LOS ANGELES — The concept of a pennant race no longer exists in baseball, with six teams in each league making the postseason. But there’s still such a thing as a pennant race atmosphere, and maybe that environment at Dodger Stadium is enough to snap the home team out of its funk.
I mean, something’s got to help, right?
Then again, the Dodgers had another weapon in the series opener against the San Diego Padres, a mid-August game that was magnified in importance because they had spit up a nine-game lead in 41 days and found themselves looking up at the Padres in the standings.
Enter Clayton Kershaw. He might no longer be the unquestioned ace, but he acted the part when his team needed it most in a 3-2 victory on Friday night that again evened the NL West race. He went six innings, gave up two hits – one of them a home run to Ramon Laureano in the second inning – and otherwise gave his team a chance to get untracked, with his 76-pitch effort enabling a beleaguered bullpen to reset just a bit.
“I mean, I think he’s built for these big moments,” said outfielder Teoscar Hernández, whose solo home run in the seventh turned out to be the margin of victory. “He’s a legend. He helped us stay in the game. He gave up a homer early but after that he was like, being Clayton Kershaw. And he gave us the chance so we can score some runs.”
As noted, this is what aces do. He might not have the velocity of an ace anymore – of his 76 pitches, 26 were four-seam fastballs and three reached 90 mph, the fastest at 90.7 according to Statcast – but he got outs, gave the bullpen a little bit of a breather, and more importantly set a tone.
Yes, it’s only mid-August. Yes, 40 games remain on the schedule after Friday. No, division titles probably won’t be decided in these six games over 10 days unless either team does an absolute faceplant. But you could tell the difference in urgency, because the Padres are the ones they’ll be battling for the NL West title and possibly in a postseason series, also because they’re very capable of getting into the Dodgers’ heads just by being irritating, and finally because the fans contributed to that vibe with their own energy.
Anyway, forget the velocity figures. This felt like old times, when Kershaw truly was the staff’s ace and bore the responsibility of righting the ship when necessary.
Manager Dave Roberts talked before the game about how his team could use an increase in intensity as well as better performance. This series against this team figured to help, he said, and he later added: “There’s just no one more intense or focused than Clayton, and he has a way of elevating people’s focus and play. And so to have him tonight, first game of this series, he’s the perfect guy.”
He was.
“We had the right guy on the mound tonight,” Roberts repeated afterward. “I think we all know that. And what he did for us tonight, not only just the compete, but the stuff, I just thought he mixed (it) really well. Missed bats, got soft contact. Efficient as he always is. And getting us through six innings was huge to set us up for the rest of the series.
“… He’s a guy that’s pitched in, you know, many, many big ball games, understands the responsibility of it, what’s needed of him in a particular night. And he delivered. So I don’t know. I just think that it’s just a belief in the person, the player that I felt very convicted about him pitching well tonight.”
Kershaw said he didn’t feel a responsibility to go a certain number of innings. “I just try to pitch well as long as I can,” he said, and later added:
“It’s just, this is what you’re supposed to do. You know as a starter you’re supposed to pitch well. And when it’s your turn, step up. And our rotation’s getting healthier and we got a lot of guys that can throw the ball really well. And so I just want to do my part.”
Let’s see: The man has won two World Series championships and put to rest the “can’t win the big one” stigma in 2020. He became the 20th member of the 3,000-strikeout club earlier this summer, and given the way starting pitchers are now used that door might be shut and locked behind him. Five years after he finally hangs them up, it says here he will be in Cooperstown, a first-ballot Hall of Famer.
He might not come right out and say these August games, in this division race against this particular opponent with all of the expectations the Dodgers carry, have a different vibe. But they do.
“When you’ve done this, you know, as long as we have – it’s August now,” Kershaw said. “You know, you try and treat every day the same. But then hopefully the situation just helps magnify everything. … The way we were going, it felt like a big game for us. … You know, baseball’s hard. And when you play every day things can spiral pretty quick.”
“You don’t want to put too much (importance) in us losing a bunch of games. You know, I don’t think that’s who we are. So I don’t want to say that, you know, ‘Hey, we’re reset now.’ I think we were fine. I think we just played some bad games, and I think we’re fine moving forward.”
There’s always that rationalization that they’d played a lot of close games, were in every game, and should be encouraged by that. Except … losing those close games, losing them the way they’ve lost them, and having the bullpen take a disproportionate share of the responsibility for those losses has to have been discouraging to everyone from management on down.
One good night – which included a one-pitch appearance by Blake Treinen that was good enough to get the Dodgers out of an eighth-inning jam, and a scoreless ninth from Alexis Diaz and Jack Dreyer – won’t wash all of the last six weeks’ frustrations away. But it’s a start.
And maybe it carries a certain amount of grace for all involved, even if it’s just for a night. President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman joined media members on the elevator downstairs at game’s end. When he stepped off and walked toward the home clubhouse, one fan exiting the Dugout Club greeted him this way:
“Good job, Andrew!”
In other words, what trade deadline?
jalexander@scng.com