When the final out of the bottom of the first inning was finally recorded in Thursday’s game between the Dodgers and New York Mets at Citi Field, there wasn’t a Dodger fan on the planet who wasn’t concerned about 34-year-old Dodgers left-hander and future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw.

Why, you ask?

This is why:

In that painful first inning of his first appearance since August 4, the greatest Dodgers left-hander since Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax walked three batters (including walking in a run) and gave up a one-out single to Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor before the final out of the inning was recorded, with seven Mets batters having come to the plate and having made 22 pitches, of which 15 were balls.

…and then Clayton Kershaw showed up.

Kershaw would finish his first outing in nearly a month allowing just that one first-inning run, those three extremely rare first-inning walks, that first-inning single by Lindor (the only hit he allowed), and six strikeouts, doing so on 74 total pitches of which 46 were strikes in his 5.0 innings of work.

“Yeah, first inning was a little rough, obviously, but thankful to kind of bounce out of that and get through five at least,” Kershaw said postgame.

With his six strikeouts, the Dallas, TX native and Dodgers first-round draft pick in 2006 now has 2,764 in his nine-year MLB – and Dodgers – career, which ranks 26th on MLB’s all-time strikeout leaders list.

Unfortunately, although Kershaw left the game with his team up 2-1 and was in line for his eighth win of the season and 193rd of his career, the Dodgers ended up losing the game by a final score of 5-3 because of some poor baserunning and less-than stellar defense, although technically they committed no errors.

As for Kershaw, former Dodger and current SportsNet LA analyst Nomar Garciaparra summed it up perfectly:

“You see that first inning and I’m sure all of us fans are holding out breaths, and ‘I hope he’s okay,’ and go ‘Make sure he gets through it.’ But then when he comes back out and he settles in, and he was perfect the rest of the way, that’s how good he looked. The big question will be tomorrow and see how he feels.”

The big question indeed.

Stay tuned…

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