LOS ANGELES — With their season on the brink, Kyle Schwarber’s first home run Wednesday night woke up a slumbering Phillies attack.
A majestic blast hit harder and farther than any baseball at Dodger Stadium this year, the ball clanked off the top of the roof in the right-field pavilion and started an onslaught against All-Star Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
Yet it wasn’t as painful for the 53,689 fans in attendance as Schwarber’s second home run of the night, a towering fly ball that plopped off the top of the fence and over to put the finishing touches on an 8-2 Phillies win and a disaster relief outing for Clayton Kershaw in the future Hall of Famer’s first appearance of his final postseason.
“It was hard to watch,” said Mookie Betts about Kershaw. “But … he’s going to have a statue out in front of Dodger Stadium.
“Kind of 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 do it.”
That’s what made this unraveling so especially uncomfortable and hard to witness.
Any Kershaw appearance, in his 18th and final big-league season, could be his last. The fans acknowledged that when he received a standing ovation as he departed the home bullpen to make his first postseason relief appearance since Game 5 of the 2019 NLDS to start the seventh inning Wednesday night.
And then they sat aghast.
Clayton Kershaw’s first postseason appearance was a dud. (Photo by Katelyn Mulcahy/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
For the next two innings, the home stadium was left in a daze, while Kershaw was left to weather another October avalanche. A two-run deficit quickly ballooned to seven as he surrendered five runs — four earned — on six hits and three walks without striking out a batter.
“He just didn’t have a great slider tonight,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. “And then the fastball command, he was working behind, too. Just, the command wasn’t there tonight.”
Yet he was forced to wear it.
Kershaw escaped an inauspicious seventh inning unscathed, despite walking two batters and failing to get a single swing and miss on his 21 pitches in the frame, which ended on a 108-mph lineout. He had not pitched in a game since Sept. 28, and he clearly did not have the stuff to stymie the Phillies’ attack, which suddenly found its rhythm again.
That could have been it.
“You don’t really think about that,” Kershaw said. “You just try to make the next pitch. It’s not really for us to do, you just try to get people out. I wasn’t throwing strikes, and it’s hard to pitch behind in the count.”
But Roberts’ options were more limited than it initially appeared, despite the Dodgers coming off an off day with the game still in reach.
Afterward, it was revealed that Tanner Scott was dealing with a personal matter and not at the ballpark.
“It will come out later,” Roberts said, “but he was completely unavailable.”
The Dodgers’ arms in Game 3 were rocked by the Phillies. (Photo by Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)
The Dodgers elected to carry just 11 pitchers on the NLDS roster (not including Shohei Ohtani). Anthony Banda put out a fire earlier in the night, and Jack Dreyer had already delivered a scoreless inning of relief.
That left just Roki Sasaki, Emmet Sheehan, Alex Vesia and Blake Treinen as the remaining options in relief. Sasaki and Sheehan are still making the adjustment from starters to relievers and have become two of Roberts’ most trusted high-leverage relievers. Vesia had already pitched in each of the Dodgers’ first four games of the postseason.
Unwilling to use the arms that they might want to deploy with a chance to put the Phillies away again Thursday in Game 4, the Dodgers trotted Kershaw back out for the eighth. It ended in a painfully familiar scene, with his team asking more of him than he appeared able to provide.
By the time Treinen entered in the ninth, the game — and Kershaw’s night — had already gone off the rails.
“Just didn’t make enough good pitches,” Kershaw said. “I was battling command. It’s hard when you’re trying to throw strikes as opposed to getting people out. Just wasn’t a fun inning.”
The Phillies’ big bats found their footing and are still in this series. (Photo by Katelyn Mulcahy/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
Kershaw surrendered a leadoff homer to J.T. Realmuto to start the eighth. He gave up a walk to Max Kepler and watched Max Muncy commit an error that allowed Nick Castellanos to reach base.
“I thought it was my fault, not being able to get a clean ground ball on that,” Muncy said. “I know it was a short hop, but it’s still a play I need to make.”
Still, no one was warming. It was going to be Kershaw’s inning.
He gave up a sacrifice fly, then allowed a two-run base hit to Turner before Schwarber deposited his second home run of the night. Unlike Schwarber’s first, this one barely cleared the fence. But it cleared the stands, sending many Dodger fans to the exits. They had no interest watching another October heartbreak for their star left-hander in one of his final acts on the mound.
The disaster inning continued with a double from Harper and a single from Alec Bohm before ending mercifully on a deep flyout from Brandon Marsh.
“He’s undoubtedly probably the top, I don’t know how many starting pitchers in baseball,” Schwarber said. “This guy’s going to be in the Hall of Fame. I have a lot of respect for Clayton and for how he goes about his business, and I know that he’s going to be leaving baseball after this year. So, just from all of us and the opposite side, we all have a ton of respect for him.”
Kershaw’s body of work — an MVP, three Cy Youngs, a Triple Crown and 11 All-Star appearances — will of course earn him a call to Cooperstown in five years and, eventually, that statue. He’s the left-hander of a generation, as evidenced by his 2.53 career ERA.
But if Wednesday night was his last time taking the mound at the place he dominated for 18 years, it was a tough way to go.
“If you let two innings kind of ruin that,” Betts said, “you don’t know baseball.”
Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on X at @RowanKavner.
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