Future Shock: Dodgers ... (02/08)
Team Health Reports: L... (03/29)
21 comments have been left for this article. BP Comment Quick Links
| Home | Blogs | Articles | Newsletter | Statistics | Fantasy | Events | Radio | Glossary | Search |
|
|
|
|
|
February 8, 2010 Team Health ReportsWashington Nationals
 The Summary: Washington is kind of the Evil Spock of consistency to Toronto's comparative randomness when it comes to injuries. That's because no team has been more injured than the Nats, despite being in different cities, stadiums, and training rooms, despite different GMs and front offices, and with a succession of trainers. The tide of DL days has broken past the sandbags every year, leaving the already short-handed team even more shorthanded. The Nats are also one of the only teams not to see any sort of positive bump from moving into a new stadium. Equipped with more money, better facilities, and starting to acquire talent, there should be a reduction, but it hasn't shown up yet. If the team stays at the bottom of the rankings for a fifth straight year, we're going to have to get a live chicken involved.
The Facts The Cost: Washington lost $11.7 million last year, and has lost $43.6 million over the last three years. That is money that could have been used to bring in Orlando Hudson before he decided to accept the Twins' offer for just a million more guaranteed. The Nationals could have gone the other way with that money on pitching, too, and brought in a John Lackey type instead of spending the $15 million on Jason Marquis to be a "front of the rotation" starter. The Big Risk: Stephen Strasburg has some upside. Maybe he has more upside than any pitcher since Mark Prior... and there's the problem. Pitchers get injured, burn out, or just don't make it. The can't-miss guys—remember Ryan Anderson or Luke Hochevar?—sometimes miss. Add in that Strasburg is nearly a singularity in terms of baseball talent and it gets worse, at least from a risk standpoint. With that crazy velocity comes a small group of comparables, so you'll almost always hear Nolan Ryan and Joel Zumaya. That's a pretty big range between a very few names. While it's not quite that binary, and since we have a wealth of scouting data on Strasburg, we have more to go on here. The Comeback: There's no clear comeback player for the Nats the way there is for most teams. The Nats aren't really counting on much from Jordan Zimmermann, but he's coming off Tommy John and playing golf, which I guess is a good thing. If it's not, John Lannan's tweets just got Zimmermann in a bunch of trouble. Elijah Dukes is in a state of constant comeback—much of it his own doing—but he also seems to have some terrible timing when it comes to injuries. With a more-or-less new manager and theoretically coming into his prime, Dukes could put everything together... or continue to flush it all away.
|
Question 389 also maintains that Lincecum is due for a UCL blow out because of his motion, but the guy has thrown a ton of pitches for 6 or 7 years counting his time at the U of W, without apparent ill effect. My own take from watching him is that it seems far more likely to have back problems than arm problems, but golfers put similar torque to their backs and manage to play competitively into their 40's and 50's, so who knows?
The golf analogy is a great one, but while I too have always worried more about his back than arm, we have no idea what forces and stresses he's putting on his body. My biggest concern is that as Lincecum matures, he'll either gain weight or just "thicken up" as many do and reduce the flexibility that allows him to do that back arch. Clemens had his "tick-tock" flaw, but was strong enough in the core to overcome it. Maybe Lincecum is as well.
It would be great if we had data like W% of pitchers that do X have injury Y within Z years. Until we have that, I think predictions on which pitchers will have specific injuries are kind of suspect. I think it is pretty much a given that every pitchers will have some sort of injury that will cause them to miss starts at some point. Greg Maddux is about the only guy I can think of that was completely healthy for a long career. That being the case, were there obvious 'flaws' in Maddux's delivery? The one thing I really remember about him that stands out was that he was *always* ready to field the ball at the end of his delivery.
Didn't Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina also remain exceptionally healthy until the very end? As you mentioned, these two also finished their deliveries facing home plate, balance intact. Food for thought.
I do, but only for a small period. Is the last 8 yrs enough? Not sure. Its certainly not the same as any other period, but still there's a TON of unknowns. I don't know when a pitcher is sore, or had a bad cheeseburger, or is going through a tough time at home, or has anxiety, or when the manager is hard on him, or when his back is stiff from a hotel bed or long flight. I don't know how he recovers, how strong he is, or how much he really weighs. I don't know his genetic makeup, the condition of his shoulder on any given day ... and a million other things. That's why these are broad categories of risk, not defined predictions. You'll never hear me say "Joe BLow WILL get injured"; I simply don't know.