SAN DIEGO — The windup looks the same, his arms stretching toward the sky and one leg paused in mid-air before delivery. The stuff coming out does not.
In his second start since returning from shoulder surgery, Clayton Kershaw was roughed up by the San Diego Padres for seven runs and failed to get through four innings in an 8-1 loss for the Dodgers on Wednesday night.
The surging Padres completed a sweep of the two-game series and have won nine of their past 10 games. The Dodgers finished with a losing record in July (11-13), their first losing calendar month since they went 2-3 in October 2022.
The combination has pulled the Padres to within 4½ games of the Dodgers in the National League West – the smallest the Dodgers’ lead has been since May 4.
When Kershaw made his comeback start against the San Francisco Giants last Thursday, he allowed six hits in four innings – but he also struck out six and got 14 swings-and-misses in all, eight on his slider.
There was none of that against the Padres. He didn’t strike out a batter – the first time in his career that Kershaw started a regular-season game and didn’t record a strikeout. He didn’t get a swing-and-miss until his 23rd pitch (a slider to Padres catcher Luis Campusano) and got just one more (on the 81st of his 83 pitches).
In his four innings against the Giants, Kershaw’s fastball averaged 90.6 mph – in line with his average fastball over the three seasons before shoulder surgery. Against the Padres, it dipped below 90 mph.
Kershaw’s troubles started in the second inning when the Padres scored four times on three singles, a walk and a wild pitch. Kershaw could have limited the damage but he fumbled Bryce Johnson’s squeeze bunt, allowing a run to score and extending the inning for Jurickson Profar’s two-out RBI single.
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He retired the side in the third but gave up a one-out home run to Campusano in the fourth and then singles to Johnson and Profar wrapped around an error by second baseman Gavin Lux. After Xander Bogaerts drove in the third run of the inning with a sacrifice fly, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts pulled Kershaw rather than have him face Manny Machado for the third time in four innings.
Four of the Padres’ runs off Kershaw were unearned, still leaving him with a 5.87 ERA after two starts. More troubling perhaps, the two lineups he has faced have batted .333 (12 for 36) against him.
Padres starter Dylan Cease was making his first start since pitching a no-hitter against the Washington Nationals and a three-start stretch in which he allowed a total of two hits in 22 innings. Cease was not as dominant. He only went 5⅔ innings and needed 101 pitches (only 59 strikes) to do that.
But the Dodgers managed just one run against him on an RBI double by Lux in the third inning. They struck out six times against Cease and four more times in 3⅓ hitless innings against the Padres’ bullpen.
While losing four of the first five games on this road trip (which continues in Oakland this weekend), the Dodgers’ depleted lineup has managed 31 hits while striking out 66 times.
More to come on this story.
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