Imperfect-o

 OK, so I almost get it. Almost. This time.

Clayton Kershaw is coming off a 2021 season in which he missed two months with inflammation in his pitching arm. And he was on an 85-pitch limit. And it's April.

Except. Except.

Except he had a perfect game going through seven innings, and he'd only thrown 80 pitches.

And the Dodgers were on their way to a 7-0 win over the punchless Minnesota Twins. 

And if you're paying the guy $17 million to pitch, as the Dodgers are, shouldn't the guy, you know, pitch? Especially when he's got a perfect-o going?

Instead Dodgers manager Dave Roberts pulled Kershaw after seven innings, 21 batters and 13 strikeouts. And Kershaw not only didn't protest, he seemed almost to agree with it. Because when you're getting paid $17 million, you begin to see yourself the way the club sees you -- as an investment that must be protected for the money games in October.

Or not even then, sometimes. Remember when the Washington Nationals shut down Stephen Strasberg for the playoffs a few years back, in order to save him for, I don't know, some other future playoffs?

This is where the Blob channels its inner Old Hoss Radbourn, who, way back in the caveman days of 1884, won 60 games for the Providence Grays and pitched nearly every damn game from July 23 on. Forty-three games; 40 starts. And he won 36 of them.

My inner Old Hoss is sneering at these pantywaists today. He's wondering why all this babying of investments is producing more and more pitchers who break down if you look at them sideways. Or who sit out a couple of weeks because of a "twinge" in the elbow.

A twinge in the elbow?

Old Hoss would have killed for a twinge in the elbow. Hell, he pitched on days when he couldn't raise his arm above his head until he got going. And if you don't want to go all the way back to 1884, what about Nolan Ryan almost a century later?

Someone posted something yesterday about how Ryan, in 1974, threw 235 pitches across 13 innings in a 15-inning Angels win over the Red Sox. He faced 58 batters and struck out 19 of them.

Two-hundred thirty-five pitches. Fifty-eight batters. And the Angels didn't shut him down for a month after that, because three days later Ryan took the bump again and beat the Yankees. That season he went 22-16, pitched 332 2/3 innings and rang up 26 complete games.

"But Mr. Blob," you're saying. "It's a different time now. No one throws complete games anymore. And if a guy throws more than 100, 110 pitches in a game, they declare his manager clinically insane."

To which my inner Hoss Radbourn would say: That's right. And that's the problem. Today's pitchers don't throw enough pitches, so they don't don't develop arm strength, and that's why they're so fragile.

Of course, that's just a theory. And it might be a completely absurd theory, its evidence being largely circumstantial. Modern baseball people might even laugh and call my inner Hoss a flaming peawit.

I do know how my inner Hoss would respond to that, however.

I just can't repeat it here.