It’s happens often – a group of friends get together and start telling stories about some of their greatest baseball memories.

And then the inevitably happens, the ‘Remember the time’ stories begin about their worst baseball memories.

Monday night’s devastating 5-2 loss to the San Francisco Giants in front of 45,229 at Dodger Stadium officially qualifies as a worst ‘Remember the time’ baseball story.

It might start out as ‘Remember the time that Clayton Kershaw pitched his greatest game of the 2018 season by outdueling Madison Bumgarner 2-1?’.

But more than likely it will be ‘Remember the time that Scott Alexander sucked?’, because, well, Scott Alexander sucked … again.

With two outs and runners on second and third in the top of the ninth inning, Dodgers left-hander Scott Alexander needed one more strike to secure Kershaw’s and the Dodgers’ a 2-1 win. Instead, he hit Giants first baseman Austin Slater with a pitch that was two feet inside. The rest, as they say, is history.
(Photo credit – Ron Cervenka)

Kershaw went a stellar 8.0 innings, allowing only one run on four hits while walking none and striking out nine, to lower his earned run average to a team best 2.47 among all Dodgers starters with more than 30 innings pitched. If ever Kershaw deserved to win a game, this was it. In fact, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said this exact thing during his painful postgame interview.

“Clayton pitched great and he had great stuff. He deserved to get the win,” a visibly upset Roberts said. “It was fun to watch him compete, make pitches, get out of a couple spots.

“That eighth inning was huge, pushed him a little bit, made a great play to finish his outing, so I can’t say enough about what Clayton did for us tonight,” Roberts added.

Kershaw was the Kershaw of old on Monday night and absolutely deserved to win … again.
(Photo credit – Ron Cervenka)

That “pushed him a little bit” thing had to do with the 110 pitches that the future Hall of Famer made, 78 of which were strikes.

As for Alexander, there’s that “Remember the time” thing.

“He had [Giants shortstop Chase] d’Arnaud down 0-2 and then the soft single out there,” Roberts said. “And then he had Slater there two strikes and he ends up hitting him. We were there, a strike away.”

A strike away twice.

Although the Dodger skipper never entertained the thought of sending his ace back out there to pitch the ninth, Kershaw told reporters after the game that he certainly would have, if given the opportunity.

“I mean, I would have stayed in. Doc made the choice,” Kershaw said.

To be fair, Doc didn’t have a lot of options, with his star closer Kenley Jansen out for at least another week and perhaps a month for an irregular heartbeat. In the interim, Roberts has no choice but to continue to put guys in high leverage situations that they’re not used to being in.

“They’re going out there and they’re doing the best they can, they’re trying to make pitches,” Roberts said. “They’re in uncharted territory. Unfortunately, we didn’t get it done tonight.”

I’m certainly no Ferdinand Magellan, but the Dodgers bullpen better find that chart soon.

Real soon.