LOS ANGELES — After how his previous season ended, Clayton Kershaw had unfinished business.
His much-anticipated 2025 debut will leave him wanting more as well.
Kershaw allowed five runs in four innings in Saturday’s 11-9 Freeway Series loss to the Angels, taking the mound for the first time after completing his rehab from offseason surgeries on his left toe and left knee.
The veteran southpaw joined Zack Wheat and Bill Russell as the only players in franchise history to play 18 seasons for the Dodgers, an accomplishment that has taken on even more meaning for Kershaw because of the time he’s missed in the past two seasons.
“I think when you haven’t done something for a long time, and you realize that you miss it, you miss competing, you miss being a part of the team and contributing, there’s a lot of gratitude and gratefulness to get back to that point. I definitely feel that,” Kershaw said recently. “Now, if I go out there and don’t pitch good, it’s gonna go away real fast. So there’s a performance aspect of it, too.”
After laboring through a long first inning in his much-anticipated season debut, Kershaw got somewhat of a do-over when he returned to the mound for the second.
Kershaw had allowed three runs to the Angels in his 38-pitch opening frame, which was prolonged by one at-bat due to a rundown gone awry. But the Dodgers wasted no time responding in the bottom of the first, with Andy Pages leaving the yard for the ninth time this season with a game-tying three-run blast off Halos starter Tyler Anderson.
That wiped the slate clean for Kershaw, who breezed through a 1-2-3 second before allowing another two runs. He surrendered a solo homer to Taylor Ward in the third, and Pages helped limit the damage in the fourth by making an impressive grab at the right-field wall, turning a deep drive from Zach Neto into a sacrifice fly.
Kershaw struck out a pair, pulling him within 30 of 3,000 strikeouts for his career.
