LOS ANGELES — Clayton Kershaw sees the flurry of pitching injuries that has dominated the conversation around the sport and has thoughts. Among them: He doesn’t have an answer.
“If someone says, ‘I have it figured out,’ I wouldn’t listen to them,” Kershaw told The Athletic. But the three-time Cy Young Award winner and longtime Los Angeles Dodgers franchise face is curious.
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“I’m very wary of people that think they have it all figured out when all of this is still happening,” he said. “If you had it figured out, you would’ve told somebody and made a billion dollars. You know what I mean? Nobody knows.”
This, Kershaw acknowledges, feels like a real surge. Atlanta Braves ace Spencer Strider underwent surgery to repair his ulnar collateral ligament after already having one Tommy John surgery on his ledger, his club announced Saturday. New York Yankees star Gerrit Cole was shut down this spring with a cranky elbow. The Miami Marlins, ever so cautious with prized pitching prospect Eury Pérez, still lost the right-hander to Tommy John surgery. Cy Young Award winner Shane Bieber didn’t allow a run in his first two starts with the Cleveland Guardians this season before he, too, succumbed to Tommy John surgery. Houston Astros ace Framber Valdez went on the injured list this week when his elbow started barking.
The scars, in many ways, surround him. Kershaw spoke Friday, hours after his teammate, Shohei Ohtani, completed the most recent stage of his throwing progression from his second major elbow procedure. That night, Walker Buehler made his third minor-league rehabilitation start as he continues his recovery from his second Tommy John surgery. Of the 28 pitchers listed on the Dodgers’ 40-man roster (and 60-day injured list), 12 have already had at least one Tommy John surgery to reconstruct ligaments in their elbow, and four have had some form of major shoulder repair.
Shohei Ohtani threw in the outfield Friday before the Dodgers played the Padres. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea / Getty Images)
That group includes Kershaw, who went under the knife for the first time at age 35 this past winter to repair the capsule and glenohumeral ligaments in his left shoulder. He is hoping to return at some point this summer. But he is startled at the troubles that have knocked out some of the game’s most noteworthy arms.
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“Everybody has theories,” Kershaw said. “It’s probably a combination of what everybody’s talking about, whether it be added velocity, weighted ball programs too young, all this stuff that people talk about. But at the end of the day, nobody knows. Nobody knows the perfect formula, and if they did, they’d be doing it. So I think the question we need to ask is, how do we fix it? And then somebody has to be brave enough to put their neck out and try something different.”
“Nobody cares about the old guys,” Kershaw quipped, referring to himself along with multiple-time Cy Young Award winners like Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer, who each are on the shelf to start the season. Even as Kershaw piled up mileage on his arm through his 20s and early 30s, he said, “I never threw 100 (mph).”
Rather, it’s what’s happening to stars like Cole, Strider, Bieber, Valdez and fellow Cy Young Award winner Sandy Alcantara (who underwent Tommy John surgery last fall) that presents the biggest threat to the sport.
In looking at those cases, Kershaw struggles to find real answers. He’s long admired Alcantara, who he said has “perfect pitching mechanics” that seemingly put minimal strain on his arm. Strider’s lower half, he said, theoretically is supposed to help avoid his arm from breaking down again like it did.
Dueling public statements between MLB and the MLBPA have thrust some of the conversation on to the pitch clock, spurring speculation that the reduced time between pitches, paired with max-effort throws, have contributed to the breakdown.
“I just think it’s all silly between the two of them,” Kershaw said.
Whenever Kershaw returns, he will do so with a Dodgers rotation that is attempting to maximize rest as much as possible to hold its delicate yet potentially electric rotation together. Tyler Glasnow has never topped 120 innings in a season. Yoshinobu Yamamoto is acclimating to Major League Baseball. James Paxton has a history of injuries. Buehler, Kershaw and perhaps even Dustin May could return from surgery. So, the Dodgers have sought to create a quasi-six-man rotation, including plugging in a bullpen game during their first full turn through the rotation to ensure at least five days’ rest whenever possible. The answer might not be in more rest, however. Just ask the Marlins, who handled Pérez with kid gloves and still watched him blow out after 283 professional innings at just 20 years old.
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The conversation around pitching at maximum effort is just as complicated.
“I try to throw every pitch as hard as I can every time,” Kershaw said. “I’ve always done that. I don’t think the amount of effort you’re putting in — I know old guys will say, ‘I pitched at this speed and then when the game got into the seventh, eighth, is when I really sped up.’ We can’t do that. We’re out of the game in the third inning if that happens.”
Kershaw doesn’t have the answers. No one seems to. And that creates a massive, existential crisis that has long loomed over the sport but now feels ever-present.
“At the end of the day, we just want the best players to be on the field,” Kershaw said. “That’s true of every sport. So if there’s a way to do that better, I hope that MLB, the union, everybody would be all on board to figuring that out. I just haven’t heard somebody tell me definitively what would help.”
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(Top photo: Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)
