FG on Fox: Longer Games, More Injuries
“Ever notice that nobody talks about the length of the games when they talk about injuries being up around baseball?” Oakland outfielder Sam Fuld asked before a game with Texas. Maybe it’s time to remedy that.
It’s a simple fact that games are longer. Even before replay became a thing, games were trending longer. Look at the average minutes per game for matchups that went longer than eight innings, and see it jump even since 2002:
Though there are plenty of good theories about why there’s a rise in Tommy John surgeries, perhaps we’re missing the simplest explanation: longer games and more strikeouts means more pitches. More pitches means more chances to hurt yourself.
Look at pitcher injuries since 2002. Even in this short time frame, we’re losing more days to the DL:
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With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
…except the numbers don’t indicate what you say they indicate. Length of game as risen sharply since 2010, but # of pitches was actually lower in 2013 than 2010. Hitter injuries went down between 2012 & 2013. This is a correlative argument that doesn’t show a correlation… unless 2014 data would further the point? In that case it would’ve been great to post this article next Monday.
I say very clearly that number of pitches is not up. Game time is up, though.
Worst Fox article so far. It should be subtitled “tricks with y-axis”. The graphs do not show a clear increase in pitcher injuries, and the only increase in game length is over the last two years.
Plus the y-axis is scaled to make the increase look much more dramatic than it actually is.
I say in the piece that this isn’t a great way to discuss pitcher injuries. As for game time, it’s dramatically up since 2005, and since my DL database was limited to 2002 and forward, I stuck with the same time frame.
Sorry didn’t mean to sound like a D. I guess if it’s not a great way to look at injuries I’m just confused as to what’s the point of the article. Still very curious to see a follow-up of how 2014 data fits this theory.
To me, the point was hitter injuries are up too, and we don’t talk about them as much, and they don’t really have much of a reason to be up except game time is up. Apparently it’s really tough to do in-season DL stuff, so we’ll know more when the season is over.
I usually love this articles, but this seems really sloppy. It should have just asked the question, instead of supporting the theory.
I didn’t feel I found anything conclusive, I thought I was just asking the question.
Or maybe it was the new concussion protocols? I would look into that first before worrying about an extra 10 minutes of game time, which could even have a positive effect of allowing extra rest.
Interesting article, but there’s really not a lot of conclusion to be drawn. I’d be interested to see if there’s a correlation between the amount of time players have to stand around (game delays, advert breaks) and the regularity of injuries.