During his start last week against the San Francisco Giants, Clayton Kershaw issued a leadoff walk, his first of the spring. On Monday, Kansas City Royals third baseman Mike Moustakas hit a solo home run off Kershaw in the bottom of the first inning.
The hit and run scored were both the first Kershaw allowed this year. Remove the two occasions, and it was business as usual for the left-handed ace in his past two outings. Kershaw stretched out to four innings on Monday, then capped off his day with additional work in the bullpen.
He allowed just the one run, two hits, and had four strikeouts. Kershaw utilized his staple of pitches — fastball, curveball, slider — and incorporated a changeup he’s experimented with in past years.
According to Ken Gurnick of MLB.com, Kershaw is working to grow more confident in throwing a changeup to add a fourth pitch to his arsenal:
“I have no idea, honestly,” Kershaw said about using the pitch more. “I threw a couple today that were OK, so that’s usually how it works. You’ve got to throw some and get some good results with it to gain some confidence. That’s all pitching is, is just confidence in your pitches. If you have intent behind it, more often than not you’ll have success. For me, it’s just building up that confidence with that pitch.”
Since making his MLB debut, Kershaw’s highest usage rate of a changeup was 5.5 percent as a rookie in 2008, per FanGraphs. His next-highest, 4.3 percent, came the following season.
He’s thrown the pitch just 0.4 percent of the time in each of the past two seasons. The fastball has held as Kershaw’s pitch thrown most, the 33.3 percent usage of his slider last season was a career high.
While occasionally mixing in the changeup this spring, Kershaw has allowed just one run in 10 innings and has nine strikeouts.
