Matt Kemp's Rebirth as MLB Superstar Saves Dodgers' Season from Disaster

LOS ANGELES — There was a time when this city, with all its glitz, glamour and star power, belonged to one Matthew Ryan Kemp, an Oklahoma boy-turned-Southern California darling.

Then, with one summer crash into a Colorado fence in 2012 followed by multiple surgeries, everything went dim. Gone was the love, the adulation and the dawning of baseball’s next prince.

Injuries had sapped Matt Kemp’s game and value to the Los Angeles Dodgers, the franchise that made him a sixth-round pick from Midwest City High School in 2003 and is currently feeding him $160 million over eight years.

The arrivals of Hanley Ramirez, Yasiel Puig and Adrian Gonzalez pushed him further down the line and turned him into a platoon player, available on the trade market for the right price.

Luckily for the Dodgers, that price was never met.

On Saturday night, Kemp again became royalty in this what-have-you-done-for-me-lately sprawl of land. His eighth-inning home run won Game 2 of the National League Division Series 3-2 against the St. Louis Cardinals and saved the franchise from the brink of its most disappointing season, maybe ever.

With a flick of the bat barrel on a misplaced Pat Neshek slider, a baseball flew just by the money side of the left-field foul pole in a game that minutes before had crushed Dodgers fans for a second straight evening. The roar that bellowed out of Dodger Stadium as the ball landed was a chorused, "Welcome back, Matt" from those who bleed blue.

"It’s one of the biggest ones I’ve hit," Kemp said of that game-winner, but let’s not let him be so modest. That home run was the biggest hit of Kemp’s career, and it was a rubber stamp that his star is again shining in Los Angeles.

"It’s been a tough couple of years for him," manager Don Mattingly said. "Multiple surgeries, and I think taking a lot longer to get back, to get his rhythm, and get back into the game than I think he expected."

For all of 2011 and the start of 2012, Kemp was recognized as the best position player in the game. He could literally do everything asked of a baseball player, and his confidence was booming, prompting him to jokingly claim he would be baseball’s first 50-50 man before the 2012 season.

Everything came crashing down for Kemp in late August of that year after he crashed into the center field wall at Coors Field chasing down a fly ball. It turned out his left shoulder was severely damaged, leading to two surgeries to clean up the area. The injuries piled up from there and included an ankle injury and surgery last fall, which kept him out of the playoffs against these Cardinals.

In the time between that collision with the wall and this season’s All-Star break, Kemp struggled to find any semblance of the player he used to be, the one who was the city’s greatest active sports figure this side of Kobe Bryant.

He never found it within that time, and it led to heavy trade speculation as Puig’s arrival created a logjam of outfielders, with production winning the manager’s nod. Kemp could not produce, though, and he was platooned and later moved from his coveted center field home to left field and eventually right.

Stephen Dunn/Getty Images

It was around that time that things started to change for Kemp.

He moved to right field permanently July 21, and from that point through the end of the regular season, he found his old self. In those 61 games, far less than half a season, Kemp hit .313/.368/.621 with a .989 OPS, 17 home runs, 53 RBI and 71 hits.

"It was hard on him, and it was hard on us to see because we knew how talented he is," catcher A.J. Ellis said. "This was a guy who for a year and a month was undeniably the best player in baseball, position-wise. But the string of injuries slowed him down, and I’m sure, as is human nature, the doubt started creeping in his mind if he was every going to get back to the player he was.

"You saw the momentum growing as the season kept going. Something clicked around the time he became our everyday right fielder. He was really just focused on his hitting and didn’t have to be concerned about the juggling act."

During Kemp’s struggles, he could be standoffish, understandably. He consistently had to answer questions about his health and why he was no longer the all-around star he had once been. It would frustrate anyone, something you have no control over hindering your livelihood to the point where you are expendable to the people who used to covet you so much.

"It’s been a grind the last two years," Kemp said. "Last year was a disappointing year for me as far as just sitting there and watching my team be successful."

Teammates saw the frustration in Kemp.

"You grow from it, you get better from it," Adrian Gonzalez said. "He knows who he is and what he’s capable of doing. He just had to get healthy. It was great to see him hit that [home run]. He’s a guy that’s been the face of the team for a long time."

Before that home run, the face of the Dodgers was ugly and embarrassed. A night after Clayton Kershaw imploded all over the Dodger Stadium mound, Mattingly shockingly removed Zack Greinke before the eighth inning—he had a shutout going—and went to J.P. Howell. Four pitches later, the game was tied after Chris Carpenter homered against the struggling lefty. 

Had the Dodgers lost this game and gone down 0-2 in this series, on the verge of being eliminated, serious in-house changes would have had to be considered. From the manager to the coaches to the players, a reassessment of the club would have had to take place—and still may—because for $241 million, you have to get more for your dollar than a trip to the NLDS.

In fact, for this club full of stars, anything less than a World Series is failing.

Because of Kemp, who knows all too well how expectations can crush you under their weight, that championship hope still resides in the Dodgers clubhouse and in a city that once again believes Kemp can lead it to its first baseball title since 1988.

"I’m just blessed to be able to be on this stage and be able to be healthy and to help the team try to accomplish a big-time goal," Kemp said. "We have a great team, and I feel like this is the year that we can do something big."

Anthony Witrado covers Major League Baseball for Bleacher Report. He spent the previous three seasons as the national baseball columnist at Sporting News and four years before that as the Brewers beat writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.