Clayton Kershaw is nowhere near as dominant as he was from 2011 to ’17, when he went 118-41 with a 2.10 earned-run average in 207 starts and won three National League Cy Young Awards and a most valuable player award.
But even at 35, with a sometimes balky back and nearly 2,700 innings on his odometer, the Dodgers left-hander has been the clear-cut ace of an injury-ravaged rotation that lost Walker Buehler to Tommy John surgery, Dustin May to a major forearm injury and has been without Julio Urías (left hamstring strain) for a month.
“I don’t know where we’d be [without him] given the injuries we have,” manager Dave Roberts said before the game. “He’s a stalwart, the glue, our horse.”
The Dodgers rode Kershaw for six uneven innings Wednesday night, and Kershaw kept them in the race against the Chicago White Sox, giving up two runs and six hits, striking out five, walking two and escaping three difficult jams over the course of 97 pitches.
Kershaw was in line for a win when the Dodgers rallied for four runs in the sixth to take a two-run lead, but the relievers were torched for six runs in the final two innings of an 8-4 loss in front of 44,442 at Dodger Stadium. The bullpen ERA rose to 4.90, second worst in the majors.
Dodgers right-hander Yency Almonte breezed through a one-two-three seventh, giving Roberts the confidence he could coax another inning out of the reliever. But Eloy Jimenez doubled to lead off the eighth, and Jake Burger drove a two-run homer high off the left-field foul pole to tie the score 4-4.
Left-hander Alex Vesia replaced Almonte and hit Andrew Benintendi with a pitch. Benintendi took second on a wild pitch and scored on Clint Frazier’s single to center for a 5-4 lead. Jimenez added an RBI single off Tayler Scott, and Benintendi hit a two-run single off Victor González in the top of the ninth.
The stadium was plunged into darkness by a brief power outage before the bottom of the ninth, but the lights returned and Kendall Graveman closed out the win for the White Sox.
Kershaw grooved a 92-mph fastball to Burger, who drove a solo homer to right-center field in the second inning for a 1-0 White Sox lead, and Kershaw failed to bury a 74-mph curve to Luis Robert Jr., who golfed the pitch into the left-field pavilion for a 2-0 lead in the third.
But Kershaw escaped a bases-loaded, two-out jam in the second by getting Tim Anderson to ground to third and a second-and-third, two-out jam in the fourth by making a nice play on Anderson’s dribbler in front of the mound, charging the ball, grabbing it with his bare hand and firing to first to end the inning.
With two on and no outs in the sixth, Kershaw struck out Yasmani Grandal and Frazier and got Elvis Andrus to ground out to keep it close.
The Dodgers rallied for four runs in the bottom of the sixth, a wild inning that began with singles by David Peralta, Chris Taylor and Jason Heyward and included a run-scoring throwing error by Chicago right fielder Frazier, an RBI fielder’s-choice grounder by Austin Barnes and the ejection of White Sox manager Pedro Grifol.
Mookie Betts capped the rally with a two-run single to right field off former teammate Joe Kelly to give the Dodgers a 4-2 lead.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.