Diamondbacks chase all their demons out of Dodger Stadium, grab NLDS opener

LOS ANGELES — The demons of Dodger Stadium have haunted the Diamondbacks for decades, visiting upon them nightmares, terrors and all manners of atrocities so gruesome that no matter what unfolded, it never felt especially shocking. It felt inevitable, every last moment down to Randy Newman blaring over the sound system.

What happened in this ballpark on Saturday night did not feel that way. What happened felt unreal. It was only one game in a best-of-five series, but it felt like so much more.

The Diamondbacks destroyed the Los Angeles Dodgers and Clayton Kershaw, 11-2, in Game 1 of the National League Division Series. It was an 84-win wild-card team exacting a beatdown on the 100-win division champion and its future Hall of Fame starter, silencing the usually raucous Dodger Stadium crowd to such a degree that a small cadre of chanting Arizona fans could be heard in the first inning.

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It was a shocking reversal for a club that had been routinely tormented in this otherwise picturesque ballpark. Over the years, the Diamondbacks lost games on walkoffs and even a balkoff. More than once they watched their postseason hopes go up in flames. They watched their best starters get bombed, their best hitters get shut down, their best relievers get embarrassed. And, night after night, they shuffled quietly out of the visitors’ dugout while Newman’s “I Love L.A.” — the Dodgers’ postgame victory song — rang in their ears.

“Definitely coming in here in the past,” center fielder Alek Thomas said, “they've been tough for us as a whole and we’ve been baby brother a lot and, you know, it felt good to do that in the playoffs and give it right back to them. So hopefully we can build off today and take that into the next (game).”

None of what happened on Saturday made sense. The Diamondbacks were 5-24 in this ballpark over the past four seasons and 22-63 over the past 10. Kershaw was nearly unbeatable here against the Diamondbacks, posting a 1.60 ERA in 21 career starts. And right-hander Merrill Kelly, who fired 6 1/3 scoreless innings, had never once beat the Dodgers in 16 career regular-season starts.

The Diamondbacks scored five times in the first before Kershaw had recorded an out. They added another run before he was removed from the game, then scored three more times in the second off reliever Emmet Sheehan to all but extinguish any hopes of a comeback.

The Diamondbacks did not just hit Kershaw. They flattened him. Every ball put in play came off Diamondbacks’ hitters’ bats at 96.7 mph or harder, including four at 105 mph-plus.

Ketel Marte smoked a double to center to open the game, a 115.7 mph rocket that center fielder Josh Outman had pop out of his glove. Marte scored on Corbin Carroll’s single to center. Tommy Pham singled. Christian Walker doubled home a run.

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Then came the swing on which it became glaringly obvious that Kershaw had no chance, that he had nothing at his disposal to put away hitters. With the count full, he tried to throw a slider to Gabriel Moreno. The pitch spun over the middle, hanging benignly, and Moreno obliterated it. The home run landed three-quarters of the way up the left-field pavilion.

“Just disappointing,” Kershaw said. “Embarrassing. You just feel like you let everybody down, guys in the whole organization that look to you to pitch well in Game 1. It’s just embarrassing, really. I just feel like I let everybody down. It’s a tough way to start the postseason. Obviously we still have a chance at this thing. But that was — yeah, that wasn’t the way it should’ve started for me.”

Though the Diamondbacks were wildly aggressive against Kershaw — they swung at 17 of the 18 pitches he threw within the confines of the strike zone — they told reporters that was not necessarily a part of the game plan.

“It might have just been one of those momentum things,” Pham said. “The hit fell for Marte, then Corbin goes in there and gets a hit and I get a hit. It’s just kind of momentum. It’s funny how the game works like that sometimes.”

Pham had four hits, adding a home run late. Alek Thomas walked twice and homered for the second time in as many postseason games, ending an epic 14-pitch at-bat in the seventh with a shot to right field. The offense collected 13 hits.

In three postseason games, the Diamondbacks have beaten Corbin Burnes, Freddy Peralta and now Kershaw. All rank among the better pitchers in the National League.

“The togetherness that we’re playing with — there’s no selfish at-bat,” Carroll said. “I think it’s just a collective mind-set that we’re all in the same space and it’s paying off in a cool way so far.”

Kelly had no trouble making the lead stand. He allowed just three hits and relatively little in the way of hard contact. He walked only two. Only two runners reached scoring position against him. When manager Torey Lovullo went to get him with his pitch count at 89, Kelly appeared to be in disbelief.

"I told him, 'I want to preserve every pitch I possibly can. We're up 10-0 and it doesn't make a lot of sense to ask you to go any further than this,'" Lovullo said. "And he understood."

Just like earlier in the week in Milwaukee, the Diamondbacks seem to be in the driver's seat in this series. In Game 2 on Monday night, they will give the ball to their ace, Zac Gallen, then they will return home for Games 3 and 4 with a chance to clinch.

“We set an expectation, a standard for ourselves, and we accomplished it,” Walker said. “But I believe that in a couple of days, (this win will be) its own day. We have to execute again. We have to do it all over again. We’re going to have to. This is just the beginning, but I’d like to roll with this as much as we can, for sure.”

Said Marte: “We’ve just got to keep playing. We don’t need to talk a lot. We don’t need to talk a lot. Be quiet and play hard.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Dbacks, in a stunner, batter Dodgers ace Kershaw, take NLDS Game 1