Not enough preparation, more injuries

It’s already the end of April, and for fantasy baseball owners, that means it’s time to start evaluating your team. Players that start off slowly hamper all teams, but this season, I’ve noticed a specific trend that is proving to be quite harmful. Over the past three weeks, three of my top players have gone on the disabled list (“DL”) with injuries that were only recently detected.

After talking with a few other owners in my league, it appears that there is a strange trend going on in baseball in which veteran players discover nagging injuries that were unknown during Spring Training. Many players simply get hurt in the first few weeks of action, and their injuries are legitimate and should not be included in the lot that I’m attempting to distill. But consider this:

After just three appearances, Yankees starter Chien-Ming Wang was placed on the DL last weekend with “hip abductor muscle weakness.” The Yankees figured that Wang might be injured after the veteran allowed 23 earned runs in just six innings of work spanning three games. (That prompted Nick Swisher, a position player, to pitch!)

Yankees outfielder Xavier Nady—who was projected to be a mainstay in the bombers’ offense this year—is on the DL with “right elbow soreness.” According to MLB.com, Nady sustained the injury “after making a routine throw,” and up until this weekend, he was considering having a second surgery to “repair damage to the elbow.”

Lots of other players have been relegated to the injured list since the season began, including Brandon Webb, Daisuke Matsuzaka, and Vladimir Guerrero. At the beginning of the year, Major League Baseball boasted that only 69 players were starting the season on the DL in comparison with the 106 players that sat out to begin the 2008 campaign. But today, I counted 135 players that were currently on the disabled list.

So I have to ask, if the DL grows by 50 percent after just three weeks of play, why aren’t players and teams able to identify injuries during the offseason or at least during Spring Training? During the winter months, most players spend time working out, but few engage in serious baseball activities until Spring Training comes around.

While Spring Training is designed to prepare players for the regular season, veteran players see far less action then the horde of prospects who are fighting for a spot on the roster. Veterans are given days off and yanked from the game in the later innings, and pitchers especially are scheduled to throw a certain amount of innings or pitches.

So what good is Spring Training if there are tons of players who aren’t actually ready for the regular season? The Yankees pitchers reported to Spring Training on Feb. 13 and didn’t start the regular season until April 6, but Wang threw just 21.2 innings in that seven-and-a-half-week period! C.C. Sabathia, who is not injured but has struggled in the opening month, threw even fewer innings than Wang did.

It appears that veteran players and especially pitchers are on such a delicate schedule that their readiness for the actual season is unknowable at the time. Nobody wants to play at an intense level that could cause an injury, but is the alternative any better?

If Xavier Nady was playing at a high level during Spring Training and if Chein-Ming Wang had averaged more than three innings of work a week, maybe the Yankees could have identified and rehabbed their injuries before the season. Giving up 23 runs in three games should not be a surprise, and a player can still test a sore arm without risking other injuries.

Such was the case for Alex Rodriguez, who realized that he was hurt while preparing for the World Baseball Classic in February. Rodriguez had surgery in early March, and, when he rejoins the team next month, he will have only missed a sixth of the season instead of a third due to the early recognition of his injury. Even so, had Rodriguez engaged in baseball activities over the winter, he may not have missed any time.
As I mentioned, there are currently 135 players on the DL, but there are probably even more players off to slow starts because of limited preparation. Some players just need the weather to warm up before they start hitting, but others are using the month of April as their warm-up, and that is simply unfair to fans, owners, and teammates.

Players understandably want to be with their families after a long season of traveling and constant competition. But for the amount of money that they reel in, it is ridiculous to show up for the regular season without being physically and mentally prepared.
While I’m not paying player salaries, I am paying the ridiculously high ticket prices each year, and the least the players can do is prepare for the occasion.

Jacob Shapiro is a List College junior is majoring in history and Talmud.

Tags: Sports, Jacob Shapiro, Column