LOS ANGELES — His teammates were reeling, their bitter rivals were surging, and the division was slipping. Under those circumstances, Clayton Kershaw — clearly diminished but still every bit as determined — came through.
With the Los Angeles Dodgers riding a four-game losing streak and hosting a San Diego Padres team that had won five straight and made up 10 games in a span of six weeks, Kershaw fired six innings of one-run ball Friday night, cutting through the tension of a keyed-up series to set the tone in a 3-2 victory at Dodger Stadium.
The National League West, a division the Dodgers led by nine games just six weeks earlier, is tied once more. The Padres and Dodgers will play five more games against each other over the next nine days.
“We had the right guy on the mound tonight,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I think we all know that.”
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Kershaw made his debut with the Dodgers’ 2025 rotation around the middle of May, after fully recovering from offseason knee and foot surgeries, and helped stabilize a group that once again found itself beset by injuries. His initial results were merely decent — a 3.62 ERA in 12 starts, with 39 strikeouts and 18 walks in 59⅔ innings — but his availability was vital.
Over the past few weeks, as the Dodgers’ rotation has stabilized, Kershaw has tapped into another level.
All three of his starts this month have seen him go six innings while combining to allow just two runs. On Friday night, the only damage against him was a Ramon Laureano solo homer that clanged off the left-field foul pole. Kershaw featured a sharper-than-usual slider and allowed just two other baserunners while requiring only 76 pitches to complete 18 outs. Fifteen starts into his age-37 season, he is 7-2 with a 3.01 ERA.
“It’s just what you’re supposed to do,” Kershaw said of being at his best lately. “As a starter, you’re supposed to pitch well. And when it’s your turn, step up. And our rotation is getting healthier. We got a lot of guys that can throw the ball really well, so I just want to do my part.”
Friday began with the news that Max Muncy, the Dodgers’ everyday third baseman and a critical middle-of-the-order bat, was nursing an oblique strain that would keep him out for the next several weeks. Muncy joined Tommy Edman, Enrique Hernandez and Hyeseong Kim on the injured list, prompting a rookie (Alex Freeland) and a journeyman (Buddy Kennedy) to fill in. The bullpen, meanwhile, was already down as many as six high-leverage relievers, severely limiting Roberts’ options to hold leads late.
The Dodgers desperately needed Kershaw’s six innings. But they also needed the contributions from Teoscar Hernandez, who was carrying a .673 OPS since the start of July but provided a critical insurance run with a seventh-inning homer. And they badly needed the production from their bullpen, where five relievers combined to allow one run over the last three innings.
With Roberts unwilling to bring Kershaw back out for another inning, Ben Casparius successfully tackled the middle of the Padres’ lineup in the top of the seventh. The Padres then threatened in the eighth against Alex Vesia, loading the bases on a couple of hit by pitches and a walk and cutting their deficit to one on Luis Arraez’s sacrifice fly. With two on, two outs and Manny Machado due up, Roberts turned to his best weapon, Blake Treinen, and watched him induce an inning-ending popout on one pitch.
Alexis Diaz, the former All-Star closer discarded by the Cincinnati Reds, and Jack Dreyer, the rookie left-hander who has been a godsend this season, closed it out in the ninth.
“It was a high-intensity game,” Roberts said. “It was certainly kind of tempered as far as internally, but I think that I could see it as far as on the field. I could feel it. Our focus was keen. They pitched really well. I thought we pitched really well. It was just a well-played ballgame.”
The last time the Dodgers and Padres faced off, it was the middle of June, amid a stretch in which they played seven games in 11 days against each other — on the heels of a tense NL Division Series the previous October. The Dodgers won five of those games, including three of four at Dodger Stadium. The four-game set in Los Angeles featured eight hit by pitches, half of which were dispersed to Fernando Tatis Jr. and Shohei Ohtani. The finale saw Roberts shove Padres manager Mike Shildt while both dugouts and bullpens emptied.
At that point, the Dodgers were five games better than the Padres and seemed poised to cruise to a 12th division title in 13 years. The next two weeks only fortified that belief. Then the Dodgers navigated through one of their driest spells in years, losing 22 of 31 games after July 3 — including all three at Angel Stadium earlier this week. The bullpen was a mess, the offense was inconsistent, and the Padres, buoyed by a string of trade-deadline acquisitions from their aggressive general manager, were riding a high.
For one night, at least, Kershaw and his teammates put a stop to that.
“It just takes one to get going,” Kershaw said. “Hopefully this was it tonight for us.”
