Strasburg to have Tommy John surgery

For some reason, lots of owners don’t like paying these kids these bonuses . . .when they don’t realize that these kids are the best deal they can possibly get in baseball. Hard to believe that these guys never took economics 101, but it sure looks that way.

The owners alone wouldn’t be enough to change the system, I think . . .except that the MLBPA would love to change the system even more than they would. MLBPA doesn’t represent minor league baseball players, who when promoted are cost-controlled for years and thus are very valuable assets to their teams. Teams aren’t willing to pay Jermaine Dye a couple of million a year when they can promote a kid from the minors that they think can do a fair enough job and cost them a quarter of the same amount. And the players in the MLBPA aren’t so vain or stupid not to realize that most of them are going to one day be looking at a similar situation. The only way to keep these guys in major league baseball and making a major league salary is to stem the flow of quality replacement-level or above talent into MLB.

It makes me wonder an awful lot about the spending habits of major league baseball players . . .if it’s anything like the players of other major American sports, we’re basically looking at baseball selling out the future of the sport in exchange for a quick fix for the present generation. Shocking that this is happening under Bud Selig.

Has had two, amongst others

Strasburg isn’t going to turn into some nobody off of this surgery. If players work hard and keep at their rehab, their recovery rate is quite good. I have no clue what happened with Foppert . . .TJ didn’t just rob him of his velocity, it robbed him of his command too. I can’t think of another case that went so poorly, and I have to think there were more issues there than just the physical ones. Strasburg’s work ethic is quite good, and while I’m not prepared to say for certaint that he’s going to once again be one of the best pitchers in all of baseball, it’d be pretty shocking to see that Tommy John surgery (a serious but not uncommon procedure) would reduce Strasburg from an All Star caliber pitcher to a fringe major leaguer.

Ackley’s floor is NOT higher at this point, and I think Ackley’s a pretty good prospect. But he hasn’t played a single inning in the majors yet, let alone perform in the majors to a level that would be equivalent to what Strasburg did this year.

though I don’t think I can agree with your last paragraph.

I’ll just add as far as the “lean” pitcher argument, I remember a study from a few years ago that looked at body types and “survival” rate. Looked at were “thin” pitchers, “fat” pitchers, “tall” pitchers, and “short” pitchers. Survival rate didn’t look at injuries. Rather, it identifed which pitchers were still pitching past a certain age. I’m going by memory here, so I might have a detail or two wrong, but I know skinny pitchers had the highest amount attrition, tall and short pitchers were identical in their survival rate, and fat pitchers were most likely to continue pitching past the age the study used.

So your hypothesis does have some research to back it up though I’m not sure if the guys you listed would be classified as thin…when I think of thin pitchers I think of guys like Brandon McCarthy and Ross Detwiler, who interestingly enough have both had injury plagued careers…that might not be a good omen for Chris Sale.