Crowdsourcing “Minor” Spring Training Health Problems
As we reach the beginning of the Cactus and Grapefruit League schedules, pitchers are starting to ramp up towards opening day. It’s no longer just long toss and stretching, but now, they’re expected to throw actual innings at a physical effort level approaching what they’d do in the regular season. And, naturally, some players are experiencing some issues while ramping up, with some even heading off to get MRIs.
We know that these kinds of strains and pulls and soreness are pretty common in February and March, but what we don’t know — or at least, I don’t know — is how often these reported spring training issues turn into something more serious. Plenty of people out there have tracked and continue to track the “Best Shape Of His Life” group, but as I read about a few more pitchers going to the training room today, I wondered why we’re not tracking pitchers who report spring training pain, in order to learn what percentage of guys who have to undergo treatment in February and March end up on the DL in April through September.
So, that’s what this post is designed to do. While I try to stay on top of the news around baseball, there are far too many players for any one person to keep a complete list of every strain or pull reported by the local media, and so our best chance at collecting as much potentially useful data as possible is to crowdsource this. I’ve created a Google Doc with a handful of the pitcher health issues that I’ve seen reported so far, but I know there are plenty more out there that I’ve missed.
Additionally, there will be plenty more over the next month or so, and I’d like to keep this as updated as possible during March so that we can track the rate of which these pitchers end up missing regular season time, as well as compare their 2014 performance against what the forecasts had called for them to do before these health issues came to light.
The spreadsheet is embedded below, so you can see which pitchers have already been added to the list. You can access the spreadsheet from this link in order to add to it, using the same format already established, and we’ll follow along with this crop of pitchers and see how often these strains and pulls turn into something more serious.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Poor Mike Minor 🙁
Yikes! No kidding. When I saw that on the spreadsheet, I thought it was a joke, and then I read about it and… ugh. He’s had trouble urinating for two years! That doesn’t sound fun. At least it’s not his shoulder, I guess.
You don’t want Dr. James Andrews to have to take a look at that!
For the purposes of this spreadsheet though, it may be worth noting that Mike Minor is getting a delayed start due to shoulder soreness, which they attributed to him getting a late start to his throwing program after his urethra surgery. Unless the point is just to correlate any time of injury with any type of preseason concern. Presumably he’ll be more likely to hit the DL this year due to his shoulder than another urethra problem.
Excellent point! I changed it.
Do you want entries to include players coming off an injury, e.g. TJ?
Good question. I think any reported pain/soreness/strain should be represented here. The more data the better.
Bartolo Colon’s real calf problem is eating too much veal
So any ham-string problems of his should be attributed to eating too much pork products.
You got it. Any back problem will come from eating baby back ribs.
Should illness also get added? ie. Sergio Santos: https://twitter.com/ShiDavidi/status/439427788022366208
Why not hitters as well?
I think there’s a feeling that hitter injuries tend to be more of the “freak” variety. They get injured running, sliding, diving for a ball, etc. Pitchers, on the other hand, get injured as a routine part of their job. Throw enough pitches and you can damage your arm, even if nothing unusual happens. These types of injuries tend to present themselves as pain, soreness and inflammation at some point, or we think they do.
So there isn’t really a reason not to do this for hitters, but I think the expectation is that for them, this would not be very instructive.
Just added Greinke’s Calf strain.
Do you think you could create a similar post for hitters? I know you wanted to look at pitchers specifically but a reference for hitters could be useful.
I remember that he had elbow soreness last spring, and I was worried. It turned out to be nothing, but it did cause him to start his season a little late.
All Twins Pitchers- velocity is down
Does Zimmerman not account for spring training aches in his MASH report? I know he tracks nearly every report of players who acknowledge they played through pain and seems to be pretty heavily sourced.
Not to belittle the wisdom of the crowds. This sort of research could be incredibly fruitful.
Just an FYI, but I think this was supposed to be pitcher only. It appears people have begun adding hitters.
Would it be beneficial to put in initial estimate of downtime?
You can go ahead and assume that all Rangers pitchers have some level of back tightness. It’s even spread to the position players.
Now we need one of these for “best shape of his career” and “gained X# of pounds”
And lost X# of pounds a la Prince “Lightfoot” Fielder.
I do hope that someone is backing this up somewhere every hour or two. (Or at least every 12 hours.) I don’t think anyone will vandalize something like this, but people on the internet constantly surprise me.
Throw Casey Janssen on the pile:
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20140301&content_id=68514314¬ebook_id=68514318&vkey=notebook_tor&c_id=tor
Tigers Catcher, Alex Avila has been having back spasms.