Clayton Kershaw scattered three hits over seven shutout innings, earning his 20th career win against the San Francisco Giants. The Los Angeles Dodgers provided their ace with early run support and snapped a three-game losing streak behind a 6-1 victory.
Corey Seager’s base hit and Justin Turner’s double put two on with one out. After Johnny Cueto struck out Cody Bellinger, he surrendered a two-out, two-run double to Yasmani Grandal. While Cueto then began to exchange words with Grandal during Chris Taylor’s at-bat.
The dust-up was the first of two between Cueto and Grandal. Chase Utley led off the third inning with an infield single, which Seager followed with a line drive to right field.
Turner curiously dropped down a sacrifice bunt, though it ultimately paid off. Cueto threw up and in on Grandal, with the wild pitch scoring a run.
Grandal’s at-bat ended in a flyout, and he and Cueto again verbally sparred. Both benches cleared onto the field, though there was hardly any incident. Kershaw inadvertently played peacemaker by walking through the teams toward the mound.
His perfect game was broken up on a Justin Ruggiano one-out flare single in the fourth inning. But Kershaw induced a double play to face the minimum up to that point.
The Dodgers loaded the bases with two outs in the sixth inning. Yasiel Puig cashed it in by pulling an inside fastball into left field to extend the Dodgers’ lead to 5-0. Kershaw surrendered his second hit of the game to Nick Hundley on a looper just over Seager’s leaping attempt.
Seager worked a one-out walk in the seventh inning. Two batters later, Josh Osich gave up an RBI double to Cody Bellinger. He benefitted from Michael Morse inexplicably struggling to track a relatively routine fly ball to the warning track in left field.
Buster Posey’s line-drive base hit was the Giants’ lone well-struck ball against Kershaw on the afternoon. Morse flied out harmlessly to end the inning.
Kershaw finished with five strikeouts, some of which came on a slider that was thrown at lower velocity and with improved movement. He improved to 90-0 during the regular season when provided with at least four runs of support.
Pedro Baez turned in a scoreless inning and Sergio Romo allowed a solo home run to Eduardo Nuñez before finishing out the game to salvage the Dodgers’ series and road trip.
