Kershaw motivated against Cards
Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw will start game of the National League Division Series tonight against St. Louis.
Cardinals manager Mike Matheny celebrates with Adam Wainwright after clinching the National League Central Division title Sunday.
The last time the Los Angeles Dodgers faced the St. Louis Cardinals in the playoffs, Clayton Kershaw had a terrible outing and the Dodgers were bounced out of the postseason.
A year later and a round earlier, Kershaw has a chance to erase the memories of that 9-0 loss in Game 6 when he starts Friday’s NL Division Series opener against Adam Wainwright.
“That’s the hardest part about it. Your season ends,” Kershaw said Thursday before the Dodgers worked out. “It always hangs with you until your next start. I had to wait a long time for that next one.”
Kershaw is coming off another award-worthy regular season in which he went 21-3 and his 1.77 ERA led the major leagues for the fourth straight year. He was 10-2 with a 1.70 ERA at home, too.
Wainwright hasn’t been nearly as successful at Chavez Ravine. The right-hander is 1-3 with a 4.30 ERA in seven games, including six starts.
“I pay no mind to what happened in the regular season,” Wainwright said. “Obviously, Clayton had an amazing regular season and now we go to the postseason and it’s anybody’s ballgame. This is one game for the rest of your lives every day, so we’ll take that mindset and be ready.”
Wainwright had the third-best ERA in the National League at 2.38 this season, and was even better on the road at 1.72. But in a season in which Kershaw has been so dominant, the Cardinals’ ace can’t help but be somewhat of an afterthought.
“I’m more impressed that, what is he 26 years old, that he’s had the career he’s already had and is the pitcher he is already,” the 33-year-old Wainwright said. “Most times it takes a pitcher a few years to kind of break in and then he starts finding his own, and he’s just been excellent from the very beginning.”
Kershaw missed a handful of starts with a bad back in April, and after pitching late into the postseason a year ago, the injury provided him some welcome rest. Manager Don Mattingly said the team was looking for ways to reduce Kershaw’s innings anyway, and the schedule kicked in some extra help late last month.
“I don’t know if that’s going to make a difference or not,” Kershaw said. “I feel pretty much the same health-wise as I did last year. Arm feels great. Strength, everything physically feels really good.”
The San Francisco Giants and Washington Nationals both missed the postseason last year. That’s pretty much where the similarities end heading into Friday’s NL Division Series opener.
Bruce Bochy has managed the Giants to two of the past four World Series championships. Nationals skipper Matt Williams is about to lead a team in the playoffs for the first time.
The Giants have won eight consecutive postseason games, including an 8-0 wild-card victory at Pittsburgh on Wednesday night.
The NL East champion Nationals, most of whom have never won a playoff series, spent Wednesday at their home ballpark playing an intrasquad scrimmage between groups they dubbed “The Face-Eaters” a reference to Jayson Werth’s 2013 comment about showing up for a game “ready to eat somebody’s face” and “Team Alpha.”
It was dressed up to look and sound like the real thing: Fake crowd noise was piped in; videos were shown on the scoreboard; the game-day PA announcer introduced players; rookie reliever Aaron Barrett even sang the national anthem.
“All in all, it was good camaraderie and good competition and got the juices flowing a little bit, which is what was needed,” reliever Tyler Clippard said, referring to the four-day break the Nationals will have had between Sunday’s regular-season finale and the series start. “It was a game situation. We in this clubhouse are very competitive people, and want to beat each other just as bad as we want to beat everybody else.”