Kershaw pulled after 7 perfect innings and 80 pitches

[Third Eye]

Clayton Kershaw was perfect through 7 innings on 80 pitches.

The Dodgers elected to pull him from the game ending his chance at just the 24th perfect game in MLB history. pic.twitter.com/6m14BfPATw

— ESPN (@espn) April 13, 2022

I'm not even a baseball fan, but I find this incredible. In the history of the MLB, there have been 23 perfect games, why not give him a shot? He only had 80 pitches on the day. Maybe there is more to the story like an injury, but it doesn't sound like it at this point.

[kcxiv]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Meanwhile Scherzer would've said "**** your pitch count - I'll still be ready in October" and thrown his manager into a wood chipper if he tried to take the ball.

Just different dudes.

you the same Scherzer who said that they pitched him too much by going in to save a game in the post season which resulted in his "Dead" arm? that dude?

[kcxiv]

Kershaw has had back injuries the last few years, and dealt with some forearm issues last year which ended his season didnt start throwing until Jan. It was the right move.

[BigRedChief]

If he was okay with the move, no reason to complain about it from the fans. Like DJ said, reflects on him. His desire to battle.

Explains why we have beaten him sooo many times in the playoffs with teams that had no business beating him.

[Jerm]

Originally Posted by KC_Connection

Roberts is just doing what he's told from above, as all managers do these days (at least on the "smart" teams). If you don't do that, you won't be employed as a manager for too long.

Baseball isn't really a sport so much these days as it is a micromanaged board game run by Ivy Leaguers with econ/stats degrees.

Analytics is the killing the sport and the worst ****ing thing to ever happen to baseball and no one will tell me otherwise.

MUH LAUNCH ANGLE….**** outta here…

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Jerm

Analytics is the killing the sport and the worst ****ing thing to ever happen to baseball and no one will tell me otherwise.

MUH LAUNCH ANGLE….**** outta here…

Ted Williams was teaching launch angle and matching your swing plane to the incoming pitch 60 years ago. It's the RIGHT approach.

This was from Ted Williams book in 1970:



That's 'launch angle' fellas. It's what modern hitting coaches are teaching guys to do now to ensure the bat head stays in the hitting zone longer. In the 60s and 70s through to the early 2000s when hitting coaches were teaching guys to 'swing down' on the ball and attack the front half of it, they were ignoring what the greatest hitter of all time had been telling folks they should be doing for half a century.

This isn't new and it isn't bad. The problem is small parks combined with stronger players and pitchers who are told to let it fly along with new understanding of how pitches work that make them more effective and deceptive than ever.

Stuff like seam shifted wakes and pitch tunneling make pitchers more capable than ever of 'surprising' the hitter in the 5 feet before ball crosses the plate. And pitch tracking technologies have given them an edge that they simply didn't have, especially when combined with organizational shifts w/r/t things like shoulder loading to find additional velocity. Guys are more capable of seeing where it is that certain pitches they threw 'went wrong' through motion capture imaging that teaches them how to duplicate the nasty pitches while scrapping the hangers.

When you can't 'out-smart' the pitcher anymore and merely have to wait for them to execute poorly, the tables turn significantly in favor of pitching when the game was already 60/40 in their favor to begin with.

In the last 10 years pitching has just stormed forward and has gained so many advantages that hitters have realized that the odds of stringing hits together for long rallies are longer than simply swinging for the downs or trying to draw walks.

[DJ's left nut]

Also Ted Williams from 1981:



This isn't a result of 'analytics' as much as people are discovering what some of the greatest players of all time already knew.

[Jerm]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Ted Williams was teaching launch angle and matching your swing plane to the incoming pitch 60 years ago. It's the RIGHT approach.

This was from Ted Williams book in 1970:



That's 'launch angle' fellas. It's what modern hitting coaches are teaching guys to do now to ensure the bat head stays in the hitting zone longer. In the 60s and 70s through to the early 2000s when hitting coaches were teaching guys to 'swing down' on the ball and attack the front half of it, they were ignoring what the greatest hitter of all time had been telling folks they should be doing for half a century.

This isn't new and it isn't bad. The problem is small parks combined with stronger players and pitchers who are told to let it fly along with new understanding of how pitches work that make them more effective and deceptive than ever.

Stuff like seam shifted wakes and pitch tunneling make pitchers more capable than ever of 'surprising' the hitter in the 5 feet before ball crosses the plate. And pitch tracking technologies have given them an edge that they simply didn't have, especially when combined with organizational shifts w/r/t things like shoulder loading to find additional velocity. Guys are more capable of seeing where it is that certain pitches they threw 'went wrong' through motion capture imaging that teaches them how to duplicate the nasty pitches while scrapping the hangers.

When you can't 'out-smart' the pitcher anymore and merely have to wait for them to execute poorly, the tables turn significantly in favor of pitching when the game was already 60/40 in their favor to begin with.

In the last 10 years pitching has just stormed forward and has gained so many advantages that hitters have realized that the odds of stringing hits together for long rallies are longer than simply swinging for the downs or trying to draw walks.

Cool…I just used launch angle as a way to rail against analytics lol…interesting what you say though, for sure.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Jerm

Cool…I just used launch angle as a way to rail against analytics lol…interesting what you say though, for sure.

I just think the emphasis on blaming 'analytics' is backwards is all.

The game isn't suffering because offenses saw through numbers that HRs and walks were the way to win games by using analytics. Analytics simply provided the information and it's information that simply wouldn't have come out that way 25 years ago.

The game is suffering because pitching has become so overpowered that it MADE HRs and walks the way to win games. Especially when defensive shifts can cover for defensive deficiencies of power-forward hitters. And when smaller parks and increased nutrition means there's more power in the game than ever before.

I mean g'damn, look at a guy like Tyler O'Neill. That guy is a literal bodybuilder who is in the top 3% sprint speed in baseball. He's a freakin' monster. 30 years go Bo Jackson was a national phenomenon for being a guy just like O'Neill, now O'Neill is another face in the crowd.

Analytics didn't change the game - they simply told us that the game had changed.

And as it relates specifically to something like launch angle, I think the common fan simply misunderstands what the concept means. They're not always talking about how the ball comes off the bat (though that's part of it). They're talking about exactly what Williams is talking about there. It's about matching your swing to the path of the pitch so that your bat stays in the hitting zone longer to create more contact. THEN they'll start talking about mostly timing mechanisms that can address how the ball comes off the bat.

But it still all starts with the hit tool. If you can't put the barrel on the ball, all the raw power in the world doesn't mean anything but a fast grounder or high popup. So hitting coaches aren't teaching guys to try to hit up for loft. They're teaching guys to stay in the hitting zone by changing their attack angle THEN change their timing and their hands to do more damage at impact.

I'll probably never find it, but I saw an article about a guy who 'discovered' the Barry Bonds 'loop' in his swing by watching the knob of the bat. He thought he'd uncovered a holy grail. Nope - Williams was teaching THAT as well and any video of his swing back in the day demonstrates it.

[DJ's left nut]

Wanna know how little most hitters truly understand about how they hit?

Barry Bonds will tell EVERYONE that his daddy taught him to swing down on the ball and chop wood and that's the way hitters should do it.

Now watch him actually swing the bat:



Barry Bonds doesn't even swing down on the ball. He does EXACTLY what Williams says to do. He attacks with the knob, keeps his hands inside and 'loops' the barrel down/around to match the plane of the incoming pitch. In essence, he goes back before he comes forward to put the bat path in alignment with the pitch.

And yet he'll tell you that's not what he was taught.

[sedated]

Originally Posted by kcxiv

Kershaw has had back injuries the last few years, and dealt with some forearm issues last year which ended his season didnt start throwing until Jan. It was the right move.

Also said he hadn't attempted more than 75 pitches at any point in this pre/season. No reason to try to push 100 out of him when your goal is a World Series title.

[Gary Cooper]

I don't understand baseball contracts for starting pitchers. Would you pay Mahomes $45 million to play 4 games per season and rarely play the fourth quarter? I sure as hell wouldn't. Or imagine paying Lebron $40 million to play 20 games and rarely play the fourth quarter.

These starting pitchers are paid insane money to play once every five games; and even then they don't play the complete game.

[jdubya]

Kershaw said after the game the last 2 innings he threw, his slider was getting worse and worse. He doesnt seem upset