It appears the Dodgers have another pitching injury.
In the second inning of Friday’s game against the Arizona Diamondbacks, veteran left-handed pitcher Clayton Kershaw was forced off the field due to what the team later described as soreness in his left big toe.
No further information was available at this time regarding the severity of the issue.
Kershaw, 36, struggled early in Friday’s game, giving up two runs in the first inning and then giving up a solo homer to Corbin Carroll on his final pitch in the second inning.
That final pitch was a 67.4 mph curveball, making it one of the slowest pitches of Kershaw’s career.
Before Carroll could round the bases, manager Dave Roberts and head coach Thomas Albert came to the mound to remove Kershaw from the game.
Reliever Joe Kelly had also begun warming up in the bullpen early in the inning, suggesting Kershaw may have alerted team management to the problem after the first inning.
Kershaw, a 17-year veteran, three-time Cy Young Award winner and future Hall of Famer, made only his seventh start of the season on Friday. He had missed the first three and a half months of the season with offseason shoulder surgery.
Read more: While Freddie Freeman rested his broken finger, he also got an unexpected ‘mental’ reset
He joins a long list of injured Dodgers pitchers, most notably rotational aces Tyler Glasnow (elbow) and Yoshinobu Yamamoto (shoulder).
Yamamoto and Glasnow both played catch prior to Friday’s game.
For Yamamoto, it was a standard session as he prepares for his second minor-league rehab outing next week. He could return from his rotator cuff strain when the team plays its next home game.
For Glasnow, the catching session was the restart of a throwing program that had been delayed by ongoing discomfort caused by his elbow tendonitis. He is scheduled to catch again Saturday as he tries to return before the end of the season.
Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series.
This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
