FG on Fox: Smart Things Baseball Players Said This Year
Talk to the players as much as you can. Read about what they think. They are smart about baseball, and they can tell you things you never thought of before.
Nobody knows as much about the physical aspect of game play as the men who actually suit up to play it. Knowledge of the mechanics of the game of baseball should inform best practices, even if those insights come in a different form and language from the results we get from empirical research. So talk to the players. I have, and they’ve said some very smart things.
10) Sam Fuld, Athletics’ outfielder: “Ever notice that nobody talks about the length of the games when they talk about injuries being up around baseball?”
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.
I do have an economics degree from Stanford.
Nothing from Eric Hosmer? That’s odd. 😉
I joked a few times this year that Nelson Cruz has exactly the same swing path whether he hits the ball or misses by 2 feet. It never crossed my mind that refusing to adjust to the low-away pitch (the one he most often did this with) actually might be a good strategy for him. Shows what I know… Thanks for this – it was cool.
I would love a follow-up post on dumb things Harold Reynolds said this year. Might take you a few months to compile, however.
Too easy, and there’s zero propect of it leading to any new or interesting questions.
What’s COOL about this article is that most of us already do it on a daily basis, so long as we go beyond watching the games and actually read the game reports by the many and various beat reporters. A lot of that’ll be romantic hoo-ha and totally Clair Bee territory, but just about every MLB city has at least one and usually several honest brokers among their baseball beat reportage teams, and it’s THOSE folks, not just males, who are worthwhile reading for the sorts of views on whassup in MLB, the zeitgeist and the trends. It’s PART of the reason SBNation’s a success, not just for the ability to cheer and fret among fellow addicts, but because mostly every SBNation MIB fanblog has at least one writer and several regular followers who report these.
But the special contribution implied in this article is that it’s worthwhile rounding them up and REPRISING them periodically, and probably no better time than at right after the WS when we’re all usefully second-guessing where the surprise teams of next year will be located.
I worded the second paragraph sort of strongly not because I thought think many readers didn’t care about what players said. I worded it that way mostly for the part of the analytics community that doesn’t think players have anything to add to the discussion.
Interesting collection of quotes. But what does the length of game have to do with injuries? We’re not talking about reducing the number of innings or pitches or plays, just speeding the game up. Am I to believe that these professional athletes are significantly more likely to hurt themselves when forced stand around for a four hour game?
It wouldn’t surprise me. Stand in place a lot and your muscles would be more likely to cramp, strain, tighten up etc right? Which could lead to more injuries. Maybe a muscle is tighter so it tears or something, IDK, I’m not a doctor so for all I know I’m totally off base.
I think that’s exactly it, time doing nothing means it’s harder to stay loose. That’s an issue.
That’s exactly what Fuld said in the linked piece.