Not wanting to risk injuring his aging ace, Manager Dave Roberts pulled Clayton Kershaw. He had thrown only 80 pitches.
Clayton Kershaw has won three National League Cy Young Awards, one N.L. Most Valuable Player Award and a World Series. He has thrown a no-hitter and compiled a near-certain Hall of Fame résumé. But he has never thrown a perfect game, and his best chance at accomplishing that exceptionally rare feat may have disappeared thanks to circumstances including a manager’s decision, his age and recent injury history and, possibly even, the owner-imposed lockout that threw Major League Baseball into uncertainty this winter. Dodgers 7, Twins 0| Box Score| Play-by-Play Kershaw,34, was absolutely dominant in his first start of the season, striking out 13 Minnesota Twins over seven innings and 80 pitches on a cold,38-degree day at Target Field in Minneapolis. But his afternoon ended there. Manager Dave Roberts summoned the left-handed reliever Alex Vesia to start the eighth inning and any thoughts of a combined perfect game — it would have been the first of its kind — quickly ended when, with one out, Twins catcher Gary Sánchez rapped Vesia’s fifth pitch into right field for a single. There have been only 23 perfect games, and none since Seattle’s Félix Hernández did it against Tampa Bay on Aug.15,2012. Everything lined up for Kershaw in Minnesota not just to notch one more historical personal moment, but to end the current drought of perfect games, the longest in M.
