Written by In baseball, teams and pitchers chase the perfect game. The last perfect game in Major League Baseball (MLB) was thrown by Félix Hernández in 2012 and there have only been 23 perfect games in MLB. Last week, Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers was on track to make that feat, but his manager pulled him out in the seventh inning. Baseball fans were up in arms. Why would a manager pull a pitcher during a perfect game?
The Dodgers’ manager, Dave Roberts, saw that Kershaw had thrown enough pitches and did not want to risk injury to his star pitcher. Roberts had to make a hard decision, let fate decide whether Kershaw would join the elite club of 23 other pitchers in the MLB who had thrown perfect games or pull him from the opportunity to be in that club. Was it really a tough decision though?
Every MLB fan, coach, and player can give their opinion of what should have happened and why it should have happened. Most of the news and opinion surrounding this game showed that Kershaw should have been allowed to stay in to finish the game, or at least until there was no longer a perfect game, whichever came first. But the decision came down to Roberts’ decision to protect his player, which many disagreed with as well.
Coaches know athletes can only perform if they are able and can only perform at the highest levels if they are mentally, physically, and emotionally healthy. Dave Roberts clearly saw that Claton Kershaw had an opportunity to have a career defining game. But that career defining game could have also ended in an injury, which could have been for a few weeks or months, or even career ending, due to overuse of his arm.
While sad for fans and the sport of baseball having a 24th perfect game, it was the right decision. If Roberts would have let Kershaw stay in and get injured, fans would have been yelling for Roberts’ dismissal. As a coach who has worked at all levels, I agree with Roberts’ dismissal and would have done the same thing. What Roberts did, while unpopular, was not only the right thing to do as a leader, but also showed what the culture is like in the organization…which is a culture of supporting its athletes.
https://www.mlb.com/news/clayton-kershaw-removed-from-perfect-game