Shoulders Elbows and Thumbs

I'm sure the numbers may not be far from normal but this spring I have watched pitcher after pitcher go down with one injury after another. I wrote about Joakim Soria and Ryan Madson and their elbow injuries that will force them to miss the 2012 season. Michael Pineda left a spring outing within the last week and now will start the season on the DL with shoulder tendinitis. Soon after that it was reported that Andrew Bailey of the Red Sox has a thumb injury that required surgery and he won't be available until after the All Star break. These examples are just a few that have seriously helped shift my stance on pitchers and how I will handle them on future fantasy rosters.


The general uncertain nature of pitchers made me realize that long term investments in them seems unwise. I think signing pitchers to contracts is a thing of the past. I'll have allow the pitchers currently under contract to ride out their deals and hope for the best. However in the future I'm going to take a more rental approach to pitchers and not plan of keeping them more than the two year max in our league without contract. That way it will be easier to discard them when they do get injured.


My new stance was solidified yesterday when I read an excellent article in ESPN the magazine about pitching injuries. The article basically said that many injuries to the elbow and shoulder are caused by poor mechanics and can be preventable. Yet the sad truth is Major League Baseball doesn't have much interest in adjusting pitchers' mechanics for this purpose. They take the risk-reward stance that if it isn't broken don't fix it and when the pitcher breaks then they can just get surgery. That is a sobering view that MLB is aware that changes could be made by bio-mechanics experts but they choose not to take advantage of the science. It was stated that they do allow some changes to be made but only at the low minors because if a player has any success at the upper levels they fear changing anything that might affect that. 


This shows that nearly any pitcher can literally go down with injury at any moment. While true that could be said of any one the fact that pitchers with flawed mechanics are numerous and the injuries are only a matter of time. Its like an extended game of Russian roulette and you never know which pitch will bring the devastating results.