Welcome to the Bronx, Gary–or should we say, welcome to Gary’s World, Yankees? Gary Sheffield has torn–not ruptured–ligaments in his thumb. It’s a very similar injury to that suffered by Derek Jeter last season and extremely similar to that of NBA star Ron Artest recently. Jeter skipped surgery, while Artest had surgery and missed only five games. While the thumb is certainly a concern, I side with Sheffield on this one. The injury seems to have been blown out of proportion. It could have been much worse for Jim Thome. His fracture nearly required the insertion of pins. That would have put him out well into April. Instead he should be back near Opening Day. Thome’s power stroke might be a bit rusty, but he’s already working on non-contact drills while in a soft cast. The rust might cost him a few hits and homers, but he remains an elite hitter. Remember that fluke fractures tend to not be long-term problems.
This team is in trouble. Why? You might notice a load of lights there in the pitching staff. Even the pitching-friendly confines of Safeco Field might not be enough to keep runs off the board if the M’s are forced to scramble all year for healthy arms. With swirling rumors about injuries, nightlife, and various other explanations, Freddy Garcia simply hasn’t performed the last two seasons. There’s a consistent track between his K rate and his velocity; as he fatigues, he loses effectiveness. Garcia needs to drastically increase his pitch efficiency to have the kind of year he desperately wants in his contract season.
As they did last year, the Marlins will need two ingredients to brew up another batch of Fish Fever: pitching and luck. Jack McKeon’s lucky cigar burned bright through the off-season after beating back Dusty’s magic toothpick, but does Ole Jack still have some luck left? Ironically it was some bad luck that turned around the Marlins season; there’s a much better and more thorough description in the Marlins chapter of BP2004, so I’ll spare myself some typing here. Beckett’s minor elbow problem, though greatly exaggerated at the time, did allow him to stay fresh enough to do yeoman’s work in the playoffs. He may just be the guy you don’t recognize in baseball’s television spots, but Beckett possesses electric stuff when healthy. Beckett is still young and has not faced a full season’s workload in his career, so his yellow is well earned. Add in a horrid attrition rate from PECOTA and Beckett borders on a red light. He’s precisely the type of pitcher you want on your team when you have a deep rotation.
Are these Rangers any more than a placeholder in someone’s memory? Probably not. Deserting the plan that tried to build a team around the game’s best young player, the team now is in an odd transition between John Hart and Grady Fuson. It has young and old, good and bad, durable and fragile. Acquisitions Brian Jordan and Brad Fullmer both come in limping. The injuries are partially responsible for their new lockers, allowing them to fit under a pre-flexible salary structure and possessing enough upside to hope for comeback seasons. Fullmer will be challenged to come back from a dreadful patellar tendon rupture, but he should get plenty of rest in the DH slot. Fullmer also never relied on speed, so losing a step isn’t a terrible loss. Jordan, on the other hand, is almost on his last legs. While his patellar tendon problem was not as serious as Fullmer’s, the loss of a step or three affects what athletic talents Jordan was once able to use. He has failed several required tests this spring, so the prognosis is decidedly cloudy. Hiding him at DH, even occasionally, is unlikely with Fullmer, Teixeira, and eventually Adrian Gonzalez in the mix.
The Indians are not only one of the top medhead teams around, but also one of the best-organized front offices. From their pioneering use of databases to the way they have dealt with the Kaz Tadano situation, this franchise is first-rate. My sidekick on Baseball Prospectus Radio, Scott McCauley, is a big Tribe fan. Often, he’ll look like a dog that’s been kicked when we discuss the Indians, but I keep telling him that things are looking up. As the dawn of hope starts to light the horizon, it can appear very dark. Even in the AL Central, that lineup isn’t going to cause a lot of fear, and the rotation has a ton of question marks. Still, as Rob Neyer pointed out, this team could sneak up on people. They won’t be the Yankees, Red Sox or even the A’s, but in the AL Central, they don’t need to be. If they sneak into the playoffs some time soon…well, we all know how to play craps, right?
It was nice to watch the team play as I wrote the Team Health Report. It should be, if not successful, at least more interesting to watch the Mets in 2004. As the team moves away from a Phillips Era that led to one World Series and much woe, and into what could probably be best described as the Wilpon Era, the team begins to turn over what was an old, fragile lineup.
It’s an accepted, but not always true, tenet that younger teams are healthier. Clearly, young pitchers are more at risk in terms of workload, but in fact, there are significant changes in the body over the normal range of ages in a baseball career. Young players tend to have more tears and trauma, while older players tend to have problems of muscles and bone. Like most things, there are too many factors involved to say that there is any one rule. Team health, like players, is very individual.
The two yellows at the top of the rotation aren’t terribly concerning to me. Both Leiter and Glavine have operated for the last several years as “crafty left-handers,” rarely having problems even when taxed. Leiter especially recognizes the dangers of Dallas Green-style workloads, having the scars to prove it. Pitchers of this age are already nearly singular and have to be special to make it this far. There’s a point where the aches and pains destroy their effectiveness and it usually comes in a hurry.
So, with no discernible plan and playing in the toughest division in baseball, can this team at least stay healthy? Over the past three seasons, the medhead numbers have not been kind to the Orioles. In addition to questions surrounding the death of Steve Bechler, the Orioles medical staff has had a difficult time with injuries. Injuries to players like Segui, B.J. Surhoff, Chris Richard, and Omar Daal leave them in the bottom quartile in most measures. Once again, the top three teams in the AL East trump the Orioles, and Tampa Bay is fast becoming a medhead team, led by their top-notch staff.
Now that the ball is gone and Jamaal The Goat is next in line for explosive therapy, the Cubs may be in line for a World Series win that would finally end all the curse talk. Despite Joe Sheehan’s protestations, most Cubs fans think all that stands between them and October glory is the Astros and cruel, cruel fate.
Despite the best work of PECOTA, many still see the rotation as something akin to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or choosing from amongst five recent Playmates. To opponents, it’s pick your poison; to fans, it’s a matter of personal taste with no bad choice. Only Clement, surprisingly, avoids the yellow light. Without giving too much away from Saving the Pitcher, Clement’s mechanics are extremely good. If you want one key, watch how his glove stays steady over his plant foot.
Wait… Prior and Maddux have among the purest mechanics that motion capture has, well, captured. Why the yellow on those two? The answer is age. For Prior, he’s crossing the injury nexus after the heaviest per-outing workload of his career last season. For Maddux, he’s in a rare age bracket, one where there’s not much of a sample size. Maddux had a few minor injuries last season, but he’s hardly overworked in any sense. The problem with any system of prediction is in capturing the outliers. The Cubs have two of the most extreme on one staff. Cautionary yellows hold, but these two aren’t your average yellow-light players.
Staring down the “Evil Empire” won’t be easy if part of the Rebel Alliance is banged up, broken, or otherwise in close proximity to Jim Rowe. While Theo Epstein has been bringing state-of-the-art ideas to the front office, he’s also been adjusting the risk tolerance of the organization. If one of the basic tenets of Moneyball-friendly organizations is getting the most bang for the buck, then watching any of those bucks sit on the shelf is waste. While the Red Sox could be wasteful with their revenue stream, they aren’t.
The key to the team is, of course, Pedro. Providing more than a third of the PECOTA projected VORP for this staff is pretty amazing considering the five-deep quality. But just as it’s been the case for the last few years, this team can only go as far as Pedro takes them. Pedro is watched more closely than any other pitcher, and the continuing focus on preparing his body to pitch makes Chris Correnti one of the real up-and-coming trainers in the business. New manager Terry Francona wasn’t known for a light touch with pitchers in his Philly gig, but this is Francona v2.0.
If Pedro can do what he did last year, the Red Sox will have more than a fighting chance in baseball’s version of Spy vs. Spy. Pedro gets a yellow light based on injury history, but honestly, he’s much less likely than last year to come up lame.
Season one in the Great American Ballpark wasn’t what the Reds had hoped for. While the team flailed on the field, the front office suffered through its own turmoil, and too many fans came to the park dressed as empty seats. Yet looking at the lineup above, we see many of the same names we saw last year. The Reds may have the least turnover of any team in the NL.
Last season, I thought the Reds would have a shot at the NL Central crown. Oops. Instead, injuries once again tore down the team’s chances as more than half the starters were on the DL at one point near the end of the season. Instead of what could have been an historically good outfield, two-thirds of that trifecta spent the better part of the season on the DL, and the other turned into a modern Dave Kingman. Was that a fluke, or is that what the Reds can expect this season? For the medical staff of the Reds, this could be considered a make-or-break season.
Reports from Braves camp indicate that John Smoltz is in mid-season form. He was at full velocity during a bullpen session and reported no more than normal soreness following the workout. There are two things we can draw from this. First, Smoltz’s elbow is doing well after the late-season problems. Second, the Braves and Smoltz are more concerned about that elbow than they’ve been letting on. The only reason for testing the elbow so early is to gauge whether or not John Schuerholz needed to go work the phones for bullpen depth. Expect Smoltz to be used differently this season–the Braves want to use him in pure save situations only, while Smoltz is asking to go longer. The first Phillies camp for Billy Wagner started off poorly, but the soft-tissue injury in his middle fingers doesn’t look to be a long-term concern. There’s no real consensus on a cause, which is mildly concerning, but the Phillies have depth to deal with any minor injuries to their flamethrower.
If Joe Torre gets to write the above lineup on his card 130 times this season and gets 30 starts from each of his five starters, it will be a long season in Boston, but the odds of this happening look more like Powerball than baseball. I’ll be interested to see if any other team has as many red lights this season. It’s odd to see, but the most recent addition to the team–the misplaced third baseman–looks like the best bet for a healthy season.
Does health really matter to a team that stinks? To most teams–notably last year’s Tigers–the answer is yes. For the 2004 Brewers, the answer is mostly yes. The Brewers could lose more games if Geoff Jenkins goes down than if he’s healthy, but it won’t be the difference between making the playoffs or not. Instead, they need to keep the players that might be trade bait healthy and focus on not overtaxing their young players. The Brewers are selling hope this season, not contention, so the most important players that will see Miller Park in April will be Sheets and Spivey–for different reasons. Sheets remains the one player that could conceivably be on the next good Brewers team; Spivey is the likeliest trade bait.
The health of the “Big Three” starters is still the key to the success of the team. Hudson, Zito, and Mulder have put up big innings as relatively young pitchers, and should be moving into their best seasons. But only healthy pitchers win championships. For Hudson and Zito, they are as healthy and strong as ever. Their teammate, Mark Mulder, is the question mark, but please note that none of the questions are about his arm. Mulder returns from a fractured hip (femur, near the ball of the hip to be technical) suffered due to a faulty mound. Call it random or call it the fault of the Phillies’ grounds crew, but there has never been a pitcher that has returned from this type of injury. While the A’s and Mulder have insisted that he could have returned for last season’s ALCS, there is no evidence to back this up. I don’t want to say that Billy Beane, Larry Davis, or Mark Mulder were lying, because I simply have no reason to believe that, but I also know the A’s often seek any competitive advantage they can. In the absence of objective knowledge that Mulder can pitch–either last October or this February–I’ll continue to be cautious. It’s only when Mulder takes the mound in spring training that we will know for sure. His yellow light is based on the lack of any comparable returns only. His arm should be well-rested if possibly slightly rusty for the 2004 season.
As the Expos continue to be baseball’s answer to homelessness, Omar Minaya and Frank Robinson make do with a team that, all things considered, could be a lot worse. Not many teams survive the loss of a superstar; just ask the Pirates. The Expos seek to avoid the Pirates’ cursed decade post-Bonds, but will they be healthy enough to make it? If the Expos leave the Big O in the near future, few will miss it. Never a great baseball stadium, anecdotally, it is one that players feel strongly about. “That’s the worst stadium in baseball,” said one current NL outfielder. “It’s like being a kid and playing on the street. There’s no give, big [expletive] seams, and the dirt is like a rock.” The installation of a new FieldTurf surface this season–the same field used by the Devil Rays–could help significantly.
The AL Central is close enough–or rather, mediocre enough–that a small factor could make a big difference. It could be a breakout performance, a smart mid-season acquisition, or a key injury. The Twins have dealt with quite a few injuries, seeing their Redbook numbers creep up each year. Some may be the result of playing more “important” games, since the numbers suggest that poor teams have fewer injuries due to end-of-season replacements and ‘coasting.’ While any team can have a bad year injury-wise, this three-year trend is disturbing since there have been no significant changes in the park or even in the personnel. The Twins, you’ll notice, have a distinctly “green” tint here in the THR. Does this mean their injury woes have turned? Perhaps. At the very least, two of the riskier players–Eric Milton and A.J. Pierzynski–were moved, and even the riskiest of Twins aren’t terribly risky.