Kershaw retired the first six Milwaukee Brewers tonight on 16 pitches, then walked Rickie Weeks, who had a .554 OPS entering the game, on five.

His next pitch was a ball to Yuniesky Betancourt, who followed with a single. Two infield outs later, Weeks scored.

Ryan Braun singled in the fourth and sixth innings, and Norichika Aoki reached base on a Dee Gordon throwing error in the eighth.

That was it: 107 pitches, 32 batters, 22 first-pitch strikes, three hits, one walk, five strikeouts. On five days’ rest after throwing a career-high 132 pitches, Kershaw dusted the Brewers, 3-1.

It wasn’t a perfect game. It wasn’t a shutout. But there should be a noun for the ease and control that Kershaw (who also singled in three at-bats) dominated Milwaukee.

Kershaw walked Weeks for the same reason Vin Scully sometimes says the wrong name, for that one time that Mother Theresa asked for seconds, for that spot on the Sistine Chapel floor where MIchelangelo let a drop of paint drip.

Kershaw threw a Kershaw.

* * *

Nice to see you again, Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp.

Ethier tripled and homered. Kemp walked and homered. For Kemp, it was home run No. 2 on the season and really the first one he blasted, because home run No. 1 was an inside-out job that barely cleared the right-field fence in New York’s Citi Field.

Congrats to my brother Greg, who will be an executive producer on the upcoming animated series Star Wars Rebels.

Dodgers at Brewers, 5:10 p.m.

Carl Crawford, LF
Mark Ellis, 2B
Adrian Gonzalez, 1B
Matt Kemp, CF
Andre Ethier, RF
A.J. Ellis, C
Juan Uribe, 3B
Dee Gordon, SS
Clayton Kershaw, P

You need good relief to win, but you can’t plan for good relief. 

This comes up every year, so it’s tedious to point out, but it doesn’t seem to go without saying.

I’m going to ask take my years-old research into this on faith; whether you choose to do so is up to you. But what you find is that there is virtually no consistency year-to-year among relief pitchers. The best might give you two or three consecutive good years. The very best.

The reasons for this should be clear. You don’t become a reliever unless you are flawed in some way that prevents you from being a starter. That obviously doesn’t mean you can’t be a fantastic reliever in a given year, but for the most part, relievers are pitchers who aren’t designed to be great over the long haul. They typically have a limited number of pitches, which leaves them vulnerable to being figured out over time. The good ones end up getting overworked, or maybe they were never that good in the first place, instead merely a triumph of small sample size. We could go on, but let’s sum it up this way: Mariano Rivera is not reality.

The 2003 Dodger bullpen was incredible. It was also, in many significant ways, an accident.

Staffing a bullpen has always, fascinatingly, been Ned Colletti’s simultaneous strength and weakness. Colletti has had a knack for finding capable non-roster talent (Takashi Saito, Ronald Belisario) over the same years that he has invested multiyear deals in such inconsistent arms as Matt Guerrier and Brandon League. There is no correlation in the Colletti tenure between salary and performance, yet the expensive signings continue.

The point is that you can never feel good about your bullpen entering a season – never. I really believe that. You can’t feel anything at all. The best thing you can do is assemble a number of arms before Spring Training, a combination of youth and experience and promise and reclamation, and then hope for the best.

The peril of having someone with a long-term contract is that you feel obligated to keep him past the point of effectiveness. That’s the boat the Dodgers are in with League and Guerrier, even with a new ownership that doesn’t much worry about player salaries these days.

The Dodger bullpen is leaky through and through. Almost nothing is working right now. Just as you were gaining supreme confidence in Paco Rodriguez and Kenley Jansen, they found growing pains that left them struggling like the more experienced J.P Howell, League, Guerrier and, if you will, Belisario and Javy Guerra.

Fans tend to have unreasonable expectations of bullpens – you see outrage anytime any relief pitcher gives up a run, let alone a lead. I’m not sure where fans get the idea that every reliever on their team should have a 0.00 ERA, but there it is. Every Dodger relief pitcher since the heyday of Eric Gagne and Saito has been attacked for his failings, however momentary, however good that pitcher has been overall.  So when a bullpen is collectively struggling as much as the Dodger bullpen is, it’s frogs and locusts time.

Don Mattingly’s instinct has been correct in general to try to play matchups with his relievers. You can debate the specifics of all his choices – I don’t agree with them all – but the bottom line is, there’s little he can do when no one is reliable.

Mattingly’s bullpen Sunday faced 18 batters and got nine outs. When Jansen entered Saturday’s game in relief of Chris Capuano, he had thrown only 21 pitches in his previous 72 hours. Capuano had pitched well that night, but he was past the 90-pitch mark and going on a balky calf.

But when things are bad, things are bad.

Tim Federowicz is not a martyr.

This morning brought the news that Tim Federowicz, and not Luis Cruz or Ramon Hernandez, had been displaced from the active roster to make room for the return of Mark Ellis from the disabled list. Federowicz is more valuable than Cruz or Hernandez, but the hysteria this caused was rather remarkable.

When I called out this freakout on Twitter, several people lectured me, as if I didn’t know, that it wasn’t just about Federowicz, but that it was symptomatic of the Colletti Dodgers’ larger mismanagement in general or obsession with experience over youth in particular. As if I needed to be told that Colletti values experience, sometimes to the franchise’s detriment.

I’ve spent a lot of time on how to phrase this next section, because I don’t want to give the impression that you shouldn’t try to maximize every advantage you can. Federowicz can’t help the Dodgers that much right now, but sure, I’d rather see him get five at-bats a week over Hernandez, because an on-base percentage over .500 in Albuquerque and above-average defense suggest a better skill set than Hernandez currently offers. Scott Van Slyke’s callup was overdue, not because he was guaranteed to hit two homers in a game, but because he was on a hot streak in the minors that made it clear there was no better time to try him out.

But just as there is with the bullpen, there’s a level of knee-jerk fan reaction with the bench that is out of proportion. When a player is a single game away from having better stats than his competition, as Hernandez is compared with Federowicz (3 for 17 with one walk and no extra-base hits as a major-leaguer in 2013), and neither is projected to be a starter, and the alternatives to Hernandez as backup if A.J. Ellis gets hurt are Jesus Flores, Matt Wallach and Gorman Erickson, the uproar should not be Defcon Anything.

Yeah, Cruz stinks right now, and no one in their right mind would keep him over Juan Uribe – just like no one in their right mind would have argued to keep Uribe over Cruz last summer.

See what I’m getting at?

If you’re not frustrated with the Dodgers right now, you’re either not a Dodger fan or very zen. You’re not wrong if you’re unhappy with Federowicz’s demotion. But if you’re angry over Federowicz being sent down, you’re overreacting. It’s not symptomatic of the Dodgers’ larger problems. You’re not going to plug in Federowicz, Yasiel Puig, Joc Pederson and Alex Castellanos into the Dodger bench and as a result see things turn around.

And May 19 is too soon to give up, if only because of one person.

Matt Kemp.

Until Kemp starts hitting, nothing is going to happen with this team. Nothing. The Dodgers cannot win without his bat. And again, it’s not something anger will solve. The effort is there – if anything, he’s trying too hard to get things going. But it is up to Kemp.

It would help if Andre Ethier hit more, but the difference between what Ethier is doing compared to what is expected of him is not what it is with Kemp.

I’m sure Kemp has had all the advice in the world, from Mattingly, Mark McGwire and any number of coaches or people he meets on the street. But no one else can synthesize the good from the bad and put it into action.

You can start firing managers or coaches or trainers. Kemp still needs to hit.

The bullpen can start putting out fires. Kemp still needs to hit.

The defense can stop making two errors a game. Kemp still needs to hit.

But what if he does?

Let me tell you one more thing.  I would love to give up on the 2013 Dodgers. It will be a relief if and when I can. I spent part of my Sunday writing this 1,500-word piece that probably isn’t worth a damn, especially for a team barely winning 40 percent of its games.

And the season might be over, except for this. For all their problems, Los Angeles is still somehow only seven games out of first place. The Giants, in case you haven’t noticed, have their own cauldron of concerns. And Arizona and Colorado … I just don’t know. I can’t see them not hitting their own skid. I can’t see it.

The National League West looks like an 85-win division. That’s still within the Dodgers’ abilities.

The team gets healthier. The bullpen stops being a disaster. Matt Kemp starts to hit. And then …

Honestly, that’s as far as I can go. The team does look awful right now. It looks nothing like a winning team. It’s creaky and crumbly. Race to the bottom or race to the top – I truly can’t decide.

The Dodgers are 6-13 since Ellis’ last start for the team.

Ted Lilly is expected to come off the disabled list this week. He will either take the spot in the starting rotation of today’s starter, Matt Magill, or will go to the bullpen. Javy Guerra is probably heading back to Albuquerque soon, if not to make room for Lilly then for Scott Elbert, whose return is also fairly imminent.

Things look bleak again for the Dodgers after a short respite, but Chris Capuano’s appearance Saturday was briefly encouraging, even if there’s a hint of health concern again for the lefty, according to The Associated Press.

… Capuano said he told Mattingly after his last at-bat in the eighth inning to be prepared to pull him out of the game because he had lingering problems with a strained calf.

“It wasn’t affecting pitch execution out there,” Capuano said. “It just feels a little tired. I’ve got an extra day before the next start. With treatment and stuff we should be able to get that ready.” …

Dodgers at Braves, 10:30 a.m.

Carl Crawford, LF
Mark Ellis, 2B
Matt Kemp, CF
Adrian Gonzalez, 1B
A.J. Ellis, C
Scott Van Slyke, RF
Juan Uribe, 3B
Nick Punto, SS
Matt Magill, P

Today’s question: Who’s your 16th favorite Dodger catcher of the century?

The ’95 team rallied to win a division title.

Dodgers at Braves, 4:30 p.m.

Trepidation sandwiched tonight’s Dodger effort against the Nationals, with Zack Greinke coming off the disabled list to start the game and Brandon League back in action to end it. And in between, there were several meaty layers of runners threatening to score against multiple Dodger relievers.

Each time, pleasure pummeled pain, leading to Los Angeles’ 3-1 victory over Washington, capping the best stretch of Dodger baseball at home since Opening Day.

Greinke danced like Astaire in the first three innings, not only stifling the Nationals on 38 pitches but also driving in the Dodgers’ second run with an unexpected RBI single (when it had been floated earlier this week that Greinke would be too sore to even take the bat off his shoulder). It was the Dodgers’ second two-out, RBI single in the first two innings, following Adrian Gonzalez’s delivery of Matt Kemp in the first.

Scott Van Slyke missed triplicating the feat in the third inning, scorching as hard a line drive I’ve seen from a Dodger this year, only for Ryan Zimmerman to spear it and bail the Nationals out of a bases-loaded jam.

Greinke ran into trouble in a 28-pitch fourth inning, but escaped with only one run’s worth of damage, thanks to Adam La Roche’s solo homer, and there was little of incident before the Dodger righty left the game with the bases empty and one out in the sixth, 83 heartwarming pitches into his first official start since colliding with Carlos Quentin.

Then came the saltiness of the Dodger bullpen.

Immediately after Greinke took a seat, J.P. Howell and Matt Guerrier combined to allow runners to reach first and third, but Danny Espinosa grounded out to end the sixth. Paco Rodriguez issued a two-out walk to Denard Span in the seventh, but Kenley Jansen came in, threw one pitch and watched Span get caught stealing by A.J. Ellis.

This day in baseball: May 15, 2013

Don Mattingly has received a tremendous amount of grief this year, but what he’s done over the past two nights deserves respect.

Mattingly used his best reliever when it counted, regardless of when it counted.

Tuesday, he didn’t fret over the questions he would receive about avoiding Brandon League when it came to preserving Clayton Kershaw’s shutout. He went straight to Kenley Jansen.

Tonight, when modern convention would have dictated saving Jansen for the ninth again, Mattingly struck early. Rather then holding Jansen back for a save situation that might never come, he put the powerful righty into the game in the seventh with the tying run on base, knowing that he could get more than an inning out of Jansen thanks to Thursday’s off day.

You could argue that Mattingly should have gotten two full innings out of Jansen, but this qualifies as a major breakthrough for a manager whose bullpen usage has often been all too thoughtless. I don’t know how long it will last, but for two games, the smokejumper lives.

And now, let’s get back to this one.

As it happened, Jansen ran into his own bit of trouble in the eighth, allowing back-to-back singles to start the inning – illustrating that not even he is perfect. But with the tying run on third and nobody out, Jansen rose to the challenge, retiring La Roche on a soft fly to left (with Van Slyke quickly returning the ball to the infield to thwart any possible attempt to tag up and score), striking out Ian Desmond and then, with the go-ahead run in scoring position, setting down Kurt Suzuki on a fly to right. Stirring.

A bases-loaded Carl Crawford sacrifice fly (pinch-hitting for Van Slyke, rather than for Jansen one batter later, abbreviating the Mattingly honeymoon) gave the Dodgers – and about as importantly, their fans – an extra run of breathing room heading into the ninth and the return of League to the spotlight.

League gave up a leadoff single to Espinosa, one that aroused much more concern than anything Jansen surrendered. After Roger Bernadina grounded out, the batter was none other than pinch-hitter Bryce Harper, in his first appearance since he Wile E. Coyoted the Dodger Stadium right-field wall Monday.

In yet another moment of drama, Harper grounded out, and soon Span did the same, and the Dodgers had won their fourth game out of their past five, pulling within 5 1/2 games of San Francisco.

Enjoy Thursday’s day of rest – you’ve earned it.