As Corey Kluber completed his no-hitter for the New York Yankees on Wednesday night, Clayton Kershaw was in the early stages of his own bid to potentially blank the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Kershaw wound up allowing a one-out home run in the fourth inning — and later a double — over his six innings of work. That Kluber turned in MLB’s second no-hitter in as many nights and sixth overall this season (excluding Madison Bumgarner’s unofficial no-no in seven innings), further raised alarm bells for Kershaw.
“Well it’s not good, I’ll tell you that,” he said of the six no-nos that already are in the books. “I think whatever the intention was with the new ball or whatever it may be, it really hasn’t done anything. There might be less home runs, which I guess they want.
“I don’t know the stats on all that, but I do know strikeouts are the same, and I think I saw some stats for April that it was the worst hitting month in the history of something.”
Shockwaves were sent throughout the sport when it became known MLB adjusted the baseballs to deaden them for this season. The new ball in play is lighter and travels less distance in the air.
While approaches at the plate and pitchers throwing with more velocity are to blame as well, fact of the matter is strikeouts are up and there is increasing reliance on the home run ball to score runs.
“No-hitters are cool and I have all the respect in the world for Corey Kluber and Bum and all those guys that have thrown no-hitters, but to have one happen every night is probably not good for the game,” Kershaw added.
“Fans want to see some hits, and I get that. I appreciate the attempt that MLB has tried to do, but it seems like they missed the mark so far. We’ll see.”
Muncy disappointed with MLB’s change
Kershaw having a critical view of MLB’s decision to utilize a new baseball may be somewhat of a surprise, but he is hardly the first player — or Dodger — to share that opinion.
“Does them deadening it mean pitchers don’t throw 100 mph also?” Muncy asked during Spring Training. “That’s my only question. I feel like the whole game is kind of triggered against the offense, and now they’re taking the one advantage we had.
“Maybe or maybe not the ball was a little juiced. They obviously have never confirmed that, but them saying they’re going to deaden the ball was kind of heartbreaking. But you’ve got to go out there and get around it somehow.
“We’ll see how it goes during spring. Hopefully we have the baseballs now and we can start seeing how they fly. It will be interesting to see how much of a difference it actually is.”
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