Dodgers: Clayton Kershaw Talks About Heavy Usage in His Prime

Clayton Kershaw has no reservations about the heavy workload he had early in his career.

In the current era of baseball, starters are handled much differently as far as how many innings they log in an average outing. When most hurlers break into the majors, they are handled with kid gloves - pitch counts and innings limits are heavily enforced. That was not the case for the Dodgers and Clayton Kershaw.

Kershaw was a franchise cornerstone for ten-plus years. He logged more than 200 innings in a season by the time he was 22-year-old. He compiled four more 200-plus inning seasons in the five years that followed for a whopping total of 1,332 innings pitched from 2010 to 2015. Which was also his peak years.

When LA Times' Dylan Hernandez talked to a former team official, the official expressed reservations about how much the Dodgers used Kershaw. If the official could go back in time, he wouldn't redline Kershaw every season like the team did.

The comments were presented to Kershaw this week at spring training. The legendary southpaw identified that they were asking him if he himself wishes he would have thrown fewer innings and preserved his body more.

Kershaw has zero regrets. 

“I guess your question is if I would have protected myself more, do you think I would be less hurt and have more time in the future? “Even if that was true, I wouldn’t change anything.”

His workload during those six seasons was immense. Perhaps it did play a large role in Kershaw's recent struggles with injuries. The regular season stats also don't tell the full story - Kershaw was consistently asked to pitch on short rest in the playoffs.

Those are high stress innings on short rest.

The fact that Kershaw answered the bell and never shied away from the challenge is just another testament to why he's such a legendary Dodger.