Clayton Kershaw's playoff struggles continue with disastrous NLDS Game 1 start

Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw is one of the best left-handed pitchers Major League Baseball has ever seen, but he has one big flaw that always seems to keep creeping up on him.

He can really struggle when the calendar rolls over to October.

That continued on Saturday night with an absolutely disastrous start in Game 1 of the NLDS against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Kershaw recorded just a single out and did not make it out of the first inning before being lifted after giving up six earned runs to start the game. His final line for the night reads as 1/3 of an inning pitched, six hits allowed, six earned runs allowed, a walk and zero strikeouts.

Even worse, pretty much every Arizona batter he faced squared up almost all of his pitches and hit everything hard. It has to be one of the worst outings of his postseason career and it started from the very first batter of the game.

It was there that Arizona's Ketel Marte ripped a line drive to center field that James Outman was unable to catch, putting the lead-off man on second base. Corbin Carroll followed with an RBI single to open the scoring and the Diamondbacks simply never stopped hitting.

Christian Walker followed that by ripping an RBI double off the left field wall. Then Gabriel Moreno crushed a three-run homer deep into the left field bleachers.

Following a walk to Alek Thomas, Evan Longoria drove him in with an RBI double that ultimately knocked Kershaw out of the game.

Kershaw's health was a big concern coming into the postseason and it might be easy to explain Saturday's performance away by pointing to that. But this is not a new problem for Kershaw in October. For as dominant as he has been throughout his career, he entered play on Saturday with a 4.42 ERA for his career in the playoffs. That went up to 4.49 after Saturday's game. That is also two full runs higher than his regular-season ERA for his career. 

Kershaw has had some great moments in the playoffs during his career, but they have been few and far between for him overall. It is a stunning blind spot for one of the best pitchers of the modern era. It also becomes more difficult to explain every time it happens.