer and now likely a Dodger for life, pitched in a major league game for the first time since last Aug. 30. He led his team onto the field, skipping over the third base line on his way to the mound and throwing his warmup tosses to rookie catcher Dalton Rushing to the familiar strains of “We Are Young.”
Then the game with the Angels started, and we were reminded quickly: This is the 37-year-old version of Kershaw, and while he is still capable of getting hitters out, it’s nowhere as easy as it once might have seemed with a four-seam fastball that now barely brushes 90 mph and a slider that still has enough bite to be his out pitch but requires more precise location.
He had his shoulder repaired surgically two winters ago, remember. This past winter he had a torn meniscus repaired, along with procedures to address a variety of maladies in his left foot: bone spurs, arthritis and a ruptured plantar plate in his left foot.
(The layman might not think those are as important as the arm or shoulder or elbow, but you try throwing a pitch when your legs or feet are compromised and see how far it gets you.)
Anyway, Kershaw’s return to the big stage following three rehab starts for Triple-A Oklahoma City didn’t get off to a rousing start, with a 38-pitch first inning, three hits, two walks and a 3-0 deficit, a wacky start to a back-and-forth game that ultimately went to the Angels, 11-9.
He threw 12 four-seam fastballs in the first inning, only four of which touched 90 mph, and Logan O’Hoppe stroked one of those for a two-run single. His curve was in the 70 mph range, and of the 17 sliders he threw in that inning, only three drew swings and misses, one of those a half-swing.
Things settled down considerably after that. Kershaw made it through four innings, giving up Taylor Ward’s homer off a 72.9 mph curve in the third and surrendering a run in the fourth on a walk, double and sacrifice fly. He threw 82 pitches, left with an 11.25 ERA but didn’t get the loss.
If there is an indicator of where Kershaw is, it’s the slider. He threw 34 for the game, 29 of them to right-handed batters, and induced 19 swings and six whiffs.
“I left a few middle today,” he said. “I think more than anything with the slider, there’s a lot of foul balls instead of swing and misses, and so that needs to be my out pitch. That needs to be the one that gets swing and miss. And so I think I think it’s in there and just, you know, the location wasn’t great today. I left a lot of them middle.”
Rookie catcher Dalton Rushing, who caught one of Kershaw’s rehab starts in Oklahoma City, drew the start Saturday, and blamed himself – probably overblamed himself – for the Angels’ 11 runs and 13 hits all told.
“I’m going to take blame as much as possible,” he said. “I’m a rookie. That’s my job. … He’s the best left-handed pitcher of all time. I think I could have made some better decisions in certain situations.”
I asked manager Dave Roberts before the game if he was concerned about Kershaw being too amped up, and he used the phrase “possibility” rather than “worry,” figuring the extra emotions and adrenaline were a natural consequence.
“I think that he did a really good job of controlling his emotions,” Roberts said afterward. “I think that there was emotion there. I don’t think he was amped up. I think that he was kind of trying to control those emotions of finally getting back, pitching in a big league game at Dodger Stadium.
“The first inning … (there were) just some misfires. He had some two-ball counts or two-strike counts and couldn’t put hitters away. But I thought he did a nice job of settling in. And certainly after that first inning, where the pitch count got up there pretty quickly, to be able to give us four innings was very, very helpful tonight.”
Kershaw said he doesn’t like the word emotional, “but there’s definitely some thoughts … Just special, you know. I think as you’ve done it more and you get a little bit older, you just learn to appreciate that more.”
I’ve often wondered if the Dodgers should have brought in Greg Maddux, the master of succeeding without a blazing fastball, to be a consultant or at least a sounding board for Kershaw. Remember, Maddux was finishing his career with the Dodgers in 2008 when Kershaw was beginning his.
But Kershaw can likely figure this out on his own and in fact probably already has. The trick is staying healthy … and in that, on this Dodger staff, he is hardly alone. Given that three members of the rotation, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Roki Sasaki, are currently on the injured list, Kershaw becomes a long-awaited reinforcement. Snell, in fact, was transferred to the 60-day injured list to make room for Kershaw on the roster.
More to the point, Kershaw is still the soul of this franchise. You could tell that would happen from the very beginning, his first start as a Dodger, on May 25, 2008, in The Ravine against St. Louis: Six innings, two earned runs, seven strikeouts and a no-decision. Heck, it may have been apparent from the moment when he snapped off a 12-to-6 curveball that spring during a game in Vero Beach that baffled Sean Casey and had Vin Scully saying, “Ohhhh, what a curveball!!”
I remember that early in that 2008 season, those of us in the media kept bugging then-manager Joe Torre about the kid who was so impressive at Double-A Jacksonville, and he kept preaching patience.
And I also remember writing the day of his major league debut that if this rookie was indeed the real deal, it probably wouldn’t have been a bad idea to save the scorecard from that game. Sadly, I didn’t take my own advice.
Now in his 18th season with this franchise, it seems increasingly likely that Kershaw is one of the rare players who will end his career with the same team with which he started. That wasn’t always a sure thing, especially when he reached free agency twice and had a choice of staying with the Dodgers or signing with his hometown Texas Rangers. But each time he returned to L.A.
And in an interview with MLB Network a few days ago, he all but made it official that, whenever he hangs ’em up, it would be as a Dodger.
“I think as you get older, you just get a little bit more grateful for all the things that you’re able to do and be a part of,” he said then. “And being a Dodger for this long is – there’s a lot of gratitude on my end. So I’m excited to get going again and contribute and definitely excited to, you know, maybe end my career here at some point, I don’t know when, but maybe some point. And I’ll always be a Dodger. That’s pretty cool.”
Trust me, he’s not the only one who thinks so.
jalexander@scng.com