” In a sport in which it is rare to have three or more starting pitchers make 30 starts in a season, no Pirates starting pitcher has suffered an injury since Opening Day. Only one starting position player has been placed on the DL. The Pirates had the fourth fewest days lost to the DL last season (358) and the second fewest in the National League through the first half of this season (379).
The Pirates have had few significant injuries as their starting rotation members and starting position players have combined to spend 51 days on the disabled list entering Saturday, trailing only the Chicago White Sox (5) in fewest key players lost to injury this year.
Have the Pirates found another hidden advantage?”
Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Hat tip to Metsense for pointing out this article about a team living at the opposite end of the spectrum from the Mets in the injury department.
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I had a theory, so went directly to games played for the last two years. Last year, no Pirate played 150 games, the previous year, only two did. Most players are in the 130’s. Rest is vital.
In a previous life, I helped coach a girls basketball team. It was a Church team, but they were high school girls and worked hard. My friend who was also a coach and I had been used to coaching boys and had certain expectations. However, one thing foreign to us was that the girls were often falling on the floor during the games. We didn’t understand and thought that since they were usually laughing, they were playing around to get a quick rest. One day however, we spoke to another coach and were enlightened! It seems that because girls and boys have a different center of gravity, girls are more apt to fall down when tired because their legs struggle to hold them up. Therefore, more rest is necessary. It was then that I realized that rest and athletes really do go hand in hand.
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http://www.thepointofpittsburgh.com/the-pirates-and-injury-minimization/
I found another article discussing the Pirates injury awareness from earlier this year. Also, well worth reading and gives more info than the one linked in this article. Further, Will Carroll’s quote in Brian’s link speaks volume when he says that an organization must devote itself to this approach and a manger must buy in to this and implement the strategy.
Pure speculation on my part –
The 2005 – 2008 Mets rode their stars hard. Check out the games played for Beltran, Delgado, Reyes and Wright in those four years. And all four of them ended up being injury prone starting in ’09. This could very well be a coincidence. It could be nothing more than guys getting older. But if I was running a club, I’d be concerned about it being a direct result.
+1 Brian
if Wright had been monitored, would he have ever played all those games with a broken back?
if Matz were monitored, would he have made his second start?
Should Lagares with his side injury and his elbow injury causing more damage similar to Wright’s playing on with the back.
if Montero says that there is still somethng bothering him then maybe there is.
what value is a player if he is on the disabled list. A well run organization should reduce injury by taking care of their players and also constructing their roster with enough depth so that the manager can rest his players. Of course, you have to have a manager that would do that.
Very nicely stated!
Thanks Gus, for the link.
The articles I have read present a strong corelation between fatigue and injury. The new technology allows the players to be monitored. The new pre and post game preventive routines assist in reducing injuries. The Pirates defensive positioning is another example of their innovative techniques. The Pirates are truly an innovative team with a progressive manager who embraces new ideas and applies them. Twenty years go he was managing in the Met system.
It seems to me, that the Mets do just the opposite and seldom rest players. Cuddyer would be this years poster boy. The pitch count managing is still inconsistant and all over the place. 116 pitches for Noah may have been a little extreme. It seems to this fan that the Mets could take a few pointers from the Pirates when it comes to managing to prevent injuries.
Great thread, Brian. Seems like you are onto something here, perhaps the next wave in injury prevention.
It underscores the critical importance of a strong bench — which really in today’s baseball is a competitive afterthought, regarded as the least important component to a winning team.
But we have seen a manager who is clearly afraid of resting his players. With Wright, he had that sad routine of “trying” to get him a day off . . . for weeks at a time.
To that point, and as I’ve said before, I like Cuddyer as a 4th outfielder and Flores as my super-sub in the infield.
Like it or not, Granderson still has 2 1/2 years to go and TC is scared to keep him off the field — which will likely result in the opposite, a less productive player and/or one on the DL.
Good thread. I am always happier to agree with you than to disagree.
It would be erroneous if I said I didn’t like it when people agreed with me.
But at no point in time do I want this to be a groupthink site. I’ve had numerous disagreements with the guys who’ve commented the most throughout the years. I fully hope and expect that to carry on in the future.
May the Mets always have people like Wilmer Flores, Juan Lagares and Zack Wheeler where intelligent people can disagree.
Fascinating to be sure. Hurdle is a common guest on MLB radio and so I get to hear a lot from him as I listen regularly. He’s a smart guy, humble guy, caring guy, great baseball guy, progressive guy. And all that has translated through the players.
I’m on board with the idea of connecting fatigue and injury. We’ve heard a lot in recent years about “over training” a problem the Mets seem to have. They have tried the new fangled Barwis system, but it doesn’t seem to be paying much dividends in terms of injury.
Jack Leathersich has an injured elbow after a 57 pitch outing. The most he has thrown in a game was 31. It appears that fatigue corelates with injuries. The evidence is swaying me to conclude that pitch counts and pitches under stress resulting in fatigue are more important factors resulting in injury than innings pitched.