Jacoby Ellsbury and Injury Proneness
They say that Tuesday was maybe the craziest MLB offseason day ever. There’s a good chance it was, although in fairness, after Tuesday, none of us can remember any days other than Tuesday. Pretty much every player in baseball up and went somewhere else, and the day was capped off by news the Yankees were guaranteeing Jacoby Ellsbury a hundred million dollars and then half of another hundred million dollars. Right there, even by Yankees terms, that indicates the organization believes pretty strongly in Ellsbury’s future. You don’t make that kind of commitment to a player whose ability and health you don’t believe in.
But Ellsbury finished the 2013 season hurt, and he was on the disabled list in September. In 2012, he made fewer appearances than Chad Durbin. In 2010, he made fewer appearances than Ben Sheets. What Ellsbury has is an injury history that’s cost him an awful lot of playing time, and it’s taken a toll on his reputation. It’s worth considering what all this says about Ellsbury, and more generally, it’s worth considering how we think about players who have and haven’t gotten hurt.
There are a lot of people who think Ellsbury is soft and/or injury-prone. Take two players of similar ability. One of them has been durable, and one of them has a track record of missing time. The guy who’s missed time will be projected to miss more time down the road. That much is obvious: After all, playing time is a skill, to some extent. The question with Ellsbury is whether he really deserves to be grouped with the rest of baseball’s talented injury-prone. You’ve probably read this before, but Ellsbury’s history is simultaneously unfortunate and not particularly worrisome.
Ellsbury played a ton in 2008, and he played a ton in 2009. Early in 2010, he had the misfortune of colliding with Adrian Beltre in pursuit of a foul ball. Beltre isn’t built like a brick wall, but he’s more like a brick wall than most players, and here’s the highlight:
That busted some ribs, and Ellsbury wasn’t helped by an initial misdiagnosis. Between that and a later aggravation, Ellsbury missed almost the full year. If you were to classify injuries simply as either “potentially chronic” or “freak accidents,” this was a freak accident, because it stands to reason Ellsbury isn’t unusually prone to running his ribcage into Adrian Beltre’s knee.
Ellsbury played a whole bunch in 2011. Early in 2012, he had the misfortune of having Reid Brignac fall on his body. Brignac isn’t built like Beltre is, but Brignac is also a human , and Ellsbury’s shoulder was exposed after sliding. Here’s the highlight:
Ellsbury’s shoulder was badly hurt, and he didn’t come back for three months. Probably, it contributed to his underwhelming statistics the rest of the way. Again, this is more of a freak-accident thing, because anyone could have a player fall on him while trying to break up a double play. Ellsbury’s mistake, if anything, was reaching base in the first place. That led to contact.
Ellsbury played a ton for most of 2013. By Aug. 28, he’d played in 124 of 134 games. On Aug. 28, he fouled a ball off his own foot. Here’s the highlight:
Ellsbury aggravated the injury a week later:
Once more, freak accident, like when Jermaine Dye destroyed his own leg. Ellsbury was even wearing padding, which, if it helped, didn’t help enough. For what it’s worth, Ellsbury spent the playoffs playing through a hurt hand, but it didn’t diminish his performance. It was initially injured when Ellsbury was jammed by a pitch inside.
In the past few years, Ellsbury has missed significant time because of one foul ball and a pair of collisions with grown men. His last rib-injury aggravation was also the result of a collision with another grown man, and what you don’t see are a bunch of groin injuries or hamstring pulls. You don’t see chronic, potentially lingering injuries, like you do with, say, Matt Kemp. You see accidents that could’ve happened to anyone. As such, the history is less of a concern.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s unconcerning. We don’t know how Ellsbury’s playing time compares to the hypothetical average player who’s had the same stuff happen to him. Maybe Ellsbury’s body is slightly more fragile. Maybe the average player doesn’t get busted ribs. Maybe the average player doesn’t get a busted shoulder. Maybe the average player doesn’t get a busted foot. We can’t know the reality, and the Yankees probably can’t either, no matter how many tests they might perform. But when we look at these incidents, we’re left thinking, “Lots of people probably would’ve been hurt here.” Ellsbury deserves a pass, because his injury history appears more like bad luck than bad something else.
When Ellsbury doesn’t have something bad happen, he’s pretty durable, even if he isn’t Cal Ripken. There will probably be at least a disabled-list stint or two over the course of his contract, but that’s because we’re talking about seven years for a guy entering his 30s. The Yankees should worry less about, say, the odds Ellsbury hurts his shoulder again, and more about the extent of his recovery from the first shoulder problem that might’ve sapped his power. Obviously, the Yankees aren’t very worried by anything they’ve seen. They paid something like market price for an everyday star.
Thinking about Ellsbury got me thinking about the general perception of injury proneness. This has been on my mind for some time, and it’s all about small sample sizes at the core. It’s the same line of thinking by which it’s realistically difficult to evaluate a front office or a player-development system. We’re given a small sample of transactions and a small sample of prospects, and it can take a lot of time for patterns to emerge. If a system has one or two extra pitchers bust or not bust, that changes the way the system is seen, even though it could be nothing but noise given pitcher volatility. What we think we know about systems, we don’t, at least not that well. And front-office evaluation can be perplexing. After all, the same front office dumped Prince Fielder and subsequently dumped Doug Fister. What are we supposed to make of that?
And to bring it back to injuries, how often do injuries happen, really? Over a given period of time, the average player will miss X games. Miss more than that, and you might be thought of as prone to injury. Miss fewer, and you might be thought of as durable. One of the convenient things about baseball analysis is that, every season, players generate hundreds of plate appearances. Yet for a player there tends to be just a handful of injuries, even in most of the more severe cases, and with such a small sample we can’t be that sure whether they’re flukes.
Occasionally, it’s just obvious. Nick Johnson, for some reason, is naturally fragile. Rich Harden seems the same way. What about Grady Sizemore? The guy can’t get on a field, but how meaningful is it that he’s had knee problems and a back problem? If Sizemore returns to the field, how do we project him? What do we make of Franklin Gutierrez, who’s had some regular injuries, but also some freak-accident injuries? Ellsbury’s been significantly hurt basically three times, which is nothing. There’s always some risk of injury, and getting one or two or three more injuries might not be reflective of a body’s actual health.
Complicating matters is that injury situations aren’t black and white. We can’t look at a player and say he’s hurt or he isn’t. Sometimes players choose to play through injuries. Sometimes they do so for a long time, even if it hurts their production. Some other players are more willing to go on the disabled list with similar ailments. Some players don’t say anything about their condition, because no one wants to be labeled as fragile. The historical record will show that Miguel Cabrera just played in 148 games, and 11 more in the playoffs. It won’t show that he played a lot of those games while beaten up.
And what this all does is make it difficult to know who is and is not particularly prone to injury. We can be aggressive with our labels, but sometimes we’re probably too aggressive. Some players will be more prone to injury than others, but I’m not sure the extent to which we’re able to identify them. Which can become a thing to try to exploit. No one believed that Jed Lowrie could withstand a full season, and then with the A’s he played in 154 games. Coco Crisp has gone on the DL two times in three years, and one of those was because of an inner-ear infection. Injury proneness does have to exist, relatively, but it’s not easy to spot. Which means we have to mentally regress pretty hard, in most cases.
We might come to know more in the future. Some teams are probably well on their way to significant advances. In the meantime, injuries happen a lot, but they can be mysterious. The frequent temptation is to hold them against the players that they happen to, but that’s not always deserved. It might be very seldom deserved.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
In 2010 was also a freak accident team thought to use Cameron in CF and Ellsbury in LF.
Maybe it was for the sole purpose of protecting Cameron’s face from his freak accident with Beltran happening again…who knows.
Nice analysis here. ‘Injury proneness’ seems like something that needs to be looked at on a case by case basis and cannot really be measured statistically or objectively.
Disagree. I think the problem is the lack of data. The minors might hold some of it but the problem as Jeff stated, is that some guys “play hurt” or don’t say anything resulting in an incomplete picture. The NFL has somewhat better injury data due to the league promoting gambling in its sport. Perhaps a statistical analysis of the “NFL athlete” might be a useful comparison….
This post makes a good case that certain injuries are just bad luck and not indicative of a trend. The only way to discover this is to look at the context of the injuries themselves.
That being said, I remember reading a quantitative study about pitcher injuries a few years ago and the number 1 predictor of future injuries was past injuries.
Yes. But it also raises up the Nick Johnson data point. He broke his leg by running into Austin Kearns (I remember that because I was there). Total fluke, except maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the “average” athlete would have just had a bruise instead of a break. The problem with declaring certain injuries as outliers is that maybe they aren’t and we can measure some form of resistance to strange occurrences. Anecdotally, we’ve all seen some some pretty violent contact between baseball players and the ones involved just dust themselves off.
Kind of makes me wonder what the average amount of violent contact a baseball player encounters over the course of a year. And of course the average result. That could be a starting point on measuring “fluke” injuries….
Your analysis neglects to mention that Ellsbury’s play style makes him more likely than others to suffer these types of injuries. The guy runs into the outfield wall once a week.
Likewise, you ignored the whispers surrounding Ellsbury’s slow recovery from the 2010 injury. A lot of people within the Boston organization openly questioned his toughness and felt that he was taking his sweet time coming back. Now, you may disagree with that perception, but it’s pretty silly to simply ignore it.
“That was the hardest thing,” Ellsbury admitted. “Obviously, you’d like to be known as someone who goes out and plays hurt. I had never missed any time ever, and then all of a sudden people were questioning me.
“The reason I was out longer was because I tried to come back sooner. What I didn’t know was every time I swung the bat, I was making it worse.
“People were saying, ‘You have been out two weeks, that should be some good healing time,’ but no. Actually it was the reverse because I was swinging the bat with five broken ribs and now I’m five weeks behind.”
http://espn.go.com/boston/mlb/story/_/id/6845968/
the same people within the boston organization who misdiagnosed his injury originally? they were saying he was recovering too slow? how does that pass the sniff test? In my mind, saying someone is “recovering too slow” is a lot like labeling them injury-prone — you’re basing a conclusion off a really small sample size of experiences (similar injuries to similar players) and that conclusion has to be taken with a heavy heavy dose of uncertainty.
I agree, five to six weeks is the appropriate time frame for any type of bone injury.
Makes no sense to expect human body to bounce back quicker than that. I mean he isn’t Wolverine.
I think the first part is important – the guy runs into the outfield wall once a week. I don’t know that avoiding freak injuries isn’t a skill in and of itself. Maybe another player manages to dodge Beltre, or take the impact better. Maybe another player gets into a better position to protect his shoulder when Brignac comes down. Maybe another player just laughs off the exact same collisions. Awareness of one’s surroundings is definitely a skill, and one use of that awareness is avoiding collisions. Awareness of one’s own recovery and not rushing back from injury is probably also a skill, albeit one that is influenced quite a bit by outside factors (doctors, media, needs of the team, etc.)
It would be interesting to study the guys with that reputation as a “max effort” guy. Do those guys really run into the wall, collide with other players, etc. more often, or is there just a confirmation bias at work? If there are players who really do put themselves out there like that, do they get hurt more as a result?
The larger point of not having a large enough sample size to really identify injury-prone players is spot-on, though. Which problem is made even worse by the fact that injuries can make the sample size smaller by shortening careers.
“I think the first part is important – the guy runs into the outfield wall once a week.”
Once a year is probably more accurate. He’s a center fielder in a huge center field. He’s very rarely even close to the wall.
Which is why I say it would be interesting to study this. We have two different perceptions of how Ellsbury’s style of play might affect his chances of injury, based entirely on personal observations and anecdotal evidence. Cutting through this debate is exactly why Fangraphs exists.
He’s a pretty wreckless fielder. Not only does he take on outfield walls far more than once a year but when he isn’t, he’s diving for balls. He’s gonna remain injury prone because of that.
And because he won’t be playing for another contract, he will sit out until his injury is 110% healed again.
That’s Ellsbury; nice player, albeit fragile and kind of a wuss.
If hes going to remain injury prone because of those things, why has he never been hurt doing those things?
That’s right. Once a year is more than I remember. I would say Ellsbury is not only wall adverse, but plays all certer field fences as if they are radioactive.
“Maybe another player manages to dodge Beltre, or take the impact better.”
If you watched the attached video clip, I don’t know how you could write that with a straight face. Spiderman wouldn’t have been able to avoid Beltre. And it’s dumb luck that Beltre didn’t injure his clavicle or wrist from his fall.
It was a fluke collision that occurred because Ellsbury and Beltran cover a lot more ground than mere mortals.
Spiderman would have used his senses to either call off Beltre or be called off by him. Such collisions do not typically occur with aware players.
Wait, Spiderman can mind-control other people?! Seems like he could have prevented a LOT of carnage…
” A lot of people within the Boston organization openly questioned his toughness and felt that he was taking his sweet time coming back”
And then the next year they fired the entire medical staff when they realized the real problem was incompetence.
Not true actually. They used the sports group at MGH. It’s director was Dr Gill. Internally, they gave Dr Gill a position as Executive Director of their medical team, and he maintained his job as the Director at MGH. They fired Dr Gill from his internal position, but still used the sports group he runs at MGH for their medical needs. This group also handles the Patriots medical work and tends to not understand the difference between football players and baseball players. Dr Gill was the one who cleared Bronkowski to play with a broken forearm, and saw it rebroken and then have all kinds of complications. Did the same with Ellsbury, Cameron, Crawford, Kalish, Buchholz, Pedroia, Jenks, etc. Awful, even now.
I actually think it’s pretty silly to include front office rumors about ellsbury’s toughness or lack thereof. Playing injured often results in putting a subpar product in the field (see price, david) and is not good for either the player or the team. Being injured, especially when it’s clear you are one of the most athletic and in shape players in the game, is not a sign of weakness
I know the intent is to not be dismissive of his injury history, but it still comes across that way. Lines like –
“You’ve probably read this before, but Ellsbury’s history is simultaneously unfortunate and not particularly worrisome.” and
But when we look at these incidents, we’re left thinking “lots of people probably would’ve been hurt here”.
I have to disagree, we don’t have any kind of real data to separate “real” injuries from “fluky” injuries in order to support dismissing one situation as not predictive. In your second supposition, I watch those videos and see fairly common baseball plays that don’t generally result in players missing a year with broken ribs or months after a player falls on them at 2B.
I think its dangerous to assume (despite the intent to be balanced) that Ellsbury isn’t injury prone when the data on DL time is evident. He has missed an awful lot of games to require such lengthy explanations. Maybe its his bodies natural weakness, maybe its how he plays, or maybe it really was a fluke, but there certainly has been a lot of bad luck to choose to go with that story. The only thing we know is that previous DL time predicts future DL time and with Ellsbury reaching his 30’s that seems likely to be true.
I disagree. And you’re fat.
All the time missed with the rib thing was also the result of a couple aggravations, because he played without having been completely healed yet. Re-hurt himself diving for a catch, and re-hurt himself running into Tommy Hunter. A lot of things were done poorly that season. The shoulder thing — who can tell from video? A guy fell on his shoulder. Makes sense to me that it would mess a shoulder up.
Of course we can’t know 100% either way, whether Ellsbury is or is not particularly injury prone. But his history is based on a very small number of freak accidents, and he’s been otherwise durable his whole career. I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Every previously injured player is “otherwise durable” if you take away his injuries. The fact that he got re-injured multiple times isn’t helping your argument, Jeff.
We can agree to disagree, I see this as an exercise in excuse making to discount what has happened in his career. You see it as valid excuses for what has happened, I don’t buy it.
Potentially valid. I see it as more likely bad luck than bad body. Open to being wrong, but can’t know.
What I meant by “otherwise durable” is that Ellsbury hasn’t exactly been plagued by littler things when he hasn’t been on the DL following freak accidents. And anyone would be likely to aggravate broken ribs if the ribs weren’t healed yet. Maybe Ellsbury heals slower than he ought to, but how could we possibly know that? He said himself he worked too hard to try to get back too fast.
“The fact that he got re-injured multiple times isn’t helping your argument, Jeff.”
He didn’t get reinjured.
His ribs hadn’t healed because he was misdiagnosed with a bruise, and not several broken/displaced ribs. Pedroia’s foot injury was also misdiagnosed by the same medical staff, and caused him to make it worse, miss significantly more time, and need surgery.
That medical staff was fired the year after.
“I watch those videos and see fairly common baseball plays that don’t generally result in players missing a year with broken ribs or months after a player falls on them at 2B.”
Correct.
What also has to be taken into consideration is that every injury (real or fluky) takes a toll on even the most well conditioned athlete.
I don’t think Jeff is saying he Isn’t injury prone, more that any conclusion about injury-proneness has to be regressed heavily, since we’re operating off a tiny sample size. If you flip a coin three times and you get heads twice, yeah, you’re more inclined to believe it’s biased heads than before flipping, but that doesn’t mean you know for a fact it is. Ellsbury might be injury prone, but also, maybe not, and he is definitely an excellent center fielder, so paying him a lot of money to play for your team is not ridiculous.
Nice post. I tend to agree with you having just argued this idea in the comments section of the “Bret Gardner: Boo-hoo” article from earlier today.
Just throwing this out there as a silly wild idea, but could it be possible different players have different bones. I have a brother that was both accident prone, but never got seriously injured. Once, when he was being examined by the doc for his latest mishap, the doc got the X-ray back and told my brother that he literally was big boned. He ball parked his bones at about 20% thicker than average and suggested that may play a role in why my brother never got seriously injured, despite all his mishaps.
If that is true (and granted, I’m no doc) but could it also be plausible some folks have thinner bones than average? Like, something that might cause another guy a bruise causes the same guy a break?
If it was true of Ellsbury, wouldn’t he have shown a history of injury prior to the Beltre collision?
He was pretty much never hurt in college or the minors.
I’m glad to know someone realizes I’m still alive!
Seems as though likelihood of getting hurt on freak plays and the length of recovery time could be related. While not chronic and nagging injuries they resulted in really long DL stints. That kind of sounds like “fragile”.
Also fair to wonder, even if not chronic, whether injuries that kept a guy out for most of two seasons will have small lingering effects on fragility.
Remember that the worst of the chronic lingering injuries for Matt Kemp started as freak accidents that could have happened to anyone, too.
True, Jonny. You know what else is freaky? Pygmies. Still, they make the best trackers in the world.
Another factor here is the time spent playing baseball up until at the MLB level. Sports tends to weed out the players that are truly injury prone by the time the reach the professional level. I would say that the players that make it to the professional level are in general not prone to injury or they would not have made it that far.
This is also a great counter for most players with reputations as chokers or being “unclutch.”
After all, the same front office dumped Prince Fielder and subsequently dumped Doug Fister. What are we supposed to make of that?
That front offices often make moderately poor moves and terrible moves in the same offseason? That the same front office just gave Joe Nathan $20m, establishing even more of a trend?
Dumping one of their three 1B/DH types (and his contract) to get some middle infield help was a moderately poor move?
Even if they are freak injuries, don’t past injuries tend to weaken the body for the future and/or affect performance in the future? Personally, I tend to avoid classifying too much into “freak” injuries and normal injuries. While one should make note, some players seem to have a higher rate of “freak” injrues then post, and I can’t imagine it is all luck.
Ellsbury hasn’t had a bunch of nagging injuries, but that could also be because he missed big chunks of two years from huge injuries, which naturally means he could not have lingering injuries while he is not playing. And each freak injury puts a toll on the body.
I like Ellsbury and the way he plays and I hope he does well, but I am worried about his injury going forward.
Except for the foul ball, his lower body has been remarkably healthy. The upper body injuries were from collisions.
The shoulder injury may still linger. I suspect he partially tore his labrum when the shoulder subluxed. Be interesting what the medicals show and if Ellsbury passes his physical. Yankees might want a Lackey or Drew clause after looking at him more closely
I agree with the top statement, that most of Ellsbury’s injuries seem less related to health as a skill and more just bad luck.
I am also reminded, though, by your mention of Nick Johnson. When he fouled a ball off his wrist in 2003 in the middle of a nice little .284/.422/.472 season for the Yankees, having displaced Giambi into the DH. That, too, was characterized as a “freak” injury at the time.
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The reason is that I have been playing around the injury data from Jeff Zimmerman’s site, and I decided to investigate how past injuries predict future injuries. The upshot is that past DL time is strongly predictive for future DL time, and that the kind of injury doesn’t really seem to matter very much.
I would argue that the takeaway is that Ellsbury is more likely to be injured in the future, if not because of his past injuries then because he’s going to get old during this contract and he plays a very demanding position.
I wish I could directly model how “freaky” or nonstandard an injury is and whether that matters, but I can’t think of a good, unbiased way… any suggestions?
Just parse the data, and let it tell you what injuries are significantly more prone to future injuries.
acute vs chronic. (ie. broken leg that happened at a particular instant, or an arm strain that occurs due to repetitive stress)
age.
setting.
Did the injury occur during a baseball game?
Did it occur during baseball related activity (while exercising or warming up).
Did it occur during a non-baseball activity? (fell off a ladder, or tripped over a curb, or a motor vehicle accident, etc.)
body part injured.
fielding position.
Handedness might be interesting also.
History of previous injury?
Sounds like a lot of work to me.
Well I looked at two kinds of variables (injury location and injury type) and found that neither had a significant effect on recurrence probability. Had not thought about handedness, that’s an interesting idea.
But no way am I googling every individual injury and trying to figure out whether the player did it on the field or off or precisely how it happened on the field. And, sometimes the players don’t know; and, other times they lie (they don’t want to miss time cause they were playing basketball or something prohibited by their contract). So unless someone else wants to do the work for me, that’s not happening.
I have seen it in the comments that it wouldn’t be unreasonable to suggest that Ellsbury plays the game a way which exposes him to more injuries than most players.
He is fast, he runs hard and aggressively both on the bases and on defense. It probably isn’t an accident that he gets into collisions and it isn’t exactly shocking that some of those collisions result in injuries.
In contrast, someone like Prince Fielder, who is partially known for his durability (in addition to his bat, his weight and his contract), does not get injured much if ever. He is slow, doesn’t run bases particularly hard, and doesn’t exert himself very much defensively. As a result, one could argue he is durable because he is not put in situation to be injured.
I would also like to add Scott Sizemore to your injury list.
He has had an impossible time getting going in the majors, but there needs to be a mention for a guy who tears the same ACL two straight seasons in addition to the other injuries he has had.
Also, maybe having the last name ‘Sizemore’ could be looked into as a factor for being injury prone.
I wouldn’t describe Ellsbury’s injuries as freak. What is freak is that he was injured so seriously in them. We examine his accidents because he was injured, but we do not examine and do not much remember a multitude of other players accidents because the dog got up and walked away. Ellsbury is no malingerer, he’s just not able to take a shot. And the outfield is not a dangerous place. Middle infield and catcher are quite hazardous. He wouldn’t last two weeks there. Not his fault. Ricky Henderson and Jake Ellsbury were not built to the same tolerances, much less Cal Ripken.
Even after reading this article about how to interpret a small number of potentially fluky incidents, I feel like most readers will either feel vindicated if Ellsbury has a major injury next years, or if he doesn’t. Me, I’ll feel vindicated if he doesn’t – not because I actually agree with the argument that these incidents don’t mean anything, but because as a Yankee fan, my biases run that way, as of about a day ago.
But I do agree that running into Adrian Beltre is a lot better than arthritic knees, at least in the long run.
Ellsbury has a skill set (base-stealing and hard-nosed defense) that lends itself to injuries exactly like the ones he has had. If Ellsbury was not this type of player, there might be concern in that in his limited opportunities he got injured as much as he did. If the only goal of baseball was to stay healthy and minimize all health risk, players wouldn’t steal bases or make great running, diving catches.
I assume there have been many, many other collisions and bad slides. The collisions and bad slides that do not injure the players are forgotten after the days game. There might have been other collisions and bad slides in which he was injured but did not come out of the game. Just because the 3 examples in the article show him having what might be a routine collision and being hurt, does not mean he is more susceptible to injuries from fluke accidents.
The concern should be that he could reaggrivate those injuries, especially considering that the rib injury was compounded by a misdiagnosis.
What strikes me about the story, is that Ellsbury is getting hurt making plays that are a ROUTINE part of baseball.
Its not like he was walking a dog and the neighbor kid ran into him with his bike, or he slipped and fell on a wet floor in a store… these would be “freak” injuries.
Ellsbury has gotten hurt, while playing baseball. It happens. It seems to happen a bit more frequently to him. For whatever reason. I’m not casting aspersions on him, or judging him.
But to label his injuries as “freak” injuries seems just as incorrect as labeling him “injury prone”.
I agree, playing a sport that moves as fast as baseball results in small ijuries almost every game.
It is also the exception that some players are really, really durable. Cal Ripkin was a shortstop through his streak, seemingly a position ripe for injury. I think some players are “fragile” or have a low pain tolerance, just like most other humans.
Daily Red Sox Links: Jacoby Ellsbury, Mike Napoli, David Ross3
more : http://jacobyellsbury1.blogspot.com/2013/12/daily-red-sox-links-jacoby-ellsbury.html
Ever have one of those friends who was always getting into incredible bouts of bad luck? And eventually you decided that the one factor that correlated with all the travails was him?
Yeah, baseball injuries are like that. I don’t know if it is a weak body, lingering effects, the wrath of Yahweh or whatever. I don’t want them on my team.
While the injuries of star players may seem like flukes, we must remember there is some selection bias in these so-called flukes.
As more of a football guy, I know that on almost any play, if properly examined, “fluke” type situations, where players are put in awkward positions, are pinned, rolled up on, are hit the wrong way on a vulnerable joint, etc. happen. Baseball, this happens less often, but freak incidents like the ones that have injured Ellsbury are probably more common than first assumed. If a player is involved in a collision but that player is not hurt, is it remembered? How can we really know Ellbury has been involved in more potentially dangerous plays than anyone else? “Injury Prone” is often a post hoc description, but so too I think is “freak incident.”
Maybe it seems like Ellbury is unlucky because his regular injuries draw attention to the circumstances they were suffered in, but his real bad luck is that relatively regular circumstances, ones that may never even be seen by the wider public otherwise, injure Ellsbury but would not injury most players.
I think it would be interesting to see if playing CF vs the corner OF positions is a factor. In 2013 you had 14 CF’s,1 LF, and 5 RF’s with more than 300 chances. If the Yankees hold on the Brett Gardner and play him in CF I think Ellsbury’s odd’s of injury go down significantly.