Normally, UTK comes to you powered by a fine beer or a gourmet coffee of some sort. Tonight, it couldn’t be much more different: I’m ‘powered’ by NyQuil and about two boxes of Puffs with the lotion in them (ick). We’ll keep things short, sweet, and I hope reasonably coherent, but no guarantees. Like that’s any different from any other day…
So did you miss me? Don’t answer that, I probably don’t want to know the answer. After a week at the fabulous Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, it’s back to the cool rain-filled air of Indianapolis.
Thanks for all the response to the articles published while I was gone, especially the interesting piece with Lee Sinins. I apologize, but there’s no way I’m going to be able to respond to all the emails. I did read them all though. To summarize most of the answers, I realize that it is far from a scientific study, that nothing was “proven,” and that a “control group” study is needed–and don’t think that’s not in the works! What the piece was is interesting, since several distinct patterns came up during an observable time frame among a more or less random sampling. Until the injury database is up and populated, we’re left with studies like this; imagine analyzing hitting without any data to work from and you’ll realize just how primitive injury analysis is at this stage. Any step, no matter how small, is movement towards something, even if we had found nothing. At worst, I get great response from my readers that help us find the next direction to go.
One of the glaring weaknesses in the injury analysis game is the lack of data. As the injury database is built and populated, we are left with spotty research and anecdotal knowledge, especially when it comes to the crossroads of sports medicine and pitcher workloads. Adding to the problem is the lack of data for both minor league and college pitching. Since pitching is pitching, opponents of workload limitations often bring this up.
In one of the first systematic studies of early pitching workload, Lee Sinins, creator of the Sabermetric Baseball Encyclopedia, studied 135 pitchers who threw 175 innings or more before the age of 22.
Last year, I was given the privilege of writing a story that hadn’t been written. It’s a story about a hidden treasure and one that opened my eyes to yet another hidden game in baseball. While “original” UTK subscribers will remember this story, I think it’s important enough to bring to a BP audience. I’m also going to be speaking with American Specialty in the near future, bringing you more insight from the true masters of injury analysis. I hope you enjoy. –Will
The good word on Greg Maddux, precautionary MRIs, a clarification on pitcher abuse, and more developments in the Mysterious Case of C.C. Sabathia.
The Braves hit yet another setback on the mound, A.J. Burnett takes a step closer to returning, and the Angels experience the other side of “baseball luck.”
The Padres should be more worried about their young third baseman than the Angels should about theirs, Kevin Millwood’s comeback could give the Braves an even greater sense of longing, and the Royals eagerly await Carlos Beltran’s return, first place or not.
Will Carroll looks at the status of usual suspsects Ken Griffey Jr. and Todd Helton, tallies up more injury concerns for the owie-ridden Cards, and worries about Darren Dreifort and Brad Penny lasting the year.
Will Carroll chimes in with a UTK Sunday Extra, reporting on Ken Griffey’s latest injury, plus status reports on Derek Jeter, Kevin Millwood, and more.
Welcome to the Derek Jeter Report…I mean, Under The Knife. I want to start today by thanking everyone for stepping up and helping with the Velocity Project. Heck, one great reader, Josh Plotkin, even sent in some great pictures! We’ve already had several reports come in–including one on Mark Prior today that made me giggle–and several more people have weighed in on potential problems. Yes, there’s a lot of error in the sourcing, but it we get enough of a sample, we should be able to come up with something workable. If the data from this phase works, I’ll find a way to get people at games with radar guns. Since today’s UTK is almost all about pitchers breaking down, even a small step toward figuring things out–or even figuring out that velocity doesn’t work–gets us closer to true knowledge.
One of the downsides of writing this by a deadline and then having a gap to publication is that things can happen, new information can come out, or a source will pop in late.
With Derek Jeter yesterday, I speculated that the delay in the MRI of his injured shoulder was due to swelling in the joint space. In fact, the Yankees were merely trying to keep their star shortstop safe. With the global SARS outbreak affecting Ontario, the Yankees elected to delay the MRI until they returned to Tampa. While this makes me no more optimistic about Jeter’s prognosis–in fact, I completely agree with Joe Sheehan’s assessment of the situation–I applaud the Yankees for making a smart decision. UTK will of course have info on Jeter’s MRI and prognosis tomorrow.
It’s amazing how quickly I can go from sitting on the couch watching game after game after game, cold beer never far from my lips, to full on working the phones. It’s funny that there’s now two phases to how I write–first, I make the outgoing calls to the usual suspects, but now I’m also getting a significant amount of incoming calls, pages, and emails. During my first call to my Yankees source–and note, many U.S.-issued cell phones don’t work in Canada–I probably had three calls coming in. In the first few hours of a “big story” like Phil Nevin or Derek Jeter, I make more outgoing calls, but by morning the ratio completely reverses. It’s an interesting experience. Thanks to all the readers who alerted me (I was watching, but thanks) and offered their takes. On to the injuries:
Derek Jeter could be out a long time, it’s a bad 2003 so far for closers, and no UTK would be complete without the requisite pickle juice and urine reference.
It’s Opening Night. It doesn’t have the same ring or even the same importance as “Opening Day,” but it’s still nice to see games that count. It’s fun to see the season open with something like a Doug Glanville full-count walk or a couple sac bunts in the first inning. Oy, baseball is a long season, but this we don’t need. At least Alex Rodriguez went deep. Even better, the game looks great on the big screen and I’m ready–beer, chips and salsa, and coffee–for the 12-hour orgy of baseball that will be my Monday.
Each and every THR came with its own set of pitfalls. Players were analyzed based on several factors, such as injury history, comparable players, style of play, biomechanics, and inside information from my sources. With no good statistics and no usable injury database, early readers screamed and yelled for “proof!” My response: There is no proof to injuries–sports medicine is like baseball before Bill James, and injury analysis is as much art as it is science.
What the THRs did do was spark some discussion, get people thinking about the effects of injury on their favorite teams and players, and bring sports medicine into the conversation more when performance analysis comes up for discussion. Sometimes, the evidence took care of itself, as in the case of Phil Nevin. That one call probably got more notice than any other, but it shows that there’s a method to the madness–add up injury history, a positional change, a player with an odd career pattern, and the advice of the UTK Medical Advisory Board and it’s not voodoo or Satanism, as one Pizza Feeder accused me of, Cotton Mather-style. I’ve said that if I do my job well, everyone will be able to make the same types of judgments with varying degrees of success. With statistics, some of us stick with OPS since there’s no long division; in injury analysis, if you only want the results, I’ll be here.
Troy Glaus and Jarrod Washburn causing hand-wringing in Angel Nation, injuries to Mariano Rivera and Steve Karsay have Brian Cashman frantically searching for Alejandro Pena’s phone number, and Will’s readers weigh in on Eli Marrero’s stomach ailment and a name for the labrally-impaired.