June 18, 2014: Clayton Kershaw throws no-hitter against Rockies

The game ended with one more strikeout and a roar from the crowd. The celebration began with a starting pitcher who raised his arms in triumph and hugged his catcher, who had raced to the mound. About his no-hit performance on June 18, 2014, Los Angeles Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw said, “It was just so much fun I can’t explain it.”1

The 26-year-old struck out 15 batters, walked no one, and needed just 107 pitches to beat the Colorado Rockies, 8-0, at Dodger Stadium. A.J. Ellis, behind the plate for this masterpiece, told reporters, “That’s probably the best combination he’s had of his slider and curveball working on the same night. When you’ve got those things going, nights like this are possible.”2

Only a Hanley Ramírez throwing error in the seventh inning kept the no-hitter from being a perfect game. According to Mark Saxon of espn.com, Kershaw pitched with “almost-effortless dominance.” He added that “when Kershaw has everything working, it doesn’t matter if he’s facing Paul Bunyan.”3

This was Kershaw’s seventh season in the majors, and he already had won two National League Cy Young Awards and three ERA titles. Thus far in 2014, he was 6-2 with a 2.93 ERA after missing all of April with a back injury. In his most recent start, on June 13 in Arizona, Kershaw gave up one run in seven innings as the Dodgers beat the Diamondbacks, 4-3. Of note, he did not allow a run over his final 4⅓ innings.

LA began the day 39-34 and in second place, 5½ games behind the San Francisco Giants. The Rockies, meanwhile, were 34-38, and in third place, 10 games out of the top spot. Jorge De La Rosa, a left-hander like Kershaw, started for the Rockies. The 11-year-veteran had a 6-5 record and a 4.12 ERA.

A crowd of 46,069 filed into Dodger Stadium on a Wednesday night. Rockies manager Walt Weiss penciled in an all-righty lineup, except for the lefty Corey Dickerson, who had a .333 batting average. Dickerson struck out to lead off the game, Brandon Barnes flied out, and Troy Tulowitzki grounded out.

The Dodgers scored twice in the bottom of the first. Dee Strange-Gordon led off with a walk and stole second. De La Rosa also walked the Dodgers’ number-2 hitter, Ramírez. Both runners advanced one base after De La Rosa fired an attempted pickoff throw into center field. Yasiel Puig followed with a sacrifice fly. After Adrián González grounded out, Matt Kemp knocked an RBI single into left field. Scott Van Slyke lined out to end the inning.

LA broke the game open in the third inning with a five-run outburst. Puig began the rally with a two-out walk. González hit an RBI double and ran to third on the throw home. The next batter, Kemp, added another run-scoring two-base hit.

Both Van Slyke and Ellis walked to fill the bases. Up to the plate stepped Miguel Rojas, the third baseman and eighth batter in the order. Known more for this glove than his bat, Rojas hit a line-drive double into deep left field that cleared the bases and gave LA a 7-0 lead. Kershaw grounded out to complete the frame.

The Dodgers scored their eighth and final run in the fourth inning. After Gordon struck out, Ramírez singled and Puig doubled. Those hits ended De La Rosa’s evening and brought reliever Franklin Morales into the game. González, the first batter Morales faced, lofted a pitch into left-center field deep enough for Ramírez to score. The next hitter, Kemp, grounded into a double play.

Kershaw, meanwhile, had struck out six Rockies through the first four innings. Dodgers legendary broadcaster Vin Scully provided some memorable play-by-play for television viewers. After Wilin Rosario struck out to lead off the second inning, Scully said, “Sloooow curveball. See ya later. Oh, that’s not fair.” When D.J. LeMahieu fanned on a similar pitch for the second out in the sixth, after Kyle Parker had struck out to begin the frame, Scully said, “Curveball got him. Big, overhand downer. Wow.”4 Ryan Wheeler, pinch-hitting for Morales, whiffed to end the inning.

Dickerson led off the Rockies’ half of the seventh and hit a slow roller to the shortstop Ramírez, who charged the ball and made a throw that eluded González at first base. The scorekeeper ruled an error, ending the perfect game but keeping the no-hitter intact. Kershaw looked at Ramírez and shrugged “as if to tell him not to worry.”5 Later, Ramírez told reporters, “You just have to catch the ball and throw it. In that situation, you would rather have the error than just let it go.”6 Kershaw said, “It was a pretty tough play. Under normal circumstances, that’s pretty close to a hit.”7

Pitching from the stretch for the first time, Kershaw struck out Barnes swinging. That brought up Tulowitzki, who began the evening with a lofty .361 batting average. He grounded a ball down the line to Rojas, who made a long throw on one bounce that González scooped for an out. “That’s the bullet we dodged,” catcher Ellis said in a 2021 interview. Rosario struck out to end the inning.

After a scoreless bottom half of the seventh, with Adam Ottavino now on the mound for Colorado, Carlos Triunfel took over for Ramírez at shortstop to start the eighth. Kershaw struck out Drew Stubbs and did the same to Josh Rutledge. Kyle Parker grounded out to end the inning.

Rex Brothers replaced Ottavino in the bottom of the eighth and retired the side in order. LeMahieu led off for Colorado in the top of the ninth and grounded out, González to Kershaw covering at first base. Next, Charlie Culberson hit a shallow fly ball to Puig for the second out. Ellis joked later that “it was probably the only time Yasiel used two hands to catch a ball.”8 Now only Dickerson separated Kershaw from glory. As Scully said, “There is one out to go. One miserable, measly out.”9 Dickerson swung through a 94-mph fastball for strike one and fouled off the next two pitches. He missed a fastball for strike three.

Scully told TV viewers, “He’s got it!”10 Radio play-by-play announcer Charlie Steiner exclaimed, “The greatness of Clayton Kershaw shown off again. … Another sparkling chapter in the career of Clayton … Edward … Kershaw.”11

Los Angeles Times sportswriter Bill Shaikin, who called Kershaw “the most intense of competitors,” described how the pitcher, after the final out, “allowed himself a rare smile, and an awfully wide one, when Ellis handed him the game ball.” Kershaw accepted the souvenir. “He tucked it into his pocket,” Shaikin wrote.12

Dodger players mobbed Kershaw and gave him the obligatory Gatorade bath. The drenched but exhilarated star of the game told television reporter Alana Rizzo, “As far as individual games go, this is pretty special. I’ll remember this the rest of my life. To do it at home is even better. This is amazing.”13

Just a few weeks earlier, on May 25, Dodgers veteran Josh Beckett threw a no-hitter against the Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park. The right-hander struck out six and walked three. “Beckett told me he was going to teach me how to do it,” Kershaw said.14

No teammates had thrown a no-hitter in the same season since the Chicago Cubs’ Burt Hooton and Milt Pappas in 1972. The last two Dodgers to accomplish that feat were Carl Erskine and Sal Maglie in 1956.15

Kershaw rolled up a game score of 102, the second highest in a nine-inning game since 1914, just behind the 105 that Kerry Wood posted with a 20-strikeout, one-hit performance against the Houston Astros in 1998.16 He also recorded the third most strikeouts in a no-hitter, behind Nolan Ryan, who fanned 17 in his no-no on July 15, 1973, and 16 on May 1, 1991, at the age of 44.17

According to Grosnick, “It wasn’t quite a perfect game, at least statistically, but it was one of the finest pitching performances we’ve ever seen.”18 Dave Cameron from Fangraphs.com wrote that Kershaw gave “one of the most dominant performances in the history of baseball. … It might not have been perfect. It was better.”19

In his next start, Kershaw could not match the nearly impossible and throw a second straight no-hitter, something only Johnny Vander Meer has done. Facing the Kansas City Royals, he gave up a single to the second batter of the game, Eric Hosmer. Kershaw did, however, throw eight shutout innings before giving way to a reliever. In his two starts after that, he threw a combined 15 scoreless innings. Finally, on July 10, the San Diego Padres’ Chase Headley homered off him with two outs in the sixth inning. Kershaw had kept teams from scoring for 41 innings, the seventh-longest streak in the Live Ball Era.20

Kershaw ended the 2014 season with a 21-3 record and a league-leading 1.77 ERA. He won his third Cy Young Award and NL MVP honors.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for general game information and play-by-play data.

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2008/B05250LAN2008.htm

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2014/B06180LAN2014.html

Notes

1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fgX3ODoCb8.

2 Steve Dilbeck, “No One Better,” Los Angeles Times, June 20, 2014: 25.

3 https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/11106270/clayton-kershaw-pulls-inevitable-no-hitter-los-angeles-dodgers.

4 “Scully Calls Every Out of Kershaw’s No-Hitter,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxspKrnpMFE.

5 Everett Scott, “Ramirez Doesn’t Blame Injury,” Los Angeles Times, June 19, 2014: 25.

6 “Ramirez Doesn’t Blame Injury.”

7 “Ramirez Doesn’t Blame Injury.”

8 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/extra-innings-episode-12/id1562950135?i=1000525777962.

9 “Scully Calls Every Out of Kershaw’s No-Hitter.”

10 “Scully Calls Every Out of Kershaw’s No-Hitter.”

11 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/extra-innings-episode-12/id1562950135?i=1000525777962.

12 Bill Shaikin, “Near Perfection,” Los Angeles Times, June 19, 2014: 25.

13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fgX3ODoCb8.

14 Bill Shaikin, “Near Perfection.”

15 https://www.espn.com/blog/statsinfo/post/_/id/91774/top-10-facts-on-kershaws-no-hitter.

16 Mike Axisa, “Clayton Kershaw’s No-Hitter Was as Close to Perfect as It Gets,” CBSsports.com. https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/clayton-kershaws-no-hitter-was-as-close-to-perfect-as-it-gets/. Max Scherzer of the Washington Nationals moved into second place when he recorded a game score of 105 in a no-hit performance against the New York Mets on October 3, 2015. https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN201510032.shtml.

17 https://www.espn.com/blog/statsinfo/post/_/id/91774/top-10-facts-on-kershaws-no-hitter. Scherzer tied Ryan’s mark when he struck out 17 in his October 3, 2015, no-hitter.

18 https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2014/6/19/5823800/clayton-kershaw-throws-the-greatest-modern-no-hitter.

19 https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2014/6/19/5823800/clayton-kershaw-throws-the-greatest-modern-no-hitter.

20 Andrew Simon, “The 10 Longest Scoreless-Inning Streaks,” https://www.mlb.com/news/longest-scoreless-inning-streaks-in-history.