ATLANTA — Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln – how did you like the play?
Clayton Kershaw pitched five scoreless innings Saturday night against the Atlanta Braves. Unfortunately for him, they were not consecutive. Instead, they were wrapped around a five-run third inning that proved to be the difference as the Dodgers lost, 6-4.
“I think you’ve got to give Clayton credit for going six innings and keeping those guys at bay,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “It was one bad inning. But the linescore as far as eight or nine (strikeouts), one walk – and we had a chance to win the baseball game.”
Kershaw has pitched nearly 2,410 innings in his career and hasn’t had an inning that bad often. This was just the sixth time in his career that he has allowed as many as five runs in an inning. And, he has held opposing batters to a .180 batting average with two outs – but all five of the runs in the third inning scored after there were two outs as the Braves strung together a walk and four consecutive two-out hits.
“Two outs … you shouldn’t give up any runs when you get to two outs,” Kershaw lamented after the game.
If that weren’t enough to make Saturday’s start stand out like a trout in a punch bowl, Kershaw also gave up five runs in six innings in his previous start against the San Francisco Giants. It is only the second time since 2018 that he allowed more than three runs in consecutive starts and only the fourth time in his career he has allowed five runs (or more) in consecutive outings – the first since 2011.
“Just not pitching well, man,” Kershaw said. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
The aberrational inning started out innocently enough. With Guillermo Heredia on first base after an infield single, Kevan Smith flew out and Charlie Morton struck out, fouling off a bunt attempt.
But Kershaw worked carefully to the dangerous Ronald Acuña Jr. and wound up walking him at the end of a seven-pitch confrontation. Freddie Freeman lined a 1-and-0 slider into center field to drive in Heredia.
“That Acuña walk was not good,” Kershaw said. “Freddie does what Freddie does. Hit a decent pitch. Put the bat on it and got a hit. Then from there, I just couldn’t stop the bleeding.”
Kershaw got ahead of Ozzie Albies 1-and-2 but he also hit a slider, this one into the left field corner for a two-run double. Austin Riley beat out an infield single to put runners at the corners for Dansby Swanson. He ripped a 2-and-1 fastball into the left-center field gap for another two-run double.
But it was the Acuña at-bat that turned the inning sour, Kershaw said.
“Overall, the Acuña walk was probably the most frustrating part of that inning,” he said.
“I mean, yeah, I was pitching him as tough as I could. He’s a great hitter obviously. But with two outs, you don’t want to walk him to get to Freddie no matter what. That’s not what I was looking for there.”
Kershaw struck out Ehire Adrianza to end the inning and retired 10 of the final 12 batters he faced – one of the base hits was a 59.5 mph dribbler off the third base bag by Freeman – and didn’t allow another runner past first base, striking out six in that stretch.
Uncharacteristic as the big inning was against Kershaw, he now has a cluster of rough starts in his past five outings. He has allowed five runs in three of the starts and has a 5.12 ERA over the past four weeks.
“Well, the one thing I do see is him kind of resetting and throwing up zeroes after the fact,” Roberts said of Kershaw’s recent run which included a three-run first inning against the Giants and a four-run inning against the Miami Marlins four starts ago. “But it is uncharacteristic that in an inning where he doesn’t feel right, he still can limit damage to one, two, three runs. But the last couple have been big numbers.
“It’s just one of those things where he loses command of some pitches and those other guys are capitalizing on that one big inning.”
After the damage in the third inning, the Dodgers needed help to make it close. They got some in the form of four Braves errors leading to a pair of unearned runs.
They scored one of those in the first inning thanks to a hit batter (Mookie Betts) and two of the errors.Another one of those errors was in the mix during a three-run fourth inning but four consecutive singles (by Cody Bellinger, Chris Taylor, Matt Beaty and Gavin Lux) did the heavy lifting.
That closed the gap to one run. But Blake Treinen followed Kershaw and gave up a pinch-hit home run to Abraham Almonte in the seventh (the Braves’ seventh pinch-hit homer this season, tied with the Giants for the most in MLB).
Treinen has now given up five runs on five hits (including two home runs) in his past three innings. He was unavailable one game during this stretch due to an issue “in his groin area,” Roberts acknowledged Saturday. But that has not affected his pitching, the manager said.“I think with Blake it’s just been a little bit of lack of command,” Roberts said. “I think with all major league pitchers when they’re not going well, the stuff is there. But the cutter is just missing. The slider is kind of going in and out and he’s getting behind hitters. And when you do that, there’s a high probability of giving up some runs.
“I think he went five straight cutters to Almonte. You could say it was a good pitch in a vacuum but he saw it four times prior.”
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Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw surrenders five in third inning, loses to Braves - OCRegister
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