Dodgers have to be buoyed by Hiroki Kuroda’s outstanding start

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Now that looked like an opening-day starting pitcher.

Even if he was last year’s opening-day starter.

Hiroki Kuroda was just shy of masterful Friday night in Florida -- economical, in control and looking supremely confident for someone coming off last season’s frightening incident in which he was hit in the head by a line drive.

It was the kind of starting pitching performance the Dodgers needed after Vicente Padilla, Clayton Kershaw and Chad Billingsley had pushed their pitch counts to extremes in their first starts of the season.

That was the kind of encouraging start by Kuroda the Dodgers could only have crossed fingers and hoped for.

Going into the season there was some type of question mark attached to each of the Dodgers’ five starters. For Kuroda, it was how, at age 35, he would bounce back after suffering the concussion last year and still being bothered by neck soreness in the off-season.

If he’s going to continue to pitch anything like he did Friday, then one rotation question can be eliminated. And the Dodgers very much needed that. It had to leave them excited about the potential for his coming season.

Padilla threw 93 pitches in just 4 1/3 innings in the opener, Kershaw 109 pitches in 4 2/3 innings and Billingsley 107 pitches in 5 1/3 innings.

Kuroda had thrown only 84 pitches by the seventh inning in Florida, 56 of them for strikes. Ground balls ruled the night. He was so economical, they left him in to pitch the eighth in his first start.

He finished throwing and even 100 pitches, 69 for strikes, allowing one unearned run, five hits and a walk. He struck out seven.

It was the Dodgers’ best and most promising individual performance of the season’s first week.

--Steve Dilbeck