The league has built a season so demanding that pitchers cannot survive it.
Yesterday, the Yankees announced that Nathan Eovaldi - the workhorse of their rotation - has a barking elbow and will miss two weeks. He might be done for the season. Thus, the entire Yankee rotation from the start of the season got hurt. We achieved a perfect, 100-percent injury rate. Nobody made it unscathed.
CC hurt his knee three weeks ago. Tanaka missed two weeks with a bad elbow. Pineda strained his forearm, missed a month. Nova missed the first half with TJ surgery. Chase Whitley is missing the second half. Capuano tweaked a gonad in the spring, missed the first month. Bryan Mitchell got ht in the head. Now Eovaldi. Only Luis Severino - who was on a strict minor league pitch count (and whom we should now encase in bubble wrap) and Adam Warren (who was mostly in the bullpen) have gone the season without missing time.
For years, the NFL has been over-the-top with injuries. There is no sure thing in the NFL. You can have the league's best team, and a week later, your lineup is full of scrubs. Nobody survives an NFL season without breaking, straining, tweaking or tearing something. Baseball used to be manageable. (Cal Ripken!) But even now, injuries will hugely affect the post-season.
Let's be honest: A 154 game season won't solve the injury problem. But if you scattered eight off-days across the regular season, you would give each team's pitching staff - hell, their whole team - a better chance to heal. It would have to help.
It's time for the lords and toadies of the game to bite the golden bullet and accept eight fewer games of revenue. The owners can certainly afford it. The players can certainly afford it. The fans can deal with it. The pennant races will be just fine. And maybe - just maybe - a few more pitchers will last the season. Maybe the injury rate could drop to - say - 90 percent. Imagine that!
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9 comments:
games in early April can be so horrible. More than once I have been snowed upon in YS. That, plus November baseball is an abomination. A shorter season would be a godsend for this sport.
They really do need to cut the season. It is crazy when you hear "20 games in the next 21 days". But we all know if they downsize the regular season to 154 games, then they will assuredly increase the playoffs to eight teams each league, four rounds, best of seven each round. December baseball, what's more American than combining the World Series with Christmas season?
What fucking world do you think you live in? The game is about money not rationality. There is as much chance of the league doing what you suggest, as there is that the U.S. will revise the constitution to eliminate gerrymandering.
I say cut back to 154. Create two wild card rounds in each league. Make them quick 3 games series so the two division winners only have 4 days off before the Best-of-7 Division Series. Those would be my changes. Pretty much like Roger Goooooooooodell's No Fun League playoff system.
I'm also excited to learn today that the Yankees are visiting Denver next June. It's tough living in a National League state. The balls fly out of Coors Field. What the hell was Bud thinking making the Astros jump to the American League and not the Rockies?
WEDNESDAY'S LINEUP:
On the plate, CC Sabathia, propped up in a full body cast
At first, Mark Teixeira in a wheelchair
Afraid Alphonso is right. It's all about money.
Us old timers remember 154 season , no wild card. No playoff. Just a World Series between
the two league winners. Now that was a sensible season duration.
We're revising the Constitution to eliminate gerrymandering? Wow, that's fantastic!
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