Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw tries to put Game 3 debacle behind him

If Wednesday’s game turns out to be Clayton Kershaw’s last in a Dodgers uniform, it won’t help tarnish his legacy, teammate Mookie Betts said.

“He’s going to have a statue, so we have to keep that in mind,” Betts said. “In the grand scheme of things, Kershaw is a first-ballot Hall of Famer, one of the best pitchers to ever pitch.

“So if you let two innings ruin that, then you don’t know baseball.”

But, Betts admitted, Kershaw’s relief appearance in Game 3 of the National League Division Series was tough to watch. Over those two innings, he allowed six hits, five runs, walked three and struck out no batters, turning a close game into an 8-2 rout for the Philadelphia Phillies, who avoided elimination and extended the best-of-five series to a fourth game on Thursday.

“He just didn’t have a good slider tonight,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “Clayton throws his slider. He was working behind it too. The command wasn’t there tonight.”

Clayton Kershaw bends over during a tough eighth inning.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Kershaw, who was 11-2 as a starter during the regular season, was left off the wild-card list and hadn’t pitched for nine days when he began warming up in the sixth inning Wednesday. He hadn’t gone this long between appearances all year.

“I did everything I could in the meantime,” he said. “It’s been a while but, you know, I threw away [off] flat ground as best I could. It wasn’t there tonight.

This was evident from the first batter he faced. Kershaw, who walked a batter every 3.2 innings during the regular season, threw three straight balls to Trea Turner before giving up a single. He would give up two more walks, including one intentional, in the inning, but escaped any damage thanks to a poor base-running decision by the Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber and a nice catch by right fielder Teoscar Hernández.

But with Tanner Scott unavailable for personal reasons and Alex Vesia having already pitched twice in the Series, Roberts had few other good options against the left-handed Phillies. So he sent Kershaw in for the eighth and that’s when things really got out of hand.

JT Realmuto started the inning and drove Kershaw’s second pitch – a slider – over the wall in left center. The Phillies would send eight more men to the plate in the inning, scoring four more times, including two on Schwarber’s second homer of the evening.

Kershaw threw first-pitch strikes to just four of the 14 batters he faced and missed the zone with 26 of the 48 total pitches he threw. That won’t stop the Dodgers from building a statue of him when he retires this fall, but it also hasn’t brought him any closer to a second consecutive World Series ring.

“I wasn’t throwing strikes, and it’s hard to fall behind in the count,” he said.

Kershaw said he felt good physically, but added: “I just couldn’t find it.”

That hasn’t been a problem for Philadelphia’s lineup leaders, who have had little success in the first two games of the series. The Phillies’ first four hitters – Turner, Schwarber, Bryce Harper and Alex Bohm combined for just three hits, all singles – in 27 at-bats, striking out 12 times. They matched that hit total against Dodger starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto in the span of 11 pitches in the fourth inning Wednesday, with Schwarber homering to the roof of the right-field pavilion and Harper and Bohm following with singles.

They finished the night nine for 16 with five runs scored and five RBIs, with Schwarber’s two homers traveling a total of 863 feet.

“We just had a quick little meeting. Nothing crazy, but just focus on the game and winning today,” Turner said. “We all know we were a bit rushed as a group in the first two games and wanted to win so bad.”

If Turner and the Phillies win again on Thursday, the series returns to Philadelphia and raucous Citizens Bank Park — where the Phillies had baseball’s best home record — for a deciding Game 5 on Saturday. If the Dodgers win, they will advance to the NL Championship Series, where Kershaw could have the chance to end his career on a more resounding note than the clunker he played on Wednesday.

“That’s the great thing about baseball,” he said. “You get a new game every day.”