As he has done many times over his brilliant 17-year future first-ballot Hall of Fame career, 36-year-old Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw exited a game with his team in a position to win.

As they have done many times over Kershaw’s brilliant 17-year future first-ballot Hall of Fame career, the Dodgers bullpen blew that opportunity, losing to the Tampa Bay Rays in 10 innings on Saturday evening by a final score of 9-8 in front of a Dodger Stadium crowd of 48,488.

This time it was 29-year-old Dodgers de facto right-handed closer Evan Phillips (3-0 / 3.46 ERA with 16 saves) who blew the save by surrendering a game-tying solo home run to Rays third baseman Junior Caminero in the top of the ninth, and 36-year-old Dodgers right-hander Joe Kelly (1-1 / 4.85 ERA with 0 saves) who blew the game by surrendering a tenth-inning game-losing two-run home run to Rays shortstop José Caballero.

But as he has done throughout his brilliant career, Kershaw, who allowed an un-Kershaw-like four runs on four hits with one walk in the top of the first inning, owned up for his rough first inning, finishing his otherwise brilliant 5.0-inning start having allowed five earned runs on nine hits, with two walks and five strikeouts.

As he has also done throughout his brilliant career, Kershaw gave high praise to his teammates for bouncing back from an early 5-3 deficit to take a 6-5 lead in the the bottom of the fifth to put him in position for the win.

“Yeah, that first inning, can’t happen. Get our team behind that much that early, tough to comeback from,” Kershaw told SportsNetLA’s Kirsten Watson postgame. “But when you’re on a great team like we are, just try and make it as best you can, and, I mean, our team showed what they can do tonight. They came back, they battled, and can’t say enough good things about offensively what these guys did.”

The Dallas, TX native and Dodgers first-round draft pick in 2006 out of from Highland Park High School in Dallas also gave praise to Rays right-handed starter Taj Bradley, who limited the Dodgers to six runs on seven hits, while striking out five without issuing a walk.

“Bradley’s a really good pitcher on the other side, so for (our offense) to put up that many runs against him is impressive, but yeah, first inning was bad. Kinda settled in there a little bit,” Kershaw added. “That fifth-inning run (on a bases loaded sacrafice fly to right by Rays right fielder Josh Lowe) really bothered me there after we got those runs back. So, just a lot of things I need to execute better on, for sure.”

“You know, it was not ideal, certainly. I wouldn’t say concerning,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts answered, when asked if Kershaw’s rough first inning was “concerning” to him. “It was good to see him still, what I would expect, is not lay down and go short, and he still gave us five innings. And so, we’re in a good spot to win the series tomorrow. It’s just not the way we wanted to start, though,” added the Dodgers skipper.

As for those eight Dodgers runs, five were the result of the Dodgers three home runs – a fourth-inning two-run shot to center by left fielder Teoscar Hernández (his 27th) to make it 4-3 Tampa Bay, a fifth-inning two-run blast to right by designated hitter Shohei Ohtani (his 41st) to give the Dodgers a (then) 6-5 lead, and a seventh-inning solo shot to left by shortstop Miguel Rojas (his fourth) to give the Dodgers a (then) 7-5 lead.

Unfortunately, the home runs allowed by Phillips and Kelly came at the worst possible time and accounted for three of the Rays nine runs, including the ninth-inning game-tying run and 10-inning game-losing run.

As Roberts noted, his NL West first-place Dodgers wrap up their three-game series with the AL East fourth-place Rays on Sunday afternoon, with hopes of taking two of three from them.

Play Ball!

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