by HoraceClarke666
To take a cue
from our Dauntless Leader, Alphonso: injuries are the new parity.
Looked at in a
certain (all right: paranoid New York) way, the whole history of major-league
baseball since 1965 can be seen as a battle to rein in your New York
Yankees.
It was no coincidence
that that was the year the majors introduced their first ever, amateur draft.
Out went the incredible, nationwide scouting network the Yankees had built over
the previous 45 years. Their crack minor-league organization was already
falling into line, to be more like every other farm system.
Scouting
combines would soon follow, along with secondary drafts, just in case all the
loser organizations needed a do-over. Players who didn’t want to belong forever
to the team that drafted them had a choice: they could sign for what they were
offered, or they could go play in Japan, or maybe Mexico.
That plan
succeeded in keeping the Yankees nicely in check for the next ten years. Then,
much to the dismay of the lords of the game, baseball players won for themselves
the right every other American has, to work for whoever they want.
After that,
the leash was off, and it was only the arbitrary and dictatorial nature of
George Steinbrenner that kept the Yankees from utterly dominating, year-in and
year-out, beyond even what they had accomplished before.
The
corporatized “MLB” fought back with lockouts, luxury taxes, salary caps, and
added playoff rounds, until they had finally pushed the Yankees more or less
back into line—this time, with the help of “the new George’s” incompetence.
But now comes
the ultimate check on the Yankees and anybody else: the way the game is played today.
Sure, the
Yanks continue to get injured more than anyone else—how’s that investigation
into the team’s training going, Brian?—but that will even out. In the new
parity, everything evens out.
With all
players over-trained and injured all the time—with nearly all the stud hoss
starters replaced by an endless succession of middle relievers who take up most
of a roster—it’s all but impossible for anybody to form a dynasty anymore.
This mangled, misbegotten
rump of a season, fitted to a plague year, is exactly what MLB sees as its
ideal—minus the cardboard cutouts in the seats, of course.
A season in which
the constant injuries ensure that all the players are more or less the same as
everyone else. A season in which everyone pitches a good 1-4 innings, no more
and no less, and all the games are the same length, and the playoffs are as
long as the regular season, with almost everyone invited.
Welcome to the
future.
Posts
11 comments:
Hot hand Luke... that’s a new one isn’t it?
Thairo hits one to Cairo??
The Master was honing his craft when he was away.
I caught that Hot Hand Luke, not sure if that's the Master's new play on it as Luke is a hot hitter or if he just fucked up his temperatures.
I miss Didi for a bunch of reasons, but I miss him most when Gleyber makes things look difficult.
Horace, I couldn't agree more. After over four decades of training I believe that not only are players over-trained, but they are likely over-stretched as well. These trainers have their heads so far up DOGMA that they refuse to consider how players did it for twenty years in the Old Days. Obviously twenty year players were freaks, and lucky. But they also didn't have the benefits of today's surgical technology and techniques. I have to wonder what the percentage of players who had fifteen plus years of playing time up to 1990 v. the thirty Years of Enlightenment. Thoughts?
That Voit is adroit! Voit hits one to Detroit! Cool Hand Luke!
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August 31, 2018 at 10:22 PM
That's a good question, Kevin. I really don't know.
But as I think I wrote last year, you look at Mantle, with all his insane injuries—not to mention those hangovers!—managing to play 2,401 games as a Yankee—the record, until Jeter broke it.
To get to that number, Judge, now 28, would have to play pretty much every game until he was 40. Stanton, 30, would have to play every game until he was 37 or 38.
Never going to happen, of course. But there's something wrong when you can't approach the playing time of one of the most famously injured players in the game.
Horace, totally agree with you. BTW, much is made of Judge "being too big for baseball". Don't even bigger men run up and down basketball courts (which is a far more taxing sport)? Gooooooood gawd, the Bullsht narratives just pile on and on.....
Well, who knows? For instance, the great Bill Walton had feet that just wouldn't stand up under the pounding of an extended NBA season.
Some guys just break more easily, and Judge seems to be one of them. Not his fault! He doesn't seem to be a juicer, and he's not a slacker. But maybe if there was less time spent running, or in the weight room...
Same for Stanton. He strikes me as a juicer, but that's just a guess and I wouldn't want to say without some proof.
It did bug me, though, that he both would not play and would not get off the roster against the Astros in the ALCS last year.
I wonder too that in the old days, the guys didn't make millions a year with fixed guaranteed contracts. I grew up in a AAA town and several big leagues would come back in the winter and sell cars and tires. Get the impression that if their calf hurt, they put liniment on it, took aBenny and kept playing cuz they needed the money and like 500 guys were in the minors looking to take their place. They spent hours in the training room with a beer and played through the pain. Plus, guys weren't throwing 95-100 and blowing out their arms.
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