LOS ANGELES — Clayton Kershaw’s 18th season will officially begin Saturday when he toes the rubber at Dodger Stadium to pitch in his first meaningful game in nearly nine months.
Kershaw spent the first half of last season rehabbing from shoulder surgery. He returned in late July, then made seven starts before the pain in one of his toes became too much to bear. When the Los Angeles Dodgers used recurrent bullpen games to win a championship the ensuing fall, Kershaw only watched.
These days, joining a rotation means a little more than it used to for the veteran.
“I think there’s more gratitude, honestly,” Kershaw, 37, said. “When you haven’t done something for a long time and realize that you miss being part of a team and contributing, I think there’s a lot of gratitude and gratefulness to get back to that point. I definitely feel that. Now if I go out there and don’t pitch good, it’s going to go away really fast. There’s a performance aspect to that. But I think for now, sitting on the other side of it, just super excited and grateful to go back out there again.”
Kershaw underwent surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee and a ruptured plantar plate in his left big toe in November, then signed his fourth consecutive one-year deal with the Dodgers around the start of spring training in mid-February. At that point, the Dodgers were coming off another headline-grabbing offseason, having added Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki to their rotation. Kershaw’s return was seen as superfluous. Now, it’s a necessity.
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Snell, Sasaki and Tyler Glasnow are on the IL with shoulder injuries, leaving the Dodgers with what amounts to a four-man staff that has once again required them to routinely deploy a slew of relievers rather than a traditional starter. As a result, Dodgers relievers have compiled a major-league-leading 181⅔ innings.
If minor league results are any indication, though, Kershaw could provide a legitimate boost. In five starts with three Dodgers affiliates, Kershaw posted a 2.57 ERA with 16 strikeouts and five walks in 21 innings.
“When you stop worrying about feeling bad and you start worrying about performance, I think that’s kind of when you know that you’ve turned the corner,” Kershaw said. “Those last few rehab starts, I was more concerned about throwing well and getting guys out than I was how my foot felt or anything like that. I think that was a good sign for me physically.”
Saturday’s start, against the neighboring Los Angeles Angels, will feel different to Kershaw for one reason in particular:
Austin Barnes, one of his oldest and closest friends, won’t be there for it.
The Dodgers essentially replaced Barnes with top prospect Dalton Rushing on Tuesday, ending an 11-year run in which Barnes was mostly a backup catcher but made contributions both on and off the field. Kershaw threw to Barnes for 86 of his career starts, second behind only A.J. Ellis, his close friend and trusted catcher through the first half of his career. Kershaw threw to Barnes in 45 games from 2021 to 2024, including the playoffs — eight more than he threw to the Dodgers’ primary catcher, Will Smith. His ERA with Barnes in that stretch (2.68) was nearly a run better than it was with Smith (3.65).
“I think everybody was surprised,” Kershaw said of the Dodgers designating Barnes for assignment. “You won’t find a guy who competes better than Austin Barnes. He wants to win more than anybody, and he always found a way. He came up with some big moments for us throughout the years. I think people forget he was starting a lot of playoff games, winning a lot of games for us, getting big knocks.
“It’s sad to see someone like that go who’s been there that long. I think we all kind of feel it. It’s no disrespect to Dalton; I know he deserves it. He’s going to be a great player. It’s just, for me personally and I think for a lot of guys on the team, it’s disappointing to see him go.”
Kershaw is long removed from his days of accumulating 200-plus innings and being one of the game’s most dominant forces, but he has proved to be highly effective despite losing velocity off his fastball and absorbing a litany of injuries. Among pitchers who compiled at least 400 innings from 2020 to 2023, Kershaw’s 2.67 ERA was the second lowest in the majors, slightly behind Max Fried’s 2.66.
Last season — 4.50 ERA and a career-low 18% strikeout rate — was a struggle. But it put Kershaw just 32 strikeouts away from 3,000, a milestone only 19 others have reached. Asked if he has thought about getting there, Kershaw smiled and said, “I’ve thought about Saturday a lot.”
“I’ve thought about getting back out there,” he said. “I haven’t really thought about [3,000 strikeouts] a whole lot. For me, just getting back on the mound is a big step. Then it’s the rest of the season.”
