The St. Louis Cardinals, it seems, got under Clayton Kershaw’s skin Sunday afternoon.
Kershaw led the Los Angeles Dodgers to a 7-3 win on Sunday in Missouri. He had seven strikeouts and didn’t give up a run in five innings on the mound. It marked the 37-year-old’s first seven-strikeout game since 2023.
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But before the contest at Busch Stadium, the Cardinals’ video team opted to play a video from more than a decade ago that featured Kershaw. The Cardinals showed Matt Adams hitting a go-ahead three-run homer off Kershaw in Game 4 of the National League Division Series in 2014. That helped lead the Cardinals to a 3-2 win that day and eliminated the Dodgers from the postseason.
Kershaw took notice of the video stunt, and he wasn’t happy.
“It’s a little bush league, but I don’t expect anything less from these guys,” Kershaw said, via The Los Angeles Times. “So it’s no worries. No problem.”
Fair or not, Kershaw certainly came out on top Sunday.
The win marked just the fifth start for Kershaw this year. He missed the first two months of the season while recovering from knee and toe injuries, and he didn’t make his debut until May 17. The three-time Cy Young award winner holds a 4.35 ERA with 15 strikeouts over his five starts this season.
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The win for the Dodgers allowed them to avoid the series sweep with the Cardinals, who won the first two games. The Dodgers now sit at 39-27 heading into a three-game series with the San Diego Padres starting on Monday night.
“The results haven’t always been there, but I feel like there’s been a little bit of progress in each [start],” Kershaw said, via The Times. “Probably the biggest thing, I had a little bit better command.
“I felt like I had an idea where the ball was going. When it was going bad, I didn’t really know how to correct it. [Today] when I threw a bad one, I had some ideas on how to fix it with the next pitch. Pitching is just making the adjustment as quick as you can. It wasn’t perfect, but it’s getting better.”
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