Clayton Kershaw paused halfway up the dugout steps Saturday and bowed his head. The jog he was about to make to the mound at Dodger Stadium would be the first steps of what is likely the final chapter of his spectacular career.
A moment of silent reflection was in order.
Kershaw threw his last pitch in August at Phoenix’s Chase Field; Corbin Carroll hit it over the right-field wall. Kershaw then walked off the mound and was put on the injured list with a bone spur on his left big toe.
The first pitch of his latest comeback came at 6:10 p.m. Saturday, a high fastball that Zach Neto took for a ball. The rest of the inning went downhill from there, with Kershaw giving up three runs on three hits and two walks in the first inning.
He recovered nicely, though, yielding two runs on two hits over the next three innings while striking out two in the first four innings of a wild game the Angels won 11-9 behind a career-high five RBIs from catcher Logan O’Hoppe.
Kershaw’s return comes at a key time for the Dodgers (29-17), who are missing three starters — Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Roki Sasaki — to injury.
“I’m envisioning a shot in the arm of emotion, of intensity,” Dodger manager Dave Roberts said of Kershaw’s return. “I do believe in a player like Clayton, his track record, raising the level of performance, intensity to a ballclub.”
A three-time Cy Young Award winner, Kershaw, 37, is the Dodgers’ all-time leader in strikeouts and is 30 shy of becoming the 20th pitcher in big-league history to reach 3,000. His 212 career wins is second in franchise history behind only Don Sutton’s 233 and his 2.50 ERA ranks third. He also ranks third in starts (430).
But he’s spent almost as much time on the injured list as he has in the Dodgers’ rotation over the last five seasons and the list of injuries includes so many body parts, it reads like a page out of “Gray’s Anatomy.” There’s the toe, which kept him off the opening day roster. Last season it was knee, toe and shoulder injuries. In 2023, it was his left shoulder. The year before that, his back and pelvis and before that it was his forearm, elbow and back again.
Last season was clearly the most painful, though. Kershaw made seven starts and pitched just 30 innings, both career lows, and missed the World Series. Days after the team’s victory parade, he underwent surgery for torn meniscus in his left knee and another on his left foot that left him on crutches and a walking boot for two months.
“The superstar players that I have been around, there’s always something that fuels them and they need that,” Roberts said. “Him not being a part of that last year, I know that that’s fueling him.”
With Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford, Kershaw’s high school teammate, looking on, Kershaw struggled through a 38-pitch first inning, giving up a bases-loaded single to O’Hoppe and an RBI double to Matthew Lugo. But the Dodgers needed just four batters to match that with Andy Pages belting a three-run homer, his ninth of the season, to dead center in the bottom of the inning.
Taylor Ward put the Angels (19-25) back in front in the third, hitting his 11th home run. A walk, a double and a sacrifice fly from Neto extended the lead in the fourth before Kiké Hernández pulled a run back for the Dodgers with a lead-off homer, his seventh, in the bottom of the fourth.
The Dodgers went in front for the first time in the sixth, turning three walks, two hits, a stolen base, a wild pitch and a ground-ball double play into three runs and 7-5 lead that O’Hoppe erased with his 10th homer, highlighting a five-run Angel seventh inning.
Five players — O’Hoppe, Luis Rengifo, Lugo, Nolan Schanuel and Kevin Newman — had two hits each for the Angels, who will try to sweep the three-game series Sunday afternoon.
For the Dodgers, Freddie Freeman matched a season high with four hits and is batting .407 in May, raising his league-leading average to .375. Pages, Hernández and catcher Dalton Rushing each had two hits.
Shohei Ohtani, who went hitless in six at-bats for the first time this season, threw 50 pitches in his most extensive bullpen session since undergoing a second surgery on his right elbow in 2023. The up-and-down session, in which Ohtani simulated a break between innings, was his second in a week. … To make room for Kershaw on the 26-man roster the Dodgers optioned right-hander Ryan Loutos to the minors. To create space on the 40-man roster, the Dodgers moved Snell to the 60-day injured list.
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