Clayton Kershaw says he isn’t a fan of the All-Star ‘counting’ after taking loss
CINCINNATI — Clayton Kershaw emerged from the home clubhouse at Great American Ballpark on Tuesday night showered, scrubbed and with a smile on his face.
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“It was fun until I started giving up runs,” the Los Angeles Dodgers ace said.
Pitch in enough of these Midsummer Classics and you’re bound to get tagged for a few runs. The American League finally caught up with Kershaw during his fifth straight appearance, tagging him for two runs, three hits and a walk in the top of the fifth inning. The outing was the worst All-Star appearance of his career — he came into Tuesday’s with two hits and a walk over four scoreless All-Star innings — and left him credited with the loss as the National League fell 6-3.
Afterward, a reporter threw him a life preserver by asking if his routine was thrown off by pitching middle relief instead of starting. Kershaw threw it right back.
“I felt fine,” he said. “I wasn’t really worried [about where I was coming in]. I was just trying to get people out.”
Kershaw started the inning by giving up a single, but then recovered by forcing a fielder’s choice with the dangerous Mike Trout at the plate. A warning-track flyout to Baltimore’s Manny Machado went for the second out and it appeared as if Kershaw’s night would be a scoreless one.
But Kershaw followed by issuing a walk to Albert Pujols, which brought Prince Fielder to the plate. Kershaw quickly put the Texas Rangers slugger in an 0-2 hole, but Fielder responded with a single to left that brought Trout home. Kansas City’s Lorenzo Cain followed with a double that scored Pujols and the American League was on its way to its third straight All-Star win.
Kershaw, of course, wasn’t even supposed to be here in Cincinnati. After being undeservedly snubbed in the selection process, Kershaw lost the final vote to Carlos Martinez of the St. Louis Cardinals. He was looking at his first true All-Star break since 2010 until Max Scherzer dropped out of the game and Kershaw was tabbed as his replacement with a 6-6 record, a 2.85 ERA and a league-leading 160 strikeouts.
Now Kershaw faces the odd prospect of being one of the main reasons the 51-39 first-place Dodgers have a shot at the league’s best record while also facing the possibility of being partly responsible for the Dodgers opening the World Series on the road.
“It’s not something I think about,” said Kershaw when asked on whether homefield advantage was something he thought about before his appearance. “It’s not really my favorite thing in the world that they determine homefield advantage [with the winner] but I understand why they do it.”
Kershaw said he’d take a couple of days off and then refocus on the second half, which begins with the Dodgers on a 10-game trip through the Nationals, Braves and Mets.
Looking at him, the inning didn’t seem like anything that would stick with Kershaw long. With five straight All-Star appearances, the 27-year-old is already more than halfway to matching Hall of Fame pitchers like Greg Maddux and Nolan Ryan for All-Star appearances (each have eight, well behind career leader Warren Spahn with 14 rosters).
Simply getting here that many times isn’t easy for a pitcher.
“I said it before: I have no pride in how I get there,” Kershaw told Dodgers beat reporters on Sunday. “You get to go to the All-Star game. I don’t care if I was the batboy, as long as I get to make it there. It’s a special time. You look back on all those, nobody will remember you were a replacement of a replacement that didn’t win the fan vote.”
Nor will anybody remember Kershaw as Tuesday’s losing pitcher in a day or so.
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Kevin Kaduk is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KevinKaduk
