Clayton Kershaw is starting to age like a fine wine, and it showed on Tuesday with him retiring 14 hitters in a row to complete five dominant innings in a win against the Cincinnati Reds.
His night did begin on a sour note, allowing the Reds to take the first lead and prompting the Dodgers to attempt another comeback win, which they did successfully. Kershaw spoke with Kirsten Watson of SportsNet LA post-game about how he was able to find his groove after being rattled in the first inning, ultimately leading him to finish August with a perfect 5-0 record and ERA below 2. Although he collected a month-high six strikeouts, he admitted that his stuff just wasn’t there.
“It wasn’t a great night stuff-wise. I didn’t have a lot of life on the fastball, or really anything. Will did a good job. We flipped the script and started throwing a lot of different stuff trying to be creative… Fortunate to make it through five.“
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The expectation for Wednesday’s series finale is that Shohei Ohtani will complete five innings of work on the mound, something that has alluded him the first two times he’s pitched in the fifth inning this year, notes Doug Padilla of the Orange County Register.
“It’s big,” Roberts said. “… Tomorrow’s going to be a nice afternoon and I expect him to go out there and get through five innings.”
Alex Call was a late-game replacement during Tuesday’s win, and then needed his own replacement after scoring on a Miguel Rojas double. Dave Roberts spoke to the media after the game where he discussed why Call was removed, downplaying the possibility of any serious injury.
“Something happened with his lower back. He says he’s played through worse, but my hope was to get him in there for tomorrow. I wanted to get him out of the game, get Dean in there, and we’ll see how he responds to treatment tomorrow. I don’t think it’s too concerning.”
On a positive note, Tommy Edman discussed his recovery from injury with Kirsten Watson of SportsNet LA prior to Tuesday’s game, where he noted how his return would have him situated more in the outfield.
“I didn’t really play much outfield in the last couple months before the injury. Part of that was feeling like I didn’t have the full speed and that first step to be able to play out there effectively… As the end of the season comes closer, and the playoffs, there’s a lot of weird situations that can happen, so I gotta be prepared to play both infield and outfield.”