Astros turned tables on Kershaw in Game 5
HOUSTON — Clayton Kershaw returned to the dugout and sat down after one of the worst performances of his major league career. A few minutes later, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ lead gone, he buried his head in his hands.
In the opener, he conjured memories of Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Orel Hershiser.
In Game 5, he had an outing to forget.
Expected to dominate the Houston Astros and move the Dodgers within a win of their first World Series title since 1988, Kershaw wasted a four-run lead and was chased in the fifth inning of a crushing 1312, 10-inning loss on Sunday night. Los Angeles headed home in a 3-2 World Series deficit.
“I just lost my command a little bit there in that fourth inning,” he said softly in the quiet clubhouse, “and, yeah, that’s all it took.”
A three-time NL Cy Young Award winner and five-time NL ERA champion, Kershaw is likely a first-ballot Hall of Famer. The 29-year-old lefthander hoped this October would be the crowning achievement of his career, a ring to fill the emotional hole left by a string of October exits.
Los Angeles provided Kershaw a 4-0 lead. He had faced the minimum nine batters through three innings, allowing only a single. The Dodgers had been 19-0 this year when scoring at least four runs in a game started by Kershaw, and this seemed a likely No. 20.
“He was rolling. He was throwing the ball well, good rhythm,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said
But Kershaw walked George Springer leading off the bottom of the fourth, Jose Altuve singled of a slider with one out and Carlos Correa hit an RBI double off a fastball. Yuli Gurriel’s no-doubt, three-run homer to left, a crushed first-pitch slider, jolted most of the orange-clad crowd of 43,300 outs of the seats. A shocked Kershaw whipped around to watch the ball fly.
“I just think of different pitches that you want to have back. Obviously, I don’t want to walk Springer to lead off an inning,” Kershaw said. “Altuve hit a OK pitch, but Correa hit one that — maybe I shouldn’t have thrown that pitch again. But it was an off-the-plate. He did a good job with it.”
As the bats where wheeled out of the clubhouse for the charter flight back to Los Angeles, Yasiel Puig said there was no doubt the Dodgers will win Game 6.
“This is not going to be finished Tuesday. It’s going to be Game 7,” said Puig, whose two-run homer sparked a three-run comeback in the ninth that sent the game to extra innings.