Clayton Kershaw put up his best start of the season so far on Sunday against the Cardinals, when he pitched five innings, allowing just one earned run and striking out seven batters. Former Cardinal Tommy Edman led the charge to provide run support, helping the Dodgers stave off a sweep after dropping their first two games in St. Louis.
Kershaw was coming off of a 4 2/3 inning, five run (three earned) effort against the Mets on June 3, and his brief return to form had Dodgers fans breathing a momentary sigh of relief. Kershaw's a three-time Cy Young winner and a future Hall of Famer, but there also could've been a secret sauce to his performance in St. Louis: rage.
Before the game started, the Cardinals played a video of Matt Adams hitting a go-ahead three-run homer off of Kershaw in Game 4 of the 2014 NLDS on loop. That homer eventually won the series for the Cardinals and was one of the earliest examples of Kershaw's penchant for withering in the postseason.
"I think it's a little bush league," he said of the video after the game, "but I don't expect anything less form these guys. So it's no worries."
Clayton Kershaw wasn’t pleased the Cardinals repeatedly played the clip of Matt Adams’ 2014 NLDS home run off him before his start in St. Louis.
— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) June 9, 2025
(via @jmjones) pic.twitter.com/D6cMhG9woR
Clayton Kershaw didn't appreciate Cardinals playing video from 2014 NLDS before latest Dodgers start
The Cardinals aren't the first to take shots at Kershaw like that. The Padres famously did it in 2023, putting an edited video of Kershaw crying on their Jumbotron after a win before promptly losing five straight series. The Diamondbacks were also selling framed pictures of Gabriel Moreno's homer off of Kershaw in Game 1 of the 2023 NLDS in their team store and then remained under .500 until early July and didn't even make the postseason in 2024.
Picking on Kershaw's postseason struggles has become a tired act, but the Cardinals also probably should've known better given the Padres' and Diamondbacks' track records after they tried it. Do we have yet another victim of the Kershaw curse in the making?
St. Louis is in second place in the NL Central — four games behind the Cubs — but if the postseason started tomorrow, they'd be packing their bags and heading home. There's still time, of course, and the Phillies have a tenuous hold on the last Wild Card spot. The Cardinals were probably just feeling themselves after two straight wins against the Dodgers. But teams should know by now that they clown Kershaw at their own peril.
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