Clayton Kershaw day by day: Pitching through the doldrums

Welcome back to the Clayton Kershaw daily, where we take a look back at every game of Clayton Kershaw’s career, on the anniversary date of when they happened. So far he’s only made one start on June 5, and it came seven years ago.

The Dodgers hosted the Padres on June 5, 2013, a Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium, in the midst of LA struggling mightily. They would lose this one too, pushing them to eight games under .500, which made their eventual runaway division title and 92 wins fairly surprising.

San Diego scored single runs in three different innings against Kershaw, including RBI hits by future old friends Yasmani Grandal and Jeff Gyorko.

A 3-0 deficit proved insurmountable for those Dodgers, because of the aforementioned struggles. They would fall to 30-42 later in the month, but followed that up with a nearly unprecedented 42 wins in 50 games.

On this night Kershaw pitched a quality start, though slightly over the minimum requirements since one of the runs was unearned. From my game recap (I am also proud of the headline “Only room for one name on the Marquis”):

Kershaw struck out nine in six innings, but was victimized by a couple dozen foul balls and threw 120 pitches. The mortal version of Kershaw allowed three runs (two earned) on seven hits and three walks.

Kershaw wasn’t the only one who was human on Wednesday night for the Dodgers. Yasiel Puig was 0-for-4 with two strikeouts, and a nation wept.

This was the third career game for Puig, who was a dynamo in that first week and first month. Just not on this night.

The outing (L, 5-4): 6 IP, 7 hits, 3 runs (2 earned), 3 walks, 9 strikeouts

Up next: Throwing zeroes against St. Louis