Los Angeles Dodgers: Why the Clayton Kershaw criticism is overblown
Los Angeles Dodgers Clayton Kershaw had another disappointing outing in Wednesday’s NLDS game against the Nationals. He should not be taking all the blame.
This is going to sound like a Clayton Kershaw-apologist story to some, but that’s okay. Some explanation needs to be brought forward after the Los Angeles Dodgers ace’s latest poor postseason performance.
The fact of the matter is, the Los Angeles Dodgers have used Kershaw in lose-lose situations in many of his career postseason outings. The Los Angeles Dodgers’ staff has done themselves, Kershaw and their fans a disservice for almost 10 years.
According to Kershaw’s Baseball-Reference page, the future Hall of Famer has appeared in one game with three days of rest in his career, a relief outing in which he faced five batters. Kershaw has also come out of the bullpen just three times in the regular season in 10 years, totaling four innings.
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Counting his third of an inning blown save Wednesday against the Washington Nationals, Kershaw has now pitched in 10 games on three days of rest or less in the postseason. Of the 32 appearances made in the postseason, Kershaw has now appeared as a reliever seven times.
While Kershaw’s 3.21 ERA over 42 innings pitched on short rest in the playoffs is above adequate, it’s much lower than his career ERA of 2.44. His 5.63 ERA coming out of the bullpen is the obvious problem, but not all of the blame can be put on Kershaw.
Look, people will make the argument that a great pitcher should be able to pitch well no matter the circumstances, those people are wrong. Pitchers are creatures of habit, especially starting pitchers in today’s game.
With his game missing an overpowering fastball, Kershaw needs to rely on pinpoint accuracy and lots of movement on his breaking pitches this late into his career, and those are tough for a pitcher to just harness at will when your routine is broken. The game is more hitter-friendly than ever, and the lineups in the playoffs are usually the best in the game year in and year out, it’s nearly impossible to consistently shut them down without your best stuff.
And the thing is, Kershaw has had more outings of success than failure in the postseason. Of the 15 runs given up on short rest, 13 of them have come in three outings and all five of his runs working out of relief have come in three outings.
Just during these Division Series games we’ve seen some of the best pitchers in the game struggle on short rest and coming out of the bullpen. Justin Verlander gave up four runs to the Tampa Bay Rays in 3.2 innings in Game 4 of the ALDS on three days rest. And in the same NLDS that Kershaw is getting so much attention for, Patrick Corbin gave up six earned runs in two-thirds of an inning.
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One of the greatest pitchers the game has ever seen has certainly struggled at times in the playoffs, but Kershaw has been placed in situations where if he falters he will harness all the blame and if he succeeds he will be told that’s what he was supposed to do.