You knew it was bound to happen at some point. You knew he was due for a postseason win. You just didn’t want to believe it would happen last night against the Mets on our home turf in a pivotal Game 4 of the NLDS.
Clayton Kershaw was a Goliath on Tuesday night at Citi Field, The overpowering southpaw pitched a gem, going 7.0 innings strong allowing just one run on three hits while striking out eight. The lone run he gave up was on a Daniel Murphy home run in the fourth inning.
” I was pretty fired up,” Kershaw said. ” I knew the adrenaline would take over, it’s just a matter of controlling it. The first inning I was kind all over the place, but after that I felt pretty good.”
Prior to last night, Kershaw, who won 16 game this year, had yet to win a game in the postseason in his career. The win last night snapped a franchise record five-start postseason losing streak. More importantly for Kershaw and his Dodgers, this win kept their NLCS hopes alive, and leaves the Mets waiting to face Zack Greinke on Thursday night in LA.
Of course, all of this happened on just three days rest. It was just his third career postseason start on three days rest. In those starts he is 1-1 with a 1.89 ERA with 23 strikeouts. Last night, he was nothing short of magnificent, with his one hiccup coming on a 0-1 cutter that caught a little too much plate against Murphy. Other than that, Kershaw was virtually unhittable.
Both David Wright and Travis d’Arnaud tipped their cap to Kershaw’s performance last night saying that his curveball was much sharper than the one he had Friday night. The only thing the Mets could try and do was to work his pitch count and try and get him out of the game early.
“I think everybody’s goal was to get him out of the game as quick as possible,” Wright said of working the count.
“But when you’re throwing strikes and have that type of command, you start 0-2 if you go up and try to take pitches. Tonight he was commanding all three [pitches] and was flat out unhittable.”
The Mets will now head back to Los Angeles to face arguably an even better pitcher in Zack Greinke in what will be a do or die Game 5. However, the Dodgers have an equally tough pitcher to deal with in Jacob deGrom.
“You know what? It’s probably dead even, to be honest,” Clayton Kershaw said in analyzing the Game 5 matchup. “As good as Zack is and has been the whole year, deGrom has been the same. So there’s really no home-field advantage when you’re facing a guy like deGrom.”
High praise from Kershaw.
