They’ve played 18 respective big-league seasons. They’ve combined for nearly 6,500 strikeouts and 435 career wins. They each have two World Series titles, and three Cy Young Awards. And one day, they’ll share immortal plaques in Cooperstown, future first-ballot Hall of Famers who defined their generation of pitchers.
For Clayton Kershaw and Max Scherzer, there’s nothing left to prove.
That doesn’t mean, however, that there’s nothing left to play for.
On Friday night at Dodger Stadium, in a pitcher’s duel that saw both veteran aces turn in vintage performances, two players who have meant so much to the sport’s past found themselves in the center of its present.
They were both pitching for first-place teams. They were both effective despite their diminished stuff. They were both wrapped up in what felt like a pivotal game at the start of each team’s late-season push.
“I think it’s going to be kind of quiet intensity from both of them,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said before the game. “I think that they both are obviously great competitors.”
And in the Dodgers’ 5-1 win over Scherzer and the Toronto Blue Jays, it was Kershaw who proved to be a fraction better.
Over his six innings, the 37-year-old left-hander navigated traffic and limited damage, giving up seven hits and one walk, but only one run, thanks to four well-timed strikeouts and three crucial double-plays turned behind him.
The 41-year-old Scherzer, meanwhile, saw what had been a scoreless night shattered in the span of two swings in the fifth, with Shohei Ohtani hitting a two-out double before Mookie Betts belted a go-ahead, two-run homer.
The Dodgers (67-49) eventually pulled away late, scoring three times against the Blue Jays’ bullpen in the seventh.
But up until then, the night’s two starting pitchers were hardly separable.
“I don’t know,” Roberts said, “if you’re gonna see this one again.”
Early on, Scherzer appeared to be the one on the ropes. In the first, the Dodgers loaded the bases against him on two singles and a walk. Scherzer appeared to be battling his command, missing the zone on seven of 14 pitches at one point. And the side was only retired after Teoscar Hernández missed a couple of fastballs left over the heart of the plate, before eventually striking out on a slider in the dirt.
Kershaw, by comparison, needed only 11 pitches in a clean opening inning.
From there, however, the tables started to turn.
Kershaw quickly ran into trouble in the second. Bo Bichette hit a squibber past Freddie Freeman for a leadoff double. The Blue Jays (68-49) opened the scoring on Addison Barger’s RBI single off a hanging two-strike curveball. Two more base hits from Ty France and Daulton Varsho loaded the bases. Kershaw escaped the jam, but only with the help of a diving play by Betts at shortstop, who snared a line drive from Myles Straw before doubling off France at second for an inning-ending double-play.
Kershaw encountered more traffic in the third (working around a Davis Schneider leadoff single), the fourth (when Barger’s one-out hit was erased by a France double-play grounder), the fifth (when second baseman Alex Freeland helped strand a runner with a sprinting catch in shallow right field) and the sixth (when a leadoff walk to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was canceled out by yet another double-play grounder).
But after getting through each new threat unscathed, he ended his 74-pitch night with a 3.14 season earned-run average — the lowest it has been since late June.
Scherzer, meanwhile, bounced back from his shaky first inning by finding a midgame groove. Starting with his strikeout of Hernández, he retired nine consecutive batters. And even after Andy Pages led off the fifth with a single, it appeared Scherzer had caught a break, with Pages getting doubled-off at first base on a Freeland pop-up after getting back to the bag late following an attempted steal of second.
Five pitches later, though, Scherzer hung a 2-and-2 slider that Ohtani drove to right field for a ground-rule double. Then Betts came to the plate and continued his recent — and long-awaited — turnaround offensively, ambushing a first-pitch slider for his first home run since July 5.
Since a career-worst 0-for-22 skid ended Tuesday, Betts is six-for-his-last-11 with three extra-base hits and, just as encouragingly, one walk to zero strikeouts.
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