Column: Game 5 should be a fitting moment for Clayton Kershaw

By Dylan Hernandez

Oct. 18, 2017 11:23 PM PT

Reporting from Chicago — If someone has to win the game to deliver the Dodgers to the World Series, it might as well be Clayton Kershaw.

I’m not trying to be Mr. Sunshine here or excuse the Dodgers’ 3-2 defeat to the Chicago Cubs on Wednesday night, but it’s hard to get worked up over a single defeat, especially when it comes seven games into the postseason. The Dodgers were bound to lose one of these games. No team has won every game in the playoffs under the current three-round format.

They still have a 3-1 lead in the National League Championship Series. They can’t blow this and they won’t.

“I think we’re in a pretty good spot,” manager Dave Roberts said. “We have our No. 1 pitcher going tomorrow.”

And why shouldn’t the chance to win the franchise’s most important game in 29 years go to the player to whom it would mean the most?

Specifically, Kershaw, who will start Game 5 for the Dodgers.

He is the player most associated with the Dodgers’ failure to reach the World Series in recent years. It’s only right that he pitches the game that marks a long-awaited breakthrough.

As much as Kershaw has accomplished in the regular season, as much as he has meant to the franchise over the last decade, the lasting image of him shouldn’t be that of a pitcher hunched over on the mound after serving up a devastating home run.

He experienced a measure of October glory last year, when he pitched in relief and recorded the last two outs of a division series victory over the Washington Nationals. That doesn’t feel like enough. A victory over the Cubs on Thursday night would.

Kershaw was calm but conflicted when he spoke at a news conference before Game 4.

“It’s a tough spot for me, just because I have to prepare to start tomorrow,” he said. “I can’t assume we’re going to win and then it just so happens I have to pitch. I have to expect to pitch and then be surprised when we win. It’s a tough spot because, obviously, I believe in our team and I believe that we can win tonight. But I can’t let myself mentally go there.”

He smiled.

“Hopefully, it doesn’t work out and I don’t have to pitch,” he said.

Well, it didn’t work out in another way and Kershaw will have to pitch.

Except this isn’t like in previous Octobers, when Kershaw’s workload pushed the boundaries of what was possible for a modern-day starter.

In each of the previous four postseasons, he pitched on three days’ rest in the division series. Not this time.

This year, Kershaw pitched only once in the division series against the Arizona Diamondbacks, which the Dodgers swept. He will pitch Thursday on normal four days’ rest, as the presence of Rich Hill, Yu Darvish and Alex Wood eliminated any consideration of him pitching any earlier.

And it’s not only the rotation that has unburdened him. The bullpen has too. Kershaw pitched 61/3 innings against the Diamondbacks, five against the Cubs in Game 1.

“It’s probably just a testament to the team we have more than anything,” Kershaw said. “The way we’ve been playing and how everybody has been able to contribute and how everybody has been stepping up, there’s been no need to do that, which is a good luxury to have.”

He initially rejected the notion his arm was fresher than in years past, only to later reconsider.

“I think maybe last year, with the usage, I maybe felt a little bit toward the end … tired is not the right word, but maybe just a little taxed,” he said.

Kershaw figures to be sharper than he was in Game 6 here last year, when the Cubs scored five runs against him in five innings and eliminated the Dodgers.

“The best pitcher in MLB,” Cubs second baseman Javier Baez said of Kershaw.

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The Cubs’ Willson Contreras celebrates after the Dodgers’ Chase Utley, right, strikes out with two men on base in the eighth inning.