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It may not have been the 97-MPH fastball that he once threw, and his once knee-buckling curveball may not have been as ridiculous as it also once was, but you could tell immediately that soon-to-be (on March 19) 32-year old left-hander Clayton Kershaw is 100 percent healthy again.

“I felt great. It was awesome,” Kershaw told reporters following his Spring Training 2020 debut on Friday afternoon against the Milwaukee Brewers at American Family Fields in Maryvale, AZ. “It’s night and day. Just everything feels good. During the season, I didn’t feel bad last year. It was just spring. I had to get over that. To have a full offseason and now have a full spring feeling healthy, it can only help. So I’m encouraged by that for sure.”

The Dallas, TX native and Dodgers first-round draft pick in 2006 out of  Highland Park High School in University Park, TX faced a total of seven batters, striking out four of them and did not allow a hit among his 37 total pitches. He did, however, walk two batters. But overall, he was pleased with his Spring Training debut.

“I maybe didn’t hit one spot today. But just physically I felt like the ball was coming out, felt like the ball was breaking the right way,” Kershaw said. “Now I just have to figure out how to throw strikes. But other than that, it was a good first step, for sure.

“It’s more of just how the ball is coming out,” added Kershaw. “It’s got that life at the end, which I think it did. Throwing four-seamers so you want the ball to have life up in the zone and feel like it did, maybe even compared to last year, it’s a little bit better. So I’ll take it.

“The curveball was breaking well. I probably threw one for a strike out of however many, but it did have good snap on it, which is good,” he concluded.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was equally impressed … perhaps even more so.

“I thought he was really good,” said the Dodgers skipper. “To see the execution of the fastball, the swings that you saw, the life of the ball, really good. Didn’t compromise stuff the second inning. Didn’t land the breaking ball, but the sharpness was there. It comes with time. I couldn’t be more satisfied with this outing.”

But it was Kershaw’s soon-to-be fulltime battery mate – 24-year-old catcher Will Smith – who perhaps summed it up best.

“[The ball] was coming out really good out of his hand,” said Smith. “He did what he did, he competed, what he always does.”

“Awesome” indeed.

Play Ball!

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