Clayton Kershaw bucked his career trends at Coors Field and J.D. Martinez reached 300 career home runs to help the Los Angeles Dodgers start their road trip with a 5-0 win over the Colorado Rockies.
Kershaw entered the night with a 4.82 ERA and .753 on-base plus slugging percentage allowed in 26 career starts at Coors Field. Both of which were career-worst marks for Kershaw in any ballpark he’s made more than two starts in.
But facing a subpar Rockies lineup yielded drastically different results. Kershaw didn’t allow a baserunner until Elias Díaz led off the bottom of the fifth with a walk.
Kershaw kept his no-hitter intact until a relatively soft line drive to the left of third base got by Max Muncy for a single with one out in the sixth inning.
Kershaw came out of the game at 79 pitches, with just two strikeouts as he pitched to soft contact for much of the night.
The Dodgers backed him with a mixture of manufacturing offense and home runs from Martinez. James Outman’s RBI single in the second inning put L.A. ahead and Miguel Rojas added a sacrifice fly.
After leaving the yard in the third, Martinez reached 300 career home runs in the sixth inning.
He joined Duke Snider (1957), Gil Hodges (1958), Gary Sheffield (2001), Adrián González (2016) and Freddie Freeman (2023) as players to hit their 300th career home run as a member of the Dodgers. Freeman accomplished the feat in a road loss to the St. Louis Cardinals.
Brusdar Graterol and Bryan Frasier both completed a scoreless inning, but Phil Bickford walked the bases loaded in the ninth. That required the Dodgers to turn to Evan Phillips with two outs.
Is Clayton Kershaw healthy?
Kershaw coming out of the game at only 79 pitches appeared to be somewhat of a curious decision, but SportsNet LA showed a replay of him signaling to the dugout he was done. The Dodgers did not announce if that was due to injury, which suggests fatigue could have been a factor.
Kershaw became the first pitcher in the National League to 10 wins this season.
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