Clayton Kershaw’s Best Remaining Starts by Camera Angle

Clayton Kerhsaw will pitch in front of this camera on August 14th, or not.

While Clayton Kershaw has dedicated much of his 2014 campaign to lowering the self-esteem of opposition batters, it’s also the case that he’s recorded zero starts in front of a straight-on center-field camera — i.e. the sort of camera angle which might best allow a viewer to fully appreciate what Clayton Kershaw is throwing and how he’s throwing it.

With the second-half of the season to begin tomorrow (Friday) and Kershaw projected to make his 15th start on Sunday, I endeavored to examine the remainder of the Dodgers’ schedule with a view towards identifying any starts Kershaw might be likely to make in front of such a (center-field) camera, so that it might be possible to participate with Maximum Energy in Kershaw’s potentially historic season.

The methodology I utilized was far from sophisticated: starting from this July 20th, I regarded every fifth day as one likely to be started by Kershaw — the logic being that a club in contention for a playoff spot (as the Dodgers are) would have some interest in deploying a generationally great pitching talent.

The results suggest that Kershaw is likely to record 15 more starts this season — two of which (at St. Louis on July 20th and at Atlanta on August 14th) occur within a stadium featuring a straight-on center-field camera. This brief experiment also reveals that Kershaw might very well start at Milwaukee on August 9th — which stadium’s camera is among the league’s worst.

Here’s a full table of Kershaw’s projected remaining starts. Rank signifies the ranking of the center-field camera according to a piece which appeared in these pages this past spring. Avg indicates that the relevant camera is neither among the league’s ten best or five worst.

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