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Clayton Kershaw struggled early with his command but settled down to pitch another masterpiece, lowering his major league leading ERA to 1.72. He walked the lead off hitter on four pitches, I assume to give the Marlins their handicap, and then fired eight innings of shut out ball.
Brian Wilson came into to pitch the ninth and struck out Giancarlo Stanton for a nice start to his Dodger career. Dobbs would hit a two out double, but Wilson finished off his first inning with a strikeout of Justin Ruggiano. Wilson hit 94 on the gun, and was reported to have good movement.
Skip Schumaker almost had one of the more unusual perfect games as he was hit in back to back plate appearances, walked once, and slapped a single, but instead of taking his perfect game home, he made the last out of the 9th inning.
Henderson Alvarez was matching Kershaw for three innings but ran into trouble in the name of Kershaw in the fourth, when Clayton plated the first Dodger run with a base hit. Carl Crawford followed with a two run double, and that would be all the Dodgers would need to coast to their 18th win in Aug.
Yasiel Puig hit a ball as far as you can hit a ball without clearing the fences when he hit the top of the center field wall. Eventually he tried to steal home on a pitch that hit Skippy so he had to go back to 3rd where he later scored on Kershaw's single. I did not see the play so I can't tell you if Puig would have been safe if the ball had not hit Skippy.
Much has been made of the Dodgers struggle to score runs when Clayton pitches, which is just as well or they would have to re--write the record books. Kershaw is now 51 - 0 in his career when the Dodgers have scored at least four runs.
Oh, and I'm not going to put that 51 - 0 record in perspective by telling you what Koufax or Drysdale, or Sutton were. I'll let the big boys handle the big tasks.
With the Dodgers victory they are now 18 - 3 in August and combined with the Diamondbacks loss are now 9.5 games up on the team they trailed by 9.5 games on June 22nd. A 19 game switch in 55 games.
Yowza