Injury prone, brittle and phooey

There are several discussion points or "memes" thrown around all the time that get my dander up. One of them is, "He plays to win." Gosh, athletes are competitors, so wouldn't like 97% of them play to win? Another large one lately is when a player is labeled, "injury prone" or "brittle." This last one is highly amplified by the recent free agent signings of Jacoby Ellsbury by the Yankees and Josh Johnson by the Padres. Ellsbury's signing, of course, was a big deal because of the Yankees/Red Sox angle and that the deal was so large and for seven years. Ellsbury was quickly stated by many to be injury prone. I have heard of measuring skill sets. But measuring a guy's ability to stay healthy? Come on.

Josh Johnson has missed a significant number of starts in four of his eight full big league seasons. Thus he is injury prone. Scott Kazmir miss years and had lost his fastball before he disappeared. So he is injury prone. What are we measuring here? Are we saying that some guys were born with more of a dark cloud over the heads? Are we saying that some guys are babies who go on the disabled list for every other thing? Do some players have a disposition to get hurt? Coco Crisp comes to mind there the way he throws his body all over the outfield when he plays out there. But even so, how much are injuries just random, freak events?

2013 was a banner year for injuries according to a great story by Jeff Zimmerman of Fangraphs.com. According to Zimmerman's data, there were 29,504 days lost by players to the disabled list. That is astounding. I found a different way of looking at it.

If there are eight position players on each team and there are thirty teams, that leaves 240 possible times where a player can play in 150 games (I didn't count the DH). Obviously, there are platoon situations that prevent that happening and some players prove to be poor during the season and are replaced. So that prevents many from playing in 150 or more games. What would you say that figure to be? Maybe half? Less than half?

According to some research I did last night, only 62 position players (ie, non-pitchers) played 150 games or more. That is some 25.8% of the total possible. Obviously, injuries play a factor. I also counted how many of those 62 were players aged 30 and higher. Only 21 of those guys played 150 games or more.

According to my data, the last three years have shown a sharp decrease in both areas. Here is my data:

	Players	over 30
Year	> 149 games	> 149 gms
2013	62	21
2012	64	26
2011	62	16
2010	74	29
2009	73	23
2008	67	24
2007	74	29
2006	74	24
2005	71	28
2004	69	28
2003	73	24
2002	75	21
2001	74	24
2000	75	30
1999	72	35
1998	90	38
1997	75	29
1996	74	31

And here it is in graph form:

The amount of players over 30 has decreased from the peak days of 1998 and 1999. Is this a PED thing? Perhaps. And from 1996 to 2003, the amount of total players over 150 games was always over 70. The last three years, that has shrunk to 62, 64 and 62 respectively. 

Looking over this data and combining it with Zimmerman's stuff just reinforces the idea that a lot of players are getting hurt. This stuff just happens. Occasionally, you get a player where it seems to happen a lot. There is Tulowitzki and even Brett Gardner. In the past, George Brett and Mickey Mantle were considered injury prone.

I consider most of these players to have been unfortunate. They have missed more than their share of games due to injury. Does that mean they are injury prone? Or does that just mean they have been unlucky?

And does such bad luck predict what will happen in the future? Unless it is a chronic injury such as Nick Johnson's wrist or Mantle's knee, I don't think that is fair or accurate. The odds of the Tulowitzki, Gardner, Johnson and, yeah, Ellsbury staying healthy in 2014 and each year beyond seem just the same as not. 

Players get hurt all the time. They hit the bags wrong when they slide or step on them. The dive and bounce off walls. They fall into seats. They get hit by pitches. These all seem random. I'm not a good numbers guy. I cannot give you foolproof data. But from my perspective, this injury prone stuff is all phooey. And every time somebody says that a guy is injury prone and it has nothing to do with a chronic problem, my teeth will continue to grit. 

It is a real shame about Troy Tulowitzki

Troy Tulowitzki is the best shortstop in the Major Leagues since Alex Rodriguez. The problem is that A-Rod almost never got hurt early in his career and Troy Tulowitzki cannot seem to avoid the injury bug. After only playing 46 games a year ago, Tulowitzki has just been diagnosed with a broken rib and will miss another four to six weeks after playing just sixty games this season.

Tulowitzki has averaged 29 homers and a 105 runs batted in for every 162 games he has played with 66 walks and 181 hits. Unfortunately, he cannot get close to 162 games in a season. He has played now for eight years and has only twice reached the 150 games played mark. 

Tulowitzki missed 51 games in 208, 40 in 2010, 19 in 2011, 115 last year and now he will miss 30 to 45 more games this season. I have seen some posts by Rockies' writers that seem to blame Tulowitzki for this problem. How can you blame a guy for getting hurt? It is just plain bad luck. His career kind of reminds me of George Brett and Larry Walker. Like them, he is a brilliant talent who simply cannot get a physical break. Or maybe he gets too many depending on how you look at it.

And 2013 was shaping up to be his best season yet. His triple slash line reads: 347/.414/.629. He had already hit sixteen homers and sixteen doubles. He had driven in 51 runs in just sixty games. It was a monster season in the making. Now it will be on hold for more than a month.

And lest you think those were simply Coors Field numbers, Tulowitzki was a .975 OPS guy on the road this season with eight of his homers and nine of his doubles on the road.

If Tulowitzki could have stayed healthy over his career, he would have been everyone's All Star. He would have been one of the most talked about players in baseball. Instead, his career thus far has been a sad shake of the head, and to some, a disappointment. You cannot call a guy a disappointment because he gets hurt. But you can call it disappointing.

Why I'll Never Be a Sabermetrician

I set to write a post today based on the idea that the shortstop position has really changed over the years. I had often heard that shortstops, starting with Cal Ripken Jr., are bigger and have more power then those that played in the days before Ripken. And indeed, I began a little search using slugging percentage for shortstops that qualified for the batting title and played at least 50% of their games at short and slugged over .300. Here's what I found:

2001 - 2010: 209 seasons
1991 - 2000: 167 seasons
1981 - 1990: 141 seasons
1971 - 1980: 120 seasons
1961 - 1970: 117 seasons

So yes, those increase of seasons for shortstops over .300 in slugging percentage seems to indicate today's shortstops are slugging at a higher rate. But I didn't know how to account for expansion (one reason I stopped at 1961). Plus, I don't know if that's the best search to use. But that's not the real reason why I'll never be good with analytics. The real reason is that my curiosity won't stay in one place.

For example, I got caught up seeing the names: Rico Petrocelli, Jim Fregosi and Dick McAuliffe on the list. Those guys were basically known for other positions. Petrocelli and Fregosi at third and McAuliffe at second. But all three of those players played the majority of their games at short for several seasons. I didn't know that. And all of those guys preceded Ripken, had good pop in their bats and hit their shares of homers. Perhaps they were where the power game at short started and not with Ripken.

Then I saw in that same list that Leo Cardinas led the lead twice in a row in intentional walks. He had middling power and I was curious anyway because he was one of my favorite Strat-O-Matic players. But the fact that he led his league in intentional walks for two straight years amazed me. Why would that be? He was pretty good in those two years for the Reds, but he wasn't THAT good. I, like most folks, associate intentional walks with fearsome hitters who don't have a lot of help behind them in the line up. The fact that Jim Rice didn't receive a lot of intentional walks was one of the arguments that deflated the "feared" hitter debate during Rice's Hall of Fame bid.

So why would Leo Cardinas lead the league for two straight years in intentional walks? As you can see, I am now further and further away from my original search. And so I went digging in his game logs for those two years and I got my answer. He led the league in intentional walks because he always batted eighth in front of the pitcher. Cardinas was pretty good with the bat and if the pitcher was coming up behind it, he wasn't going to get to hit. Leo Cardinas might have been the best eighth place hitter of all time.

And then the brain went off on another tangent. How could you prove who the greatest eighth place batter in history was? I tried a couple of searches and quickly gave up. The answer is probably out there if you have the time to compile every season and every eighth place batter on every team. Now what was my original thought and search again? Oh yeah! Shortstops and slugging percentage over the years. Let's get back to that.

Except I can't. Because I see the names of my history floating off the screen. Was Eddie Brinkman as bad a hitter as I remembered? Yes. Was Burt Campanaris as overrated as I thought he was? Yep.  Rich Aurilia! Was he as good as I remembered? Not really. He had one great season in 2001. And so I killed an hour looking at players I remembered fondly. There was Jerry Adair, Barry Larkin and Alan Trammell and so many others.

And by then I lost all interest and ambition to find out if Hanley Ramirez of the Marlins and Troy Tulowitzki of the Rockies were truly a sign of a different age. I guess that's why Tangotiger and Dave Cameron get paid to do what they do.

The Tulowitski Legend Grows

They just finished a ten inning thriller in Colorado as the Rockies beat the Giants with a walk off double by Troy Tulowitski who may have, in September of 2010, become the best player in baseball. It was a game the Rockies desperately needed to keep their slim playoff hopes alive. At the very least, it would knock the Giants out of first place (again). But the double that drove in Carlos Gonzalez with the winning run (off of Brain Wilson no less) wasn't the only heroics on Tulo's part. It was just the final act.

Tulowitzki walked in the first after Carlos Gonzalez had singled and both scored on a Melvin Mora double to get two quick runs off of Barry Zito (whose pitching broke the Giants' streak of 18 straight games with three runs or less given up by their starters). Those runs erased a first inning homer by Freddie Sanchez.

The Giants scored two runs in the top of the third on homers by Torres and Aubrey Huff to make it a 3-2 game. The bats were silent for an inning after that. The Giants scored another run in the fifth on an RBI single by Pat Burrell and the Giants took a 4-2 lead. But the Rockies broke up the Giants streak and ended Zito's night in the bottom half of the same inning.

Carlos Ganzalez hit an RBI triple to chase Zito. Ray was the new pitcher and the first batter he faced was Troy Tulowitzki. Have fun with that. Tulo crushed a two-run homer and the Rockies had a 6-4 lead after they were done (Iannetta drove in another run with a single). But the Rockies couldn't hold the lead.

The Giants roared right back in the top of the six and scored five runs. The big blow was a three-run homer by Cody Ross. That chased Hammel and the Giants had a 9-6 lead. But Tulo wasn't done. Not by a long shot. The Rockies scored another run in their half of the sixth on a double-play ball hit be CarGo with runners on first and third with no out. Tulowitzki followed that run with a single but was stranded. The Rockies had cut the lead to 9-7.

The score remained the same until the bottom of the eighth inning when with two outs, Tulowitzki his a game-tying double off of Brian Wilson. That gave him four RBIs for the evening. The first two gave the Rockies the lead and the second two tied the score. And you know the rest. CarGo got a single off of Wilson in the tenth and then Troy Tulowitzki hit his double to score him with the winning run. The final tally in a game the Rockies simply had to have? Four hits, two doubles, a homer and five RBI.

Tulowitzki's game is the stuff of legend and that's the kind of thrills that make baseball the amazing game that it is.

The Case Against CarGo for MVP

Carlos Gonzalez is having a wonderful season. He is a true triple crown threat (he won't make it in RBIs unless he goes on a bender) and will probably win the batting title. His play of late as the Rockies make another September run has propelled him to MVP conversations. While his numbers warrant attention, the argument for MVP doesn't add up. Here are a few reasons why:

1. CarGo isn't the most valuable person on his own team. That would be Ubaldo Jiminez, who has CarGo in WAR by at least two points. Tulowitzki has almost as high a WAR with far fewer at bats and games played.

2. You just can't ignore the splits. CarGo has a 1.205 OPS at home versus .760 on the road. He has 25 homers at home and 7 on the road. He has 74 ribbies at home and 34 on the road. He has 19 doubles at home and 14 on the road. It may seem unfair, but you have to take offensive production in Colorado with some kind of grain of salt.

3. He's not great in the field. Both B-R and Fangraphs have Carlos Gonzalez in the negative numbers for fielding proficiency. And as a right fielder, he only has two assists all season.

This is no knock on Gonzalez. He's had a great season and is a bit part of the Rockies successful run at the playoffs. He's just not the most valuable player on his team never mind the league.