Should Clayton Kershaw Have Been Removed after 7 Perfect Innings?

I am a physical therapist in my day to day job as well as a baseball coach so this topic was of supreme interest to me. After looking on twitter, it seems many people were outraged by the decision. Let us examine the relative risk to benefit ratio for kershaw and dodgers and whether they made the right call in my opinion.

Benefit

There have been only 23 perfect games ever thrown over the course of baseball history. This includes over 200,000 games played in total. Obviously, this puts Kershaw on a very short list and is more of an accomplishment than his no hitter he has thrown in the past. My rebuttal to this is that for Kershaw it does not move the needle on whether he is a HOF or not as I believe he is already based on his numbers and accomplishments.

Risk

Tommy John has been running rampant across the minors and majors over the past two years. As shown in the graph below, there has been a sharp increase in the number seen each year at the MLB level.

Outside of this risk, we also have the fact that Kershaw has been labored by injury over the past few seasons. Specifically, his back has been a major problem for him throughout the past few seasons. As recent as last year, Kershaw spent time on the DL in July of 2021 with forearm issues which often is a precursor for more severe issues down the road. Justin Verlander experienced this prior to going under the knife for Tommy John surgery in late 2020. Kershaw is also not exactly a spring chicken anymore at the age of 34. This may not seem very old but he has logged some serious innings over his career hitting 200 innings quite regularly early in his pitching journey. That kind of stress adds up.

Lastly, we must consider the shortened preseason the MLB had due to the lockout and Kershaw mentioning he did not start throwing until the end of January this year. It takes awhile for the body to build up the proper volume to pitch higher innings and he was just no there going into this start.

Due to all of this data, I think the Dodgers determined the risk far outweighed the benefit of throwing a perfect game and Kershaw seemed to agree. As we look back at the end of the season, I believe we will see this as a good decision and might possibly weigh heavily on whether the Dodgers win it all this year with their stacked roster.

I hope you all enjoyed reading this and please upvote or comment your thoughts on this polarizing topic.