LOS ANGELES — Tanner Scott was out for what was later described as a personnel 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 — including two converted starting pitchers — in a deficit.
And so, in the eighth inning of a two-run game Wednesday night, Clayton Kershaw returned to the field hoping to keep the score manageable by giving his team three more outs — and that’s when Game 3 of the National League Division Series unfolded.
JT Realmuto led off with a homer, six more batters reached base and by the end, the Philadelphia Phillies had scored five more 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 deciding Game 5 of the 2019 NLDS, when he returned for a second inning and gave up back-to-back, game-tying homers to Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto. His final relief outing could have ended with a bang, having recorded the final scoreless out in the top of the seventh. Instead, it ended in despair.
“I just didn’t make enough good shots,” Kershaw said, with his team still leading this best-of-five series 2-1. “I was fighting command. It’s tough when you’re trying to throw strikes rather than take people out. It just wasn’t fun.”
A sellout crowd of 53,689 roared as the left-field bullpen doors opened, Kershaw’s entrance song blared, and No. 22 himself ran to the mound. He was tasked with taking over at 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 luck. Dodgers right fielder Teoscar Hernandez made a diving catch to rob Bryce Harper of a hit. Kyle Schwarber then got caught in the middle on a pitch in the dirt and was thrown out from first base. Two batters later, Brandon Marsh hit a 108 mph line drive right into Hernandez’s glove. The crowd roared again, taking advantage of another opportunity to celebrate one of the greatest players in franchise history – just before watching him absorb another nightmarish inning in October.
Realmuto’s home run was followed by a walk by Max Kepler, which was followed by an error on a midfield jumper by Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy. After a sacrifice bunt moved both runners, Trea Turner delivered a two-run single into a vacant part of the outfield. Schwarber then provided the dagger with a dizzying two-run homer that bounced off the top of the right-field wall — four innings after his 455-foot homer nearly cleared the roof of Dodger Stadium.
If Enrique Hernandez hadn’t thrown out Harper trying to score from second on a single, and if Justin Dean hadn’t jumped the fence to deprive Marsh of extra bases, at least two more 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 in front of Dodger Stadium. 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 hit it. So if you let two innings ruin that, you don’t know baseball.”
The fact that Kershaw was even placed in this position speaks volumes about the state of the Dodgers bullpen.
The Dodgers relievers finished the regular season ranked 21st in the majors in ERA and didn’t inspire much additional confidence over the latter part of the season. The Dodgers’ hope was to use the depth of their starting rotation to fill holes in their bullpen during the postseason, but that proved to have its limitations.
Emmet Sheehan and Roki Sasaki, now accustomed to holding leads late, are subject to restrictions, particularly regarding their use on consecutive nights. Using Sheehan or Sasaki in Game 3 means they likely wouldn’t have been available in Game 4. Tyler Glasnow was used to fill the gap in Game 1, but he is the projected starter for Game 4 on Thursday. Scott, whose absence was not known until Roberts revealed it after the match, was not an option at all.
That left Blake Treinen, who ended up pitching the ninth inning of what had essentially become a blowout, and Alex Vesia, another high-leverage reliever that 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 ended up defining his October career.
Kershaw faced nine batters in the eighth inning. Three of them put in play on the first pitch. Against each of the other six, he fell behind in the count. Roberts said Kershaw “didn’t have a good slider tonight” and his overall command was poor, which was probably predictable. The only time Kershaw came out of the bullpen in the last six years was two weeks ago, on September 24, in preparation for a role like this.
This time, Kershaw said, he did everything he could to prepare while venturing outside of his typical pre-start routine, including throwing down on a flat field before stepping onto the mound from the bullpen.
It didn’t work, and when it became clear that it wouldn’t work, no one was there to save him.
“You don’t really think about it,” Kershaw said of being thrown out in the eighth inning. “You’re just trying to make the next pitch. It’s not really up to us to do it. You’re just trying to get people out. I wasn’t throwing strikes, and it’s hard to fall behind in the count.”
