Brewers' two homers off Kershaw a rare feat

LOS ANGELES -- The Brewers homered twice for a 3-2 win over Clayton Kershaw and the Dodgers on Saturday in the sort of performance that isn't supposed to happen:

• With two swings, the Brewers matched the number of home runs Kershaw had allowed in his previous 11 starts combined, spanning 88 innings and 320 batters faced.

• It marked the first time a team touched Kershaw for multiple home runs this season. Kershaw's last multi-homer game was Sept. 8 in Cincinnati, and Kershaw's last multi-homer game at Dodger Stadium was April 17, 2013, when the Padres hit three.

• Ryan Braun's blast was only the 39th home run off Kershaw with a man on base in 202 career regular-season starts.

• Before Saturday, Kershaw had surrendered only two Brewers home runs in nine career starts: Mike Cameron's solo homer on Aug. 17, 2008, and Prince Fielder's two-run shot on May 4, 2010. Kershaw had made five straight homerless starts against Milwaukee before Saturday. Nobody on Milwaukee's current roster had ever homered against the left-hander.

"He's the best pitcher in baseball and he's been on a historically great run," Braun said, a reference to the 11-game winning streak Kershaw carried into Saturday. "It's incredible. It's kind of fun to watch from afar. It's obviously extremely difficult to beat him. It hasn't happened much this year, so for us to do that, it's an impressive accomplishment."

So how did it happen?

Braun worked to a hitter's count before getting a 3-1 fastball up in the strike zone and sending it over the fence in right-center field in the fourth inning. The Brewers didn't have a hit in the game entering that frame, but Carlos Gomez hit Kershaw's first pitch for a double.

Two innings later, Gomez connected again. He hit Kershaw's first pitch of the sixth inning, a changeup, over the wall in left field.

"It was a little bit location, a little bit two of the elite home run hitters in the National League," said Dodgers catcher A.J. Ellis, who touted Kershaw as not just a candidate for the NL Cy Young Award, but the league's MVP honor.

"It was one of those days," Gomez said. "Braun's home run, he hung that pitch, and the one he threw me, too, was right in the middle and hanging. No matter who you are, when you're hanging pitches [to] professional hitters, something is going to happen."