OnlyBucs

I started this thread only to say- i have nothing- yet.



I found a recent article (by recent, I mean recent) article that's from the NYT. Be skeptical if you choose, but give us a better source. Unfortunately, i don't register for many online sites. I just go with sources that don't require me to register.



Some of you may have seen this report there or elsewhere.



The byline intrigues me. This is close to what it says:



(MLB) Injuries are up (as in days on the DL) as MLB falls behind other sports in injury prevention.



I would think that "injury prevention" measures take on a lot of forms, with rest being one. I know that sports science is a growing field.



I might register, because I can't imagine how baseball could be very far behind most other sports. Teams take their players so seriously.



Managers/coaches "rest" players for different reasons

Heck, the coach rested ME for 4 years!

If you can give me the date of the NYT article I am registered and I will try to read it and give some details.

Part of the issue this year with rest is the limited schedule last year. They don't want.to increase a pitcher's load too much from one year to the next. I suspect that's why 5 inning games are so popular. Next year might be a better test.

67464E674C44230 wrote: If you can give me the date of the NYT article I am registered and I will try to read it and give some details.


Hang tight.



June 3, 2021



It's Not Your Imagination....



That's the start of the Title.

5153494F593C0 wrote: Part of the issue this year with rest is the limited schedule last year. They don't want.to increase a pitcher's load too much from one year to the next. I suspect that's why 5 inning games are so popular. Next year might be a better test.


Yes. Have heard MLBNR hosts mention that.

I found it GW. Thanks for the info. I hope you guys can read this link.



Baseball Players are getting hurt alot

5A7B735A71791E0 wrote: I found it GW.  Thanks for the info.  I hope you guys can read this link.



Baseball Players are getting hurt alot


I have to subscribe but I’ve used all my free articles.  Others maybe able to access. 



But this year with its 5 inning goal has really gotten ridiculous. 



So I have thought often about this topic. I came to the conclusion that The increase in velocity and spin was the culprit. The average fastball is at least 10 mph faster today than 30 years ago. Or so I thought. It turns out, apparently, The difference in speed over the past 30 years can be attributed significantly to the way speed is currently measured. I was really stunned to read this.



https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... the-years/



I feel certain that the increasing injury rate is A significant reason for the extra rest. But if velocities are fairly close what is causing all of the injuries?

I can't read it for the same reason, so I'll ask a question.



Is it MORE players? Or,



Is it a HIGHER PERCENTAGE of players?



If it's a higher number, it's because we have more teams (and players) than 30 years ago.



If it's a higher PERCENTAGE, then I have no idea.

101701090710575B22050F030B0E4C010D0F620 wrote: I found it GW.  Thanks for the info.  I hope you guys can read this link.



Baseball Players are getting hurt alot


I have to subscribe but I’ve used all my free articles.  Others maybe able to access. 



But this year with its 5 inning goal has really gotten ridiculous. 



So I have thought often about this topic. I came to the conclusion that The increase in velocity and spin was the culprit. The average fastball is at least 10 mph faster today than 30 years ago. Or so I thought. It turns out, apparently, The difference in speed over the past 30 years can be attributed significantly to the way speed is currently measured. I was really stunned to read this.



https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories ... the-years/



I feel certain that the increasing injury rate is A significant reason for the extra rest. But if velocities are fairly close what is causing all of the injuries?






this measure of pitch speed is very interesting. I had no idea it depended on where pitch was measured.

By James Wagner

June 3, 2021



Every week in Major League Baseball this season, the list of new ailments has looked as long as a CVS receipt.



On Sunday, the newcomers on the injured list included Max Kepler (hamstring strain) and David Bote (dislocated shoulder). On Monday, Jose Quintana (shoulder inflammation) and Michael Kopech (hamstring strain) were added. On Tuesday, Jack Flaherty (oblique strain), Kyle Lewis (knee discomfort) and Lorenzo Cain (hamstring strain) joined them.



Already on the I.L. were some of the best players in the sport, including outfielders Mike Trout, George Springer and Bryce Harper and infielders Corey Seager and Trevor Story.



Injuries are inevitable in sports, particularly in one built around explosive actions — firing a pitch, unleashing a swing, bursting out of the batter’s box. But what is happening in M.L.B. this season has not only alarmed people around the game, it has also underscored how far behind some experts say baseball is compared with other sports in terms of injury prevention, particularly given the sharp jump in muscle strains. It has also made some of the worst fears of teams, executives and players about the abridged 2020 season come true.



“I think a lot of it has to do with the short season” in 2020, said Yankees reliever Zack Britton, who is making his way back from surgery to remove a bone chip from his throwing elbow. His type of injury is often the byproduct of lots of pitching.



He added: “Hitters probably missed out on about maybe 400 at-bats or something like that. That’s a lot of at-bats and buildup that they’re missing. Pitchers, the same thing with innings. And think about the minor leagues guys especially; they didn’t have anything. So to come back now and have these workloads, it’s going to be tough on your body.”



The M.L.B. season is the longest in professional sports: 162 regular-season games sandwiched by nearly two months of spring training and another month for the playoffs. But because of the coronavirus pandemic, and disagreements between M.L.B. and the players’ union over the length of the season, the 2020 campaign was only 60 games, followed by a monthlong postseason. (The season for the minor leagues, whose players do not have a union, was canceled entirely last year.)



So 2020 was defined by starts and stops: The traditional major league spring training was shut down because of the pandemic in March; players worked out — or not — for months without any idea of when a season might start; a second preseason camp was held in July; and the regular-season sprint started in late July.



“The way these guys prepared and trained last year, and into the off-season, and then ramping up again to try to do this for 162, is just different than how they prepared last year, and that’s a really big change,” Milwaukee Brewers General Manager Matt Arnold said. “So it does feel like it’s been more about learning how to adapt after such a strange season that has led to these types of injuries.”



Arnold has a front-row seat to the scourge of injuries. The Brewers entered Thursday with a 29-26 record, third place in a taut National League Central race, even after the key outfielders Christian Yelich, the 2018 winner of the N.L. Most Valuable Player Award, and Cain each landed on the I.L. more than once. Second baseman Kolten Wong, catcher Manny Pina and pitcher Brett Anderson also have missed time.



As of last week, the Brewers ranked third in M.L.B. in total games missed by injured players, with 518, according to the tracking site Man-Games Lost. (Those numbers, though, also included players who, for virus-related reasons, landed on the injured list.) The San Diego Padres (678 games missed by players) and the Tampa Bay Rays (542) have had more injuries than anyone, yet are two of the best teams in M.L.B. The Mets, who are leading the N.L. East, rank first in the advanced metric of most missing production.



“The entire league has a lot of injuries, so nobody is going to feel sorry for you,” said Padres Manager Jayce Tingler, whose team has 15 players on the injured list, including an entire bullpen’s worth of relievers.



“We knew going from 60 games to 162, and everything the league threw at us, there were a lot of indicators that said it’s going to take a big group of ballplayers to get through the year,” he added. “And so far, a quarter of the way through the season, that has played true.”



Compared with 2019 spring training and the first two months of that season, the number of I.L. stints had increased by 31 percent through the same point in this season, with pitchers making up the bulk of those I.L. appearances, according to Stan Conte, a former head trainer for the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers who consults with teams through his injury analytics firm.



(There are several caveats: New rules were adopted for baseball amid the pandemic, such as seven-inning doubleheaders and a runner on second base at the start of each extra inning; Conte didn’t compare 2021 with last year because 2020 provided such a small sample size; he included only orthopedic injuries, and thus no viral infections; active rosters increased from 25 players in 2019 to 26 in 2021; and teams sometimes use the injured list to manage their rosters, such as putting a player there with a minor ailment he could play through simply to give a roster spot to someone else.)



Conte has noticed a troubling trend to the upswing in injuries. Overall, soft-tissue ailments, such as muscle strains, were up 117 percent through spring training and the first two months of 2021 compared with the same period in 2019. Specifically, groin injuries were up 700 percent (to 16, from two); hamstring injuries were up 194 percent (to 47, from 16); and oblique injuries were up 83 percent (to 22, from 12).



In contrast to being hit by a pitch or breaking a bone while sliding into a base, medical experts believe soft-tissue injuries like oblique or calf strains are preventable. Conte said that while the total number of injuries was relatively unchanged from 2018 to 2019, hamstring ailments — the most common diagnosis in M.L.B. — had been increasing. While more data and analysis are needed, he said one of several theories for the rise in injuries this season could be that teams were too cautious in building up players from a small to a large workload.



“Let’s just say running, for instance, at 90 percent, which is still fast, but now comes April 1 and they’ve got to run first to third at 100 percent, but they really haven’t done it much,” Conte said in a phone interview. “And they may not have had as many at-bats in spring training, and they’re going to try to take it easy.”



Gary McCoy, a former strength coach in the Miami Marlins’ and the Houston Astros’ minor league systems, said that most soft tissue injuries could be prevented. In 2016, using a variety of techniques, McCoy began overhauling the training of the oft-injured roster of the CTBC Brothers, a professional baseball team in Taiwan, and the number of soft-tissue injuries dropped to zero in four years.



Now the vice president of performance at Kinetyx Sciences, a company developing shoe inserts that track performance, McCoy pointed to a number of underlying problems with injury prevention in the sport. Among those he listed: not enough tracking of fatigue to a lack of training of the whole body (“baseball is the most asymmetrical sport on the planet; if you’re a left-handed-hitting and left-handed-throwing outfielder, you turn right for nothing”) and not using a player enough, a more significant consideration now after the pandemic-affected 2020 season.



“We’ve got this incorrect theory that permeates the sport,” McCoy, also a strength and conditioning coach for the Australian national baseball team, said in a phone interview. “I call it the ‘bullets in the gun’ approach. They’ll turn around and say, ‘We’ll cap his pitch count, and then he’ll have more bullets available for the next game.’ What we’re doing is de-evolving the athlete. It’s not a bullets-in-the-chamber approach; it’s about building a bigger chamber.”



McCoy said that baseball was behind other sports, like soccer and football, in terms of preventing injuries through measures like collecting biometric data and adopting the right culture. (According to the collective bargaining agreement, wearable devices are voluntary for M.L.B. players.)



“I don’t claim to have the answers to all of them, but do I think that as an industry we could be more proactive?” said Tingler, the Padres manager, who is a former minor league outfielder. “I, 100 percent, absolutely do.”



Baseball is very different now, said Britton, 33, who is in his 10th major league season and whose team overhauled its strength and conditioning staff after setting a M.L.B. record when 30 players landed on the I.L. in 2019, a mark that might fall this season. He said that pitchers, for example, exert themselves more and throw harder than ever and that players train differently, a potential reason for the jump in soft-tissue injuries.



“Today’s players do such a good job of prioritizing their health, their bodies and doing everything they can to stay in shape and stay on the field,” Rays Manager Kevin Cash said. “It’s just a lot. It’s a grind. They play a lot of games.”



As of last week, only the Cleveland Indians had fewer games (118) missed by players because of injuries than the Kansas City Royals (160), according to Man-Games Lost. Asked how they had pulled that off, Royals Manager Mike Matheny looked around the visiting manager’s office for wood to knock on.



Matheny, a major league catcher for 13 years, said the health data being collected now was “light-years” ahead of a decade ago. He said the Royals tried to make educated guesses about injury red flags, schedule rest for those players and compare notes with sports officials abroad — not unlike other teams. Mere luck, though, could also be playing a part.