Poor Clayton Kershaw.
Seriously, I feel for the guy. I feel for all truly great players that become victims to the what have you done for me lately part of baseball.
Yesterday, on short rest, Kershaw took on a team that, for the most part, has not been very compliant with his role as best pitcher in the universe, the St. Louis Cardinals. The reason Kershaw did this wasn’t simply because he wanted to win, or because he’s a true competitor, or because he’s got the eye of the tiger. It’s because, as his manager, Don Mattingly, so eloquently stated post NLDS game 4 loss, “It goes back to the same question, is there anybody better, even on short rest, and even where he was at that point [in the game].” That “point,” for the record, was just before Kershaw gave up a dinger to Matt Adams, effectively ending the Dodgers 2014 season.
So I feel bad for Kershaw, who is steadily earning a reputation of being a no-show in the post season despite regular season uber domninance. Of course, there are tons of holes in that line of thinking, but holes make simple narratives complicated, and most commentators live and die on simple narratives, which means most fans snap them up and regurgitate them as their own. In fact, most managers snap them up as well, which, ironically, might just be why Kershaw was sent back to the mound in game 4 to begin with.
Welcome to meta-baseball. Kershaw—The name you’re supposed to say when you’re asked, “if you’re in a must win game, who do you pick as your starter?” Mattingly picked it. Even after he put his money where his mouth is and said money got snatched out of said mouth, Mattingly still picked it with his, “is there anybody better(?)” quote. But are we talking about better as in the realm of the regular season, of statistical comparison, of if all things were equal, or better for the task at hand given all the present variables?
Bear in mind, one of those variables is the manager’s career.
Let us look to the past, to previous aces on short rest scenarios. The hard evidence doesn’t really support the “is there anybody better” thinking even though it’s a near unanimously endorsed process. The truth is that the ain’t no one better’s of the baseball world are often bested by the not as goods on full rest. In an article by AJ Cassavell concerning short rested aces and their results, over on MLB.com: “Since 2004, starters on short rest are 5-7 with a 4.72 ERA in 21 starts in the postseason. In that timeframe, teams using a starter on short rest are now a combined 5-12 against teams who use a starter on full rest… Just six of the 21 starters in those games have pitched more than six innings, and Detroit’s Justin Verlander did so only after his Game 1 start in the 2011 ALDS was cut short by rain.”
I wrote my own take on pitching on short rest—the player’s perspective—over at Bleacher Report. I said that, while you can, absolutely do it, you’re doing it not because you genuinely feel like you’re the best pitcher available, or because you feel 100% ready, but because you would never want to betray the faith your team puts in you. When your manager asks you if you want to be the man in the moment and help the club win the biggest game of the season, what are you going to say, no thanks? A pitcher could be on the operating table with his arm getting reattached and he’d say he’d take the mound. When it’s time to play hero, rational thinking doesn’t factor in. In a sense, the pitcher is emotionally compromised. In sense, we all are.
I once said that pitching on short rest is like working out when you’re already sore. Yes, it may feel like it, as they both hurt though you can still do the act. But working out is different from pitching in that working out doesn’t, from the start, ask you to do things the body was not designed to do (baring some extremist exercise routines… you know who you are). When you pitch you are damaging your body. It’s an injury happening, not the simple breaking down of muscles in order to build more of them up. That means that pitching on short rest isn’t just an act of perceived will and heroism, it’s an act of, well, willful disregard to a known body of evidence concerning your health.
I said as much to King Kauffman on his delightfully fresh radio show, Content is King just yesterday. I told him about how pitching before your body has recovered isn’t like a diminishing returns on a good trip to the weight room, but like when action hero film stars check themselves out of the hospital before the bleeding has stopped so they can go back to fighting alien invaders. King’s completely fair response (indeed, the usual response) was to inform me that players used to do this kind of thing all the time back in the day.
Where have all the heroes gone? The thing about back in the day is that we weren’t all back in it. Certainly not today’s athlete, his exercise specialization, or the medical body of knowledge he has access to. Just like we do with that phrase “there’s nobody better” concerning Kershaw, so to must we do with, “back in the day”—debunk it.
It’s a loaded statement that implies pitchers were more resilient and healthy then, which in turn implies that today’s pitcher are the equivalent of Sworavski crystal. The truth: Back in the day tons of pitchers exploded in both attempted blazes of glory and just plain old blazes. Hell, some of them exploded in fires so small you couldn’t even earn a merit badge for the effort. Bottom line, they broke down, just as much if not more than today’s pitcher. However, there was no industry to fix them, so you never heard about what a burden it was to fix them and how much money was lost in fixing them. The injured disappeared while the genetic freaks who recovered faster and lasted longer appeared nightly to pitch for their respective squads, building the legends of time tested resilience. Fast-forward to today and the tail wags the dog.
I don’t mean to take anything away from the warhorses of the past. Truly they were physical specimens—they had to be to survive as long as they did when the medical science of the time was, “rub dirt on it”. But as the game specialized, the demand for pure velocity increased. More pitchers throwing harder—past the limits of what the body can withstand—just to be in contention for getting drafted. Medical science has made gains and saved more careers from the grave than it has lost, but it can’t fix supposed human design flaws as pointed out by baseball. What do you want more, healthy humans or hard throwing ones? Baseball likes the concept of that first one, but would prefer the second one.
Underpinning it all is the how the average cost of dominant starters has went up, up, and away from that of the average working stiff—a recipe for disgust if ever there was one. Thus the conversation has shifted from resiliency to fragility. From what makes sense to what makes us feel like a player is earning the money. From a complicated narrative to a simple one.
“It sounds to me like you wouldn’t have started Kershaw if you were the manager,” Kauffman says to me toward the end of the interview.
“Ha,” I say, “If I’m the manager, of course I’d start him!”
Counter intuitive? No more than the rest of baseball. At the end of the day, the manager’s role is political as much as it is tactical. Sometimes you don’t even know what it is. I have to think that after the Royals clinched a chance for the pennant, the powers that employ Ned Yost, high in their Kansas City penthouse, all shook their heads and said, “great, they won again, now we can’t fire him…” Madness and genius, who can say besides the outcomes of their choices? The outliers pull it off just enough to make baseball, well, baseball.
If Mattingly sent Dan Haren to the mound in game 4—like he said he was going to do before the series started—would Mattingly have been in the managerial dunce’s hot seat, presently at the forefront of post season chatter? Remember, everyone likes nice clean narratives when it comes to gambling on baseball outcomes. Something that makes us feel like the money was earned. Everyone from fans, to managers, to owners. If the mob believes Kershaw is the best, can you tell them he’s not? Sure, you could, just like you can tell them 2 + 2 is 5, or Derek Jeter was just an okay guy. They’d think you crazy. That is, unless you win. In which case, roll out the bronze statues!
But, even when you don’t pick the right crowd, safety by crowdsourcing is always a concern when you’re a manager. If Haren pitched the same game 4, to the same result, there would be no valiant effort clause cited. Instead of Mattingly being asked, “ya sure Kershaw was the best choice?”, he’d have been asked, “You sure Kershaw wasn’t a better choice? we malicious writers just talked to him, crying in front of his locker, mumbling despondently about how he felt good enough to pitch, and how you told him, the best pitcher in allllllll of baseball, NO. What gives, Donny? Kershaw has done it before, so, uh, are you sure? Are you really sure? I mean, is there anybody better?”
Sheesh, context can be a real bitch sometimes.
And so I say, poor Kersahw. He’s a victim of what he hasn’t done lately, brought on because he was first a victim of his own greatness. And that perceived greatness is so often the doom of many postseason squads. Look around at what’s left. The teams progressing to the next round aren’t the ones with the most star-studded rosters—although some tend to over estimate the prowess of what’s left because of the intensified star power effect of post season success (the good side of what have you done for me lately). Most of the remaining clubs are remaining because of the cumulative contributions of their rosters, good fortune, or flat out luck… err… I mean genius…not the blinding, perfect light of a few is-there-anybody-betters.
Maybe the most telling thing about all of this is, if Kershaw would have won last night, none of us would be talking about the matter. Well, at least I wouldn’t be. It would all be written off as a clear success, proof of the dominance of Kershaw, (who is still very dominant). Proof that Mattingly is a great manager, (though he was always a solid manager). Proof that the Dodgers spent their money wisely, (though other teams achieve success spending far less). Proof that we watch the game for the narratives it generates more than we watch for the game itself (?).