The Los Angeles Dodgers posted a franchise-best 106 wins during the regular season only to suffer an earlier-than-anticipated postseason exit.
The club was denied a third consecutive trip to the World Series after falling to the Washington Nationals in Game 5 of the National League Division Series. That’s despite the Dodgers jumping out to an early 3-0 lead against Stephen Strasburg.
L.A. maintained control for most of the game and took a two-run advantage into the eighth inning. Clayton Kershaw returned to the mound after helping the Dodgers escape a jam in the seventh, but promptly surrendered back-to-back home runs on consecutive pitches to Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto.
It allowed the Nationals to even things up before opening the floodgates in the 10th inning when Howie Kendrick hit a game-winning grand slam off Joe Kelly. Washington went on to secure a 7-4 victory and advanced to the NL Championship Series for a matchup against the St. Louis Cardinals.
For Kershaw, the stumble was another blemish on his postseason reputation. He is now looking to move past his latest struggles with the intention of improving for the 2020 season rather than give into them, via Ken Gurnick of MLB.com:
“Every year is no fun. This year, the abruptness, the way it happened. It’s no fun. It’s not. It continues not to be. But you have two options: you can either crawl into a hole, or you can move on and try to get better for the next year. I don’t want to crawl into a hole yet, so I’m going to try to get better for next year.”
Kershaw was hard on himself after the Dodgers’ Game 5 defeat and pinned the loss squarely on his shoulders.
“Letting down the guys in the clubhouse, that’s the hardest part every year,” Kershaw said after the Game 5 loss. “It’s a terrible feeling. I had one job to do: get three outs.
“I got one out, I didn’t get the other two, they went over the fence and cost us the game. No excuses. Just didn’t make pitches.”
Kershaw made just two appearances against the Nationals in the NLDS — his fewest in a postseason series since 2015. Prior to struggling in the elimination game, he turned in a quality start in Game 2.
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