Clayton Kershaw day by day: Reaching 1,500 strikeouts

Welcome back to the Clayton Kershaw daily, where we review every game of Kershaw’s career on the dates that they happened. The longtime Dodgers ace only has one career start on May 10, and it came at Coors Field in 2015.

The Dodgers were finishing off a weekend series against the Rockies in Denver, and Kershaw was on his game early, allowing only a single in the first three innings.

Up 2-0 in the fourth inning, Kershaw had a rocky second time through the batting order. It wasn’t the home run in Colorado that got Kershaw, but rather a walk and five singles. The final blow was a two-run single by pitcher Jorge De La Rosa that gave the Rockies a 5-2 lead.

From my game recap:

Kershaw ended up pitching 5⅔ innings and he gave up five runs, eight hits, four walks and struck out five. This was the first time Kershaw had given up as many as eight hits and four walks in a game since May 30, 2012.

This was the season Kershaw struck out a career-high 301 batters, though in this game he matched his season low with five strikeouts. His whiff of Drew Stubbs in the third inning was a milestone. Again from my recap:

Clayton Kershaw recorded his 1500th strikeout of his career during the game. He joined Don Sutton and Fernando Valenzuela as the only pitchers who began their career in Los Angeles to reach at least 1500 strikeouts. Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale also had more than 1500 strikeouts in their time as Los Angeles Dodgers but they began their careers in Brooklyn.

Stubbs also struck out in the sixth inning, Kershaw’s 1,501st career strikeout.

Kershaw left a tie game, one the Dodgers would win with an eighth-inning rally keyed by Justin Turner’s two-run, pinch-hit home run.

The outing: 5⅔ IP, 8 hits, 5 runs, 4 walks, 5 strikeouts

Up next: Another single-start day, from 2014