Kershaw effective in hard-luck loss to Rockies

DENVER -- The big question heading into Saturday night’s game between the Dodgers and Rockies at Coors Field was: Given how Walker Buehler and Hyun-Jin Ryu fared the prior two nights, what was in store for Clayton Kershaw?

Buehler and Ryu each surrendered seven earned runs, and with the first-pitch temperature at 93 degrees, it was more than reasonable to think the baseball would be flying out of Coors in similar fashion Saturday.

• Box score

Though the Dodgers lost to Colorado, 5-3, the score says a lot about what happened after a combined 42 runs were scored between Thursday and Friday.

Kershaw was at 53 pitches heading into the sixth inning after making a mistake to Charlie Blackmon, one of the hottest hitters on the planet, who sent a Kershaw curveball into the Rockies’ bullpen for a two-run homer in the third.

But Kershaw had a 3-2 lead and had faced only two batters above the minimum to that point. Manager Dave Roberts said the three-time National League Cy Young Award winner, who has had to transform himself as a pitcher after losing fastball velocity, pitched better than he has all month.

Aside from his start Monday in Arizona, when he gave up four runs in six innings, Kershaw’s June ERA entering Saturday’s start was 1.67.

“Honestly I thought everything was good,” Roberts said. “He had life on his fastball in the zone, moving it around. I thought the curveball was good. I thought the slider was good. You could just see from the swings, they just weren’t getting a lot of good swings off. He did what he wanted to do.”

Kershaw’s four-seam fastball hit a high of 92.6 mph, the hardest fastball he’s thrown in 2019. Of his 89 pitches on the evening, he threw 28 four-seamers with an average velocity of 91.1 mph. He had thrown 475 four-seamers this season coming into the start, averaging 90.0 mph.

One of the toughest challenges for a pitcher like Kershaw, when there is diminished fastball velocity, is maintaining the optimal speed differential between the fastball and the slider in order to keep hitters off balance. The more effective the fastball, the more effective the slider.

Kershaw’s slider, partly due to his ability to establish the lively fastball, was his best pitch Saturday night. It averaged 88.2 mph and he induced seven swinging strikes out of the 48 sliders he threw. Four of his seven strikeouts came via the slider, all swinging. The other three were on curveballs, also swinging.

“I felt really good the first few innings,” Kershaw said. “The Blackmon homer was a tough pill to swallow. It was just the wrong pitch; I shook to it and I take responsibility for that. It was the last thing [catcher Austin Barnes] called and I should have listened to him. I just felt confident about the curveball there, and I thought it was a decent one, and he hit it really well.”

According to Inside Edge, a respected scouting service, Blackmon became the first left-handed hitter to homer off a Kershaw curveball in the regular season, and only the second overall after the Cardinals’ Matt Adams homered off one in Game 4 of the 2014 NL Division Series.

The game got away from the Dodgers in the sixth inning. After Kershaw retired counterpart Jon Gray on a groundout to third, Blackmon reached first on a Max Muncy error at second. That was followed by consecutive singles by Raimel Tapia and Nolan Arenado that tied the game.

Ian Desmond followed with a rocket to shortstop Enrique Hernandez that came off the bat with a 111.3 mph exit velocity according to Statcast. The ball skipped past Hernandez as he tried to backhand it, and the next batter, Mark Reynolds, punched a two-run single to right that proved to be the difference in the contest.

But the Dodgers can take solace in what they saw from their decorated left-hander, who continues to reinvent himself and make a very difficult process look smooth, even on a hot night at Coors Field.

“I don’t think about what happens here,” Kershaw said of the ballpark. “When you start playing that game, you get into trouble. You just worry about what you can control, go pitch your game, attack, be aggressive and see what happens.”