#145---COL @ LA, 10/3/2009

On the second-last day of the season, Colorado trailed Los Angeles by one game in the NL West race. Both teams were assured of a playoff berth, but the division was still in the balance. The pitching matchup was pretty good, a pair of lefties including some guy in his first full season named Kershaw.

Kershaw started brilliantly, perfect through 3 2/3 with five straight Ks to open the game and a total of nine of the first eleven. De La Rosa was perfect through three, but injured his groin, shelving him for the playoffs and leaving Jose Contreras in long relief. Contrereas kept the Dodgers off the board for three innings, although not nearly as cleanly (five baserunners). But Franklin Morales and Matt Belisle couldn’t answer in the seventh, getting largely dinked and dunked for a five spot, while the Dodgers got three perfect relief innings (one each) from their strong back end of Hong-Chi Kuo, George Sherrill, and Jonathon Broxton to wrap up the divisional flag.

Given the importance of this game in the race, I obviously joined the scorekeeping in progress or I would have been scoring pitch-by-pitch.