Mets mesmerized by Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw, who earns 200th win of career
Los Angeles Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw, left, celebrates as he strikes out Mets' Tommy Pham to end the top of the seventh inning of a baseball game Tuesday, April 18, 2023, in Los Angeles. Credit: Mark J. Terrill
LOS ANGELES — The Mets didn’t do anything particularly well Tuesday night in a 5-0 loss to the Dodgers, but even with more efficient pitching, sharper defense or better baserunning, their fate might not have changed.
They got stuck facing classic Clayton Kershaw, who collected the 200th win of his career with a masterpiece: seven shutout innings, three hits, no walks, nine strikeouts.
Perhaps the best pitcher of his generation — with his closest competitors Mets aces Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander — Kershaw (3-1, 2.52 ERA) simply dominated, as he so often has over the past decade and a half. Even at 35, Kershaw doing this did not register as a surprise to the Mets, whose five-game win streak ended.
“There’s a reason he’s going to be a Hall of Famer,” Brandon Nimmo said. “There’s a reason he’s still in the game.”
Mark Canha added: “He’s one of the greats.”
And Tylor Megill, a Southern California native (and former Angels fan): “He’s a legend . . . Growing up watching him pitch, that’s what it’s all about.”
Kershaw regularly has owned the Mets. In 17 regular-season starts against them, he is 11-0 with a 2.03 ERA. (The notable exception: The Mets beat Kershaw in Game 1 of the 2015 NL Division Series. He beat them back in Game 4 before the Mets won the series.)
In his final frame this time, the Mets (11-7) actually brought the tying run to the plate. Canha singled on the 13th pitch of his at-bat — which was as long or longer than five of Kershaw’s innings — and Jeff McNeil singled to put runners on the corners with two outs.
But after falling behind Tommy Pham 2-and-0, Kershaw struck him out swinging on a slider just below the strike zone. That elicited screams from the 46,884 in attendance — most of whom had risen to their feet — who came to watch on a random early-season weeknight at Dodger Stadium.
“I felt the tension building,” Canha said of his marathon plate appearance. “I got winded by the end of it because I’m swinging every pitch. It’s almost like OK, swing, take a deep breath, get back in the box, go, go . . . The stimulus is going up higher and higher and higher because your heart rate is going up and you’re trying to catch your breath and the crowd is really into it because he’s at the end of his outing.”
That served as an appropriate bookend to an outing that also began with Kershaw dominating. The first batter of the game, Nimmo, shot a line drive to rightfield, where it bounced off the glove of Jason Heyward as he fell. By the time he crawled after it and threw it to the infield, Nimmo was on third base, 90 feet from scoring.
Kershaw struck out Starling Marte (swinging at a curveball), Francisco Lindor (also swinging at a curveball) and Pete Alonso (swinging at a fastball) in succession. Nine years removed from the most recent of his three Cy Young Awards, Kershaw revved it up to 92 mph for the last pitch of that sequence, then threw only two harder fastballs the rest of the night.
“That would’ve been nice to get a run there,” Nimmo said. “He’s lost a little velo but he’s gained a little bit of ride. That also is hard to hit. He’s substituted one thing for another and adapted well.”
The Mets didn’t manage another baserunner until the fourth when Lindor singled, their first hit, on a ground ball to shortstop Miguel Rojas. Kershaw retired another 10 consecutive batters before Canha ended that run, but never scored a run, in the seventh.
Megill limited the Dodgers (9-9) to three runs despite allowing seven hits and four walks in five innings. J.D. Martinez (4-for-5, four RBIs) homered twice.
With Kershaw on the mound, even one was enough.
“He’s been doing it for a long time,” manager Buck Showalter said.
Canha said: “There’s something about what he does — the tempo, the release point, the extension, all the things that make him who he is. When he’s on, he’s on. It’s tough.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
