LOS ANGELES – Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw first clashed Sept. 7, 2008, during their rookie seasons, understudies thrust onto the mainstage when Randy Johnson and Greg Maddux were both scratched from one final duel between the two all-time greats. Only 17 years later, it is clear that one pair of now Hall of Famers was replaced by another set of Cooperstown-bound hurlers, which is what made their sixth, and perhaps final, meeting Friday night so highly anticipated.
Together, they have six Cy Young Awards, 19 all-star selections and four World Series championships, becoming undeniably the class of their generation. They may also very well be the final pitchers to surpass all of the 200-win, 3,000-strikeout and 2,800-inning plateaus, making it a marquee matchup with an end-of-an-era feel.
“Yeah and it’s also not so much watch us now, but go back and hey, this is what we did when we were coming up,” Scherzer in advance of the outing. “We came up together, we got developed kind of the same way, where we had much higher pitch counts, things that we were working on. It’s different in today’s game. I get it. But some of the principles can stand the test of time.”
Maybe, although that’s also underselling the unicorn nature of their drive, intellect and natural ability, which is how Scherzer, at 41, and Kershaw, at 37, managed to deliver yet another compelling duel in the Toronto Blue Jays‘ 5-1 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Each went six innings before a sell-out crowd of 53,825 at an electric Dodger Stadium also celebrating a Kobe Bryant Night. Kershaw bent first, allowing a run in the second on Addison Barger’s single to right, before Scherzer made one mistake in the fifth, when he hung a first-pitch slider that Mookie Betts hammered for a two-run shot that put the defending World Series champions ahead 2-1.
The Dodgers pushed the game out of reach in the seventh when Brendon Little opened the inning with a walk, Shohei Ohtani’s chopper off went Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s glove put men on first and third and Betts’ chopper to short allowed Alex Freeland just ahead of Bo Bichette’s throw home. After Freddie Freeman walked to load the bases, Louis Varland walked Will Smith to score another run and surrendered a Teoscar Hernandez sacrifice fly before escaping the jam.
The loss ended a three-game win streak for the Blue Jays (68-49), who went from pounding the pitiful Colorado Rockies to wrestling with the relentless depth of the enviable Dodgers (67-49).
Scherzer and Kershaw both showed their mettle by escaping early jams that could have changed the game.
Ohtani and Betts opened the first inning with singles and after Freeman struck out, Will Smith drove a ball that Davis Schneider snared by the left-field wall. Max Muncy then walked to load the bases, but Scherzer rallied to strike out Hernandez.
In the second, after Barger’s base RBI single, base hits by Ty France and Daulton Varsho loaded the bases, but Betts made a diving stab on Myles Straw’s liner to short and easily doubled off France.
All these years later, Scherzer’s power – in the first inning he reached back to throw his four hardest pitches of the season at 96.1, 96, 96 and 95.9 m.p.h – and Kershaw’s finesse remain a study in contrasts, even if in approach they remain similar.
“They’re baseball players, first,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who had the hurlers together for the final two months of the 2021 season. “They see the game a lot better and differently than most people. In another life, they both could have been position players. Uber-competitive. They’re both intense, but I think that Max is a little bit more demonstrative in the ‘pen, in the game with the intensity, with his coaches and teammates.
“I recall not even being able to pat him on the backside in the middle of a game. That’s pretty intense. Clayton is intense, but it’s just not as like out there as Max.”
Kershaw last faced the Blue Jays on Aug. 20, 2019, a 16-3 rout memorable more for Bichette’s performance against the lefty. Then just 21, Bichette homered in his first at-bat, was buckled by a curveball while striking out in his second before taking the lefty deep again in his third trip.
Bichette called that day “one of the coolest moments of my career,” recalling how he leaned on some childhood advice from his father Dante.
“One of the things that sticks with me the most is he always told me you’re facing the ball and not the pitcher,” said Bichette. “That day was probably the first time I was facing that big of a name in my career, so literally from the moment I woke up, that’s all I was telling myself, is that I was facing the ball and not the pitcher. And I was just able to go in there and take that into the game and I learned everybody is human.”
