Clayton Kershaw entered Game 1 of the NLDS coming off a historically great season. His first start of the postseason did not go so well.
The Los Angeles Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals played the headline game of the weekend in postseason baseball on Friday night. All eyes were on Dodger Stadium because of the pitching match-up between Clayton Kershaw and Adam Wainwright.
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Suffice it to say, this game did not go the way people were expecting it to. The Dodgers did damage against Wainwright, putting up six runs and staking Kershaw to a four-run lead. Given Kershaw’s dominance this season, one would have assumed this was going to be an easy win for the Dodgers.
Not so much.
Kershaw entered the seventh inning of this game having surrendered only one hit, a solo home run. He was racking up strikeouts, soaking in the MVP chants from the Dodgers’ faithful, and looked well on his way to a win. There were absolutely no indications that the Cardinals would starting hitting the ball around on Kershaw, but that’s exactly what happened.
The Cardinals rallied, stringing together base hits thanks to good at-bats and some missed locations from Kershaw. Matt Carpenter capped off the rally with a bases-clearing double to score three runs and give the Cardinals a 7-6 lead. Matt Holliday delivered a three-run home run later in the inning, giving St. Louis a 10-6 lead and scoring a run that had been charged to Kershaw to cap off his ugly night.
Clayton Kershaw’s final line in this game reads as follows: 6.2 IP, 8 H, 8 R, 8 ER, 10 K. The strikeouts reflect the overall body of work while the runs reflect the gruesome outcome of that 7th inning.
The Dodgers chased Wainwright in the 5th inning of that game, at which point they had to feel like the stars were aligning. Instead, Kershaw was charged with eight earned runs, leaving an entire Dodgers’ crowd in shock and the Dodgers in need of a late comeback to hold home field.
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