The Cincinnati Reds had an aggressive approach against Clayton Kershaw in the first inning on Tuesday night and jumped out to a 1-0 lead before he could settle in.
Kershaw wound up holding the Reds to just the one run but only completed five innings despite throwing just 72 pitches.
“It wasn’t a great night stuff-wise. I didn’t have a lot of stuff, didn’t have a lot of life on the fastball, or really anything,” Kershaw said after the Dodgers’ 41st comeback win of the season.
“Will (Smith) did a good job. We kind of flipped the script and just started kind of throwing a lot of different stuff, trying to be creative, keep them off balance, because it wasn’t coming out so good. Fortunate to make it through five. It’s obviously not as deep as you want to get, but thankfully with Shee last night, our bullpen was fresh and we have the off day on Thursday.
“So it kind of worked out for us. Bullpen did a great job and we got the win.”
Despite Kershaw not being pleased with the overall feel for his pitches, the start ended with a streak of 14 consecutive batters retired. That success, coupled with the low pitch count, normally would amount to Kershaw trying to lobby his way into remaining in the game.
“It was pretty evident it wasn’t going to be a long night for me,” Kershaw said. “Doc recognized that and made the right call, for sure.”
Another factor and reason behind Kershaw’s shortened start was the outing came on four days of rest. It represented just the third time Kershaw pitched under such circumstances this season, with the two prior instances coming during a stretch of four starts between May 23 and June 8.
“We knew we were asking a lot of him. He just competed like he always does,” manager Dave Roberts said.
“You could see early on he didn’t have his best stuff, but he found a way to use all of his pitches and he got really creative with a lot more splits and curveballs arm side, just kind of doing different things to get them off the scent. Six strikeouts, no walks, efficient and got us through five. For me, that was huge. I felt we pushed him enough tonight.”
Dave Roberts sees different Clayton Kershaw
Along with the future Hall of Famer now being more amenable to managing his workload, Roberts has noticed Kershaw also having an increased willingness to adjust when necessary.
“I’ve seen growth in that sense. I think when you have the track record that he has, you can sort of go to your strengths all the time and you seem to always find success doing it that way, just in the last couple years he’s been more open to doing different things,” Roberts explained.
“I commend him for that. I think in that fourth inning, it didn’t matter what Will was putting down, he felt like he could throw anything. That was really rare and cool to see.”
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