Arguments for pulling him. Or I guess more accurately, arguments for why fans shouldn’t be surprised/angry that he got pulled.
Nah, athletes should intentionally put their bodies at risk for our amusement. This is basically Simone Biles pulling out of the Olympics but not as life threatening
I think crossing into the 7th inning makes the Roberts move seem more egregious. Had he pulled him after five or six for the reasons cited, I doubt anyone would care.
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Did Kershaw say he wanted to come out? If so, conversation over, I don’t think anybody here would argue with him. I suspect Kershaw would’ve wanted to go for it but who knows. The other side of the Posnanski list is that Kershaw has limited time left and will likely never get a shot at this achievement again.
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Seems like he was leaning this way:
He was at 69 pitches through six innings — 18-up and 18-down — and Roberts came over to talk with him. Their talk was frank. Roberts asked how many pitches Kershaw had left. Kershaw figured he had 80 pitches total, maybe if he really stretched he could get to 85. Roberts nodded and sent Kershaw out to pitch the seventh.
Kershaw did not have his best stuff in the seventh. He would say later that his slider was flat each of the final two innings. But Kershaw’s excellence on this day had little to do with stuff and a lot to do with what he’s learned. He struck out Buxton on a curveball, got Arraez to pop out on an inside slider and then Urshela ripped a ball up the middle, and Gavin Lux was positioned just right and turned it into the third out.
Kershaw’s pitch count was at 80.
And that was that.
The one about him retiring soon is abaolutely a reason to keep him in
Athletes should be forced to entertain me even if it might kill them.
My fantasy think tank actually had a name for this: we called it getting Dave Robertsed. He also pulled Walker Buehler from a no-hitter in 2018 in his third career start, although that was 6 IP on 93 for a rookie coming off TJS. I don’t think pulling him was a bad decision, but here’s what Buehler had to say:
He told me I was out of pitches and I was out of the game. I mean, that’s probably the toughest one of those conversations I’ve ever had. I obviously wanted to keep going, but it’s above my pay grade and they made the choice and these guys finished it out, it was pretty cool.
Beyond pulling guys from potentially historic performances, he has a general tendency to pull them early just because of third time through the order with no actual context which is bad misapplication of the data.
pulling Kershaw sure seems like the best thing long term for both him and the dodgers season.
There’s also this (via Plaschke):
For some other organizations, the chance at making history would be too great to resist.
Take the New York Mets in 2012, when Johan Santana was left on the mound to throw an untenable 134 pitches in authoring the first no-hitter in franchise history. It is no coincidence that, after that season, Santana never pitched in the major leagues again.
Yup…Mets fans probably think it was a good trade-off. Santana, probably not so much,
This discussion reminded me to dig up this 14 year old Fire Joe Morgan blog post on this topic. It’s quite hilarious, as they almost always were.
> The Giants’ Juan Marichal had 30 CG in 1968, a season dominated by pitching statistics, but how about Ted Lyons with the 1930 White Sox? That was a hitters’ year of almost comical proportions. The Yankees hit a collective .309, the National League hit .303, and eight batters hit .370 or better, yet Lyons had 29 complete games, and the co-leaders in the National League had 22.
Yeah, how about Ted Lyons and those 1930 numbers? Crazy. 297 IP. But more to the point, how about Ted Lyons and that 1931 arm injury that made it impossible for him to throw his cut fastball anymore? And how about the fact that he never pitched anywhere close to that number of innings again? And how about the fact that he’s in the HOF even though his 1.348 career WHIP is only slightly worse than Bronson Arroyo’s? It was a different game, man.
Also, do you do any research? I have no idea if Ted Lyon’s arm injury was due to the 297 innings he had thrown the year before. For all I know he injured his arm waving a sign of support for Herbert Hoover, who was President in 1930, because that’s how fucking long ago 1930 is.
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Lol he runs like my grandfather. Is there anybody on earth who thought tnat was a good idea other than Big Al?
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Yadier Molina was probably watching and thinking “wow, Albert is so fast!”
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Amazing. He got a good second and a half head start and the throw over was atrocious and he was still out by several steps
best tweet on it i’ve see was ‘running like it was leg day’
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Albert always tried to be sneaky on the base paths. to his credit it worked a lot because nobody watched him. When it didn’t work, ho boy does it look bad.
Vlad Watch:
No HR for Vlad tonight. DK ran a boost I couldn’t refuse.