Sunday, May 25, 2008

Kershaw impressive in debut

Clayton Kershaw didn't look 20 today.


"The Golden Child has arrived," Dodgers radio announcer Charlie Steiner said.

There may be just a hint of hometown bias coming through, but if you went online and grabbed Kershaw earlier today when Yahoo! made him available, you couldn't help but agree with Steiner, just a little.

Yeah, there were the first-inning jitters, the 32 pitches it took him to get those first three outs. 

But Kershaw made a name for himself early, striking out Skip Shumaker, Ryan Ludwick and Troy Glaus, the Cardinals No. 1, 4 and 5 hitters, in the first inning.

Besides Albert Pujols predictably getting 2 hits off the Dodgers lefty, Kershaw gave up just 3 other hits and 1 BB in 6 innings. He struck out 7 and gave up 2 earned runs in 102 pitches.

And outside the first and sixth innings where he combined to throw 59 pitches, Kershaw made it look very easy, throwing just 43 pitches in four innings.  Check out this pitch report.

Don't get too wrapped up in Kershaw's debut. After all, it was only one start and two years ago he was wearing a high school graduation cap. And the Dodgers are going to put him on a strick 25 IP count per month, which will knock his value down a bit.

But the Dodgers play offensively challenged San Francisco and San Diego a combined 24 times the rest of the season. 

Just a sidenote, Kershaw's debut happened to come on the same exact day as WillieMays came into the league 57 years ago.

If Kershaw becomes even a fraction of the player Mays was, you'll be happy you took the chance on him. And you'll be saying 'hey' quite a bit.

1 comments:

Mevs said...

Just wanted to say that you need to kind of correct your info. Griffey DID NOT hit 599 today off Greg Maddux.

And Bruce will come up to replace Patterson, our lousy CF; on tuesday. This is because Patterson can't hit (0 for 7 so far today). Griffey won't be traded and Bruce won't replace him.