Dave Roberts Commits Crime Against Baseball by Pulling Clayton Kershaw During Perfect Game
There are several “unwritten rules” of baseball, not all of which are good ones. But one that enjoys near-universal agreement is this: you simply cannot remove a pitcher while he’s throwing a perfect game.
Yet that’s exactly what Dodgers manager Dave Roberts did to Clayton Kershaw on Wednesday afternoon.
To say Kershaw was cruising against the Twins lineup in Minnesota is an understatement. Through seven innings, he fanned 13 batters and had not allowed a baserunner while throwing just 80 pitches.
After Kershaw induced a groundout to end the seventh, he returned to the dugout. Instead of keeping with the odd tradition of not talking to pitchers with ongoing no-nos, Kershaw’s teammates congratulated him for his performance. And with that, he was done.
— LeMickey (3-6-1) (@MPsMP4s) April 13, 2022
Alex Vesia pitched the eighth for the Dodgers gave up a single to Gary Sanchez. The Los Angeles went on to win 7-0.
In the analytics era, it’s not uncommon to see a pitcher pulled during a no-hitter, but a perfect game is something else. While there have been 314 official no hitters in Major League Baseball history, just 23 of those have been perfect games (plus Armando Galarraga getting robbed of one by umpire Jim Joyce, but I digress).
Now, there are a couple of counterpoints that could be made. The first is that like every other player, Kershaw had an abbreviated spring training thanks to the lockout, so maybe it’s best not to try to have him go the distance. After all, he missed two months last season with inflammation in his throwing arm.
On the other hand, Kershaw is a professional athlete and not a dish of peanut brittle. The odds that throwing, say, 20 or so more pitches would put him at any kind of injury risk is absurd.
The decision to pull Kershaw could have also been driven by whatever the Dodgers’ analytics nerds cooked up, though that would be hard to reconcile with what everyone was seeing with their own eyes, i.e., the complete bewilderment of Twins batters.
Either way, what Dave Roberts did on Wednesday is a crime against baseball, not to mention Dodgers fans.
Don Drysdale is rolling in his grave.
Watch above via MLB Network.
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