Defensive shifts have overtaken MLB in recent seasons, but despite their statistical effectiveness, not everyone has bought in.
Among the holdouts is Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw, arguably the best pitcher on the planet. The left-hander aired his concerns about new manager Dave Robert’s plans to employ a regularly-shifting defense to The Orange County Register.
“I think just mentally for me I can live with a hard-hit ball getting through a hole as opposed to a soft, cheap ground ball that goes through because no one is playing there because of a shift,” Kershaw said. “Mentally, it’s just easier for me to swallow. You start making excuses in your head like, ‘Ah, I made my pitch.’ You just don’t want to have that in the back of your mind. At least I don’t.”
For the average pitcher, most managers would gently tell them to suck it up and trust in the analytic data. But Kershaw is not an average pitcher. When a still-in-his-prime, three-time NL Cy Young Award winner says he is uncomfortable with a manager’s strategy, it is in the manager’s best interest to listen. Kershaw is already pitching about as well as one can, so disrupting his mental state in the name of analytics has a very real risk of backfiring.
To his credit, Roberts seemed fine with the prospect of Kershaw getting special treatment.
If the Dodgers plan to shift behind him this year, that is “definitely a conversation that we need to have,” Kershaw said. Roberts said he is fine with that. He thinks it is up to him and new bench coach Bob Geren to make their sales pitch to Kershaw before planning the defense behind him.
“Yeah, I do,” Roberts said. “Because the starting pitcher is the most important person that day. So if he’s not comfortable – especially a pitcher as accomplished as Clayton is – you’ve gotta have the buy-in. If he’s not comfortable and doesn’t trust what we’re doing behind him, then it doesn’t work.
“Certain guys that we might shift for a certain pitcher … we might not with Clayton if he doesn’t feel comfortable with it. I just don’t think it’s the manager’s call or the coaches’ call if a certain accomplished pitcher doesn’t feel comfortable.”
Kershaw went on to say he is not opposed to using data to help him pitch better. However, he wants to be sure the data is specific to him and not just left-handed pitchers at large.
“If they do all that and they show me all that, I can’t argue with that. But, hey, against all left-handed pitching last year? That doesn’t do much for me.”
The Dodgers have those numbers, Roberts said, and can present them to Kershaw in any form he would like to see. Still, even if they show a hitter does something 90 percent of the time, the competitor in Kershaw isn’t willing to concede anything.
“I just don’t want to be in that 10 (percent),” he said.
As clubhouse rifts go, this is about as tame and inconsequential it gets. Still, it is interesting to watch a first-year manager like Roberts navigate a disagreement with a star player. Previous manager Don Mattingly came under fire for a lot of things, but he was a capable overseer to some very difficult personalities in the Dodgers clubhouse. Roberts will need to be all that and more as he attempts to get the franchise back into the World Series for the first time in almost 30 years.
