Dodgers News: Mental Adjustment Led To Clayton Kershaw’s Best Start Ever at Coors Field
Heading into Tuesday’s game against the Colorado Rockies, the Dodgers needed to make sure that they stayed focused. Colorado sits at the bottom of the NL West and LA needed to be careful to avoid dropping the first game of the three game series to them. Especially with star Clayton Kershaw on the mound, the team knew that they needed to come in and take care of business to set the tone for the series. And they were led by their starter, who doesn’t have the best track record in terms of performance at Coors Field.
Entering the game, Kershaw had made 26 career starts in Colorado and held an ERA of 4.82. Coors Field is notoriously known for being a very hitter-friendly park where weird things just happen. No lead is ever safe there and the veteran pitcher has fallen victim plenty of times to the altitude. Over the 26 starts, Kershaw had gone just two without giving up a run. After Tuesday, you could add to that total and make it three.
He threw six innings of work, allowing just one hit in the process as well. Kershaw spoke on the success.
“This is a place where I don’t want to give any credit for not pitching well but I haven’t pitched well here in a while,” Kershaw said. “So it was good to have a good outing here.”
Via OC Register
It was the kind of outing that not many saw coming, likely not even Kershaw. Of course, he goes out to the mound every time expecting to shut down the team that he faces but his struggles against the Rockies on the road have been noted. Kershaw added on that prior to the game he used a mental adjustment to help keep him calm throughout the game and it led to the success.
“It was a little bit more of a mental (adjustment), like, ‘Hey, it’s the same.’ Just mentally keep going. Don’t think anything different. Just can’t be tentative. That’s the biggest thing. Obviously, I had one walk today. I’ve said this before, the homers don’t kill you here. It’s the walk-walk-blooper-homer that kills you. So just not to do that.”
Whatever Kershaw did worked and shut down the Rockies. He has been incredible over the last month of the season, allowing just four runs over 33 innings pitched. Kershaw looks like he could be on his way to another very solid season and the soon to be Hall-Of-Famer just keeps chugging on.
He is one of the more special players to ever put on a Dodgers jersey and it’s a real treat to watch him pitch each time he goes out there.
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