Clayton Kershaw returned to the Dodgers last Friday in Miami with three innings of two-run ball, but his second start, Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium, felt more credibly like Clayton Kershaw Is Back. The Los Angeles ace threw 64 pitches over five rain-bothered frames, striking out five and walking none, allowing one hit and no runs. He pinned a cutter to the bottom of the zone (or to a spot just below it—one advantage of having a pitcher like Kershaw back is getting the celebrity calls) against Gary Sanchez to end the fourth and, after waiting out the game's second rain delay, which was nearly 50 minutes long, he ended his outing in the fifth with a familiar bit: a slider that whirred under the swing of Austin Romine and a clenched-fist yell.In past seasons, of course, this has been the time of year for Kershaw to put the final touches on some statistical masterpiece. The 1.83 ERA in 2013, the 1.77 the year after that, the impossible 301 Ks last season. This year, a similarly brain-scrambling campaign—17.22 strikeout-to-walk ratio, three complete-game shutouts—was interrupted by the back injury that forced him off the field for more than two months. There's no question who the National League's best pitcher is when he's healthy, but there's also next to no chance of a fourth Cy Young.Though it's been a bummer to fans who had gotten used to seeing the pitching equivalent of Barry Bonds, Kershaw's stop-and-start year has been in keeping with a weird one out in L.A. The Dodgers of recent vintage have been star-stuffed teams with only two possible outcomes: World Series titles or underperformance. They breezed through regular seasons and fell short in Octobers. Now, though, Zack Greinke has been replaced by the steady Kenta Maeda and the spot work of 20-year-old Julio Urias, and the Dodgers' best hitters are not second-contract superstars but a rookie shortstop (Corey Seager) and a journeyman third baseman (gnome-giveaway-day inevitability Justin Turner).It's a team, and a season, purpose-built for Kershaw to correct the lazy narrative of his career: that he doesn't carry a team when it counts, that he's the June darling to Madison Bumgarner's October hero. Where his past success has always been looked at as plain brilliance, any from here on out will be viewed as proof of gumption. He's been hurt and battled back; he's ready to save his shorthanded team. The postseason promo, to be voiced by Joe Buck behind a close-up of Kershaw grimacing as he lets go of a fastball—maybe, for added effect, one from a rainy game in the Bronx—is already written somewhere: "In September, the Dodgers' ace returned."All that is fine, and will be plenty fun when it gets here, but Wednesday night should be appreciated as more than just a preview. We still have a couple weeks of baseball left before things get all serious, and those couple weeks will be better than the last couple months, for the simple fact that Kershaw will be pitching during them.
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