Dodgers at Rockies, 5:10 p.m.
Kershaw CXCV: Kershawppalachian Spring
Dee Gordon, 2B
Yasiel Puig, RF
Hanley Ramirez, SS
Adrian Gonzalez, 1B
Scott Van Slyke, LF
Andre Ethier, CF
Juan Uribe, 3B
A.J. Ellis, C
Clayton Kershaw, P

By Jon Weisman

Talking about Clayton Kershaw breaking Orel Hershiser’s scoreless inning record might just be a novelty at this point, but it would get more serious if he could get past the hitting-friendly environment of Coors Field tonight.

Seven shutout innings today, for example, would put Kershaw at 35, a top-five streak in Dodger history, tied with Don Sutton (1972) and Fernando Valenzuela (1981) and behind only Hershiser’s 59 in 1988 and Drysdale’s 58 in 1968.

Dan Szymborski of ESPN Insider has a lengthy analysis of the challenge facing Kershaw, and doesn’t put it out of the realm of possibility. Here’s his conclusion:

… Going into Coors Field is always tough, but if he survives Friday’s trip to Denver with the streak intact, the Padres and Cardinals have two of the worst offenses in baseball, and the Giants’ run-scoring has disappeared in the ether so impressively that they may get their own Vegas show.

When I include updated projections for these team offenses, Kershaw’s projected probability of 59 scoreless innings increases slightly, to 5.4 percent. Considering the difficulty of the achievement, a 1-in-19 chance is very impressive.

Matching a difficult feat is never easy — it wouldn’t be difficult if it was, after all — but the thing about great players is they make the nearly impossible possible. While Hershiser’s biggest imprint in baseball’s record books will most likely still stand at the end of the 2014 season, Kershaw is baseball’s best chance at making the publishers restock on white-out.

More on Kershaw’s hot streak here from Lee Singer of ESPN.com, starting with a fun graph that shows why Kershaw is all alone as the face of greatness.

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Colorado acquired right-hander Jair Jurrjens from Cincinnati on Wednesday and will push him onto the mound today, breaking up the wall of lefties they threatened to use in this four-game series with the Dodgers. Andre Ethier gets a start, while Matt Kemp is rested for the first time since Carl Crawford’s late-May injury.

The Rockies also signed former Dodger lefty Chris Capuano, but that was to a minor-league deal.