Well it seems the injury bug just decided to take a break from after the beginning of the season until now to bite a crap load of other players. This week we have seen both Brandon Phillips and Yadier Molina to muscle issues in their thumbs, Masahiro Tanaka has a minor tear of his UCL and if he's lucky may avoid Tommy John surgery, Encarnacion fell with a hamstring injury the week prior, Gerrit Cole went back on the DL after his previous injury flared up again, Justin Masterson is out with a nagging leg injury, Kawasaki and Reimold, two fill ins for the Jays roster, each were injured in a recent game, and many others.
It really is amazing how many injuries are coming about this year, I do always remember when injuries happen throughout each of the last decade or more of baseball I've watched but this honestly feels like it's reached a new height in terms of the numbers. In fact heres an interesting fact in this year alone, leading up to May 30th we've had 26 major league pitchers have to undergo Tommy John surgery, with an additional 13 pitchers in the minors who have been under the knife as well racking up a total of 39. Now what is so amazing about that? Well in 2013 we had 36 cases of Tommy John surgery in both the majors and the minors on the entirety of the season. Thats right we had already reached the same total number of surgeries from last season in the first 2 months of this year, now thats unfathomable to me and we've already had more creep up since that bit was posted on MLB Daily Dish.
Now a lot of these injuries have definitely changed the landscape of the MLB and to be perfectly honest I believe it has pretty much put the last nail in some teams coffin. Specifically that refers to the Yankees, the Diamondbacks, the Indians (though not sure they were all the in it to begin with) and to a less extent the Braves since they have lost the big consistent hitter on their team, aside from Freeman, Evan Gattis, The Reds and the Cardinals. Now not much needs to be said about the Diamondbacks being out due to their latest blast of injuries because they were already really far back from first place to begin with. However the Yankees did seem to be potentially be in the running before this however if you looked at their record and stats when Tanaka was not on the mound there were some really major issues and losing Tanaka along with C.C being currently on the DL makes it almost impossible for them to find 5 guys who can put together quality starts. Additionally like I've said before the Yankees have aged or aging players who has for the most part a declining skill set so their offence is not likely to get that much better. The Indians are a similar situation to the Diamondbacks, they aren't playing nearly as badly as the Diamondbacks are but their barely at .500 right now and they with their top prospect Miguel Sano out for the year and then Danny Salazar and Trevor Bauer, their two big name pitchers playing badly, the team doesn't have much hope of getting back in it during the second half.
The other teams I mentioned are on a slightly less obvious loss, in terms of the Cardinals I'm a little vary to say that the loss of Wacha and Molina to be the final nail because they are one of the teams that have their farm system loaded with top o the line prospects so they could easily turn around and replace all of the guys they have currently on the DL, which is likely necessary to a certain extent. On the side of the Braves they have lost a couple of their front of the line starters at the beginning of the season, and now are down almost all of their pitching depth as well since Floyd has hit the DL as well and Harang is beginning to fall back into his career numbers. But additionally we've come to know the new Braves to be a big strikeout team and due to that their scoring isn't consistent and losing Gattis, who is one of their most consistent power producers their offence is going to suffer a fair bit, which is something they can't really afford to happen since the pitching issues they have are going to make close games harder to win. Finally we have the Reds, these guys are a unique situation and their pitching seems rather unfazed, they got Latos back recently and he's pitching very well, Cueto is pitching like he's 5 years younger, and Chapman is destroying opposing hitters. Now they recently lost 3 players to the DL 2 long term and 1 short term or maybe long term depending on the recovery. The 2 long terms are Brandon Phillips and Joey, these two guys have been the backbone of the team for several years offensively, defensively and in terms of team morale, even more so after losing Shin Soo Choo to free agency. However Phillips has an issue with his thumb and is expected to miss at least 2 months and Votto, who is back on the DL with the same previous injury, is expected to miss a decent amount of time and potentially could be out for the season. Then finally Homer Bailey is the most recent Reds player to hit the DL, while he has been playing consistently at a quality rate, thankfully current news seems to indicate the injury isn't severe and believe that he will only be gone through the all star break meaning maybe a week into the post all star game, which means their rotation should stay in tact, however who knows what'll happen without the offence.
All in all this year is by far and away the year of the injury with a specialty in UCL tears.
No comments:
Post a Comment