Clayton Kershaw can't match Garrett Crochet's consistency in Dodgers' loss to Red Sox

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4 days ago

Garrett Crochet got out of his jams on Saturday night. Clayton Kershaw failed to do the same.
In the Dodgers' 4-2 loss to the Boston Red Sox, that was the difference — with Crochet, an in-his-prime Cy Young candidate with a heavy fastball and premium all-around stuff, frustrating the Dodgers by stranding baserunners and working out of trouble; and Kershaw, an aging left-hander who battled command in the early going, too often failing to escape danger unscathed.
Making his first career regular-season start at Fenway Park (he had only previously pitched here in the 2018 World Series), Kershaw appeared to be battling his mechanics from the start. He delivered a first-pitch strike to only five of his first 14 batters. Even worse, he couldn't put guys away when he got to two-strike counts.
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It culminated in a three-run second inning from the Red Sox (56-50), after Trevor Story worked a leadoff walk, Carlos Narváez belted a double off the Green Monster, and Jarren Duran laced a line drive to center that got over Andy Pages' head for a triple (Duran had another triple and a double later in the night).
It led to more stress for the 37-year-old Kershaw in the third, when he yielded a pair of singles to lead off the inning before getting a double-play and fanning Story with a slider.
After that, Kershaw started to settle down. He rediscovered his command, getting ahead of each of the final seven batters he faced. He found the kind of rhythm that has keyed his surprisingly strong 18th season, retiring seven consecutive batters while working into the fifth.
But with two outs in that fifth inning, star Red Sox slugger Alex Bregman outlasted Kershaw in a 10-pitch at-bat, finally prevailing on a single through the infield. Then, rookie starlet Roman Anthony drove him home with a double, Bregman able to score on a bang-bang play at the plate after the ball ricocheted off the Monster and bounced past Pages in left center.
Kershaw's night ended there, a 4-⅔ inning, four-run start (which tied the second most earned runs he has allowed this year) that raised his earned-run average to 3.62.
And while Crochet faced similar levels of duress, he never let the Dodgers (61-44) break open an inning.
The closest the Dodgers came was in the first. Shohei Ohtani started things off with a home run to deep center, his National League-leading 38th of the season and 10th to lead off a game. Teoscar Hernández followed with another solo shot two batters later, clearing the Monster in left field to continue his recent surge at the plate.
After that, however, Crochet kept the Dodgers in the ballpark, and stranded each of the eight other batters who reached base.
Unlike Kershaw, who failed to limit damage with his diminished velocity and inconsistent execution of breaking pitches, Crochet overpowered the Dodgers in each leverage situation, preventing any further scoring with the help of 10 strikeouts — giving him an MLB-leading 175 on the season.
The Dodgers didn't help their cause along the way.
After the first-inning home runs, a later first-inning rally fizzled when Freddie Freeman was thrown out trying to go from first to third base on a Pages single (the Dodgers challenged, with manager Dave Roberts applauding Freeman's aggressiveness from the dugout, but the call was upheld).
The Dodgers had two other innings end with outs on the bases. Hernández was caught stealing for the final out of the fifth (on a close play that the Dodgers might have challenged had they not burned it earlier in the game). Will Smith was gunned down trying to turn a single into a double in the seventh, after Crochet's exit.
But the most deflating moments came with Ohtani at the plate. In both the second and fourth, No. 9 hitter Hyeseong Kim managed to single off Crochet (surprising results given Kim's recent struggles and a seemingly poor left-on-left matchup against the Red Sox ace). But both times, Ohtani followed with inning-ending strikeouts, part of an evening that saw him go down swinging three total times.
The Dodgers gave themselves one late chance against Red Sox closer Aroldis Chapman, bringing the tying run to the plate after a two-out walk in the ninth from Esteury Ruiz.
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The batter representing that tying run: Mookie Betts, who was out of the starting lineup for a second-straight game after spending this week back home in Nashville following a death in his family.
But, making just his second trip back to Fenway Park since being dealt from the Red Sox to the Dodgers in 2020, the former MVP brought a night of missed chances to a frustratingly fitting conclusion, getting rung up on a called third strike to set up a series rubber match Sunday.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.