‘Weekly’ Hit Ground Ball 2008 – Week Fifteen

Are you feeling lucky?

Professional sportsmen are generally terrible at watching the game they play.  Position players in baseball are used to taking the field virtually every day once the season begins, so coping with the frustration of kicking their heels on the sidelines can’t be easy.  As such, this past week must have been a nightmare for Johnny Damon. 

The Yankee outfielder was placed on the DL last Sunday with an injury to his left shoulder, suffered during a scarcely believable play in which Kevin Youkillis managed to hit a linedrive on top of the thin left-field wall at Yankee Stadium.  Damon went to snag it, only for the ball to pop out of his glove, roll along the top of the wall and then fall to the safety of the warning track.  Damon hadn’t been part of such a moment before (has any other outfielder?) and the after-effect was a completely new experience for him too.  In the thirteenth year of his Major League career, Johnny Damon finally landed on the disabled list for the first time.

Injuries are an occupational hazard for ballplayers, yet some are affected by them more than others.  It’s rare to find a professional sportsman who doesn’t look after himself and prepare properly nowadays, so it’s difficult not to conclude that some players are simply lucky or unlucky.  Damon has always played the game with an all-action style: leaping for spectacular catches and crashing into outfield fences.  You would have thought this would make him more prone to injuries, but he’s been able to escape them up until now.

His Yankee team mate Hideki Matsui had a similar ‘invincible’ reputation.  The Japanese star played in 1,250 consecutive games for the Yomiuri Giants before playing in 518 straight for the Yankees at the start of his career stateside.  His streak of 1,768 consecutive games ended on 11 May 2006 in his fourteenth professional season after he suffered a broken left wrist.  Since that point, he’s made two further trips to the DL, including his current stint due to a  left knee injury.

While some players earn a reputation for avoiding injuries, others have a hard time staying on the field.  In virtually every article about the Cubs’ acquisition of Rich Harden this week, his injury-riddled past has been highlighted.  Harden has been on the DL six times in a little more than four seasons.  Concerns over his ability to stay healthy were compared to the consistent workload that CC Sabathia has been able to handle in his Major League career.  The Brewers’ new ace has been on the DL only twice, in both cases due to a strained right oblique muscle.  The odds on Milwaukee getting more starts out of their new recruit than the Cubs do over the rest of the season are high.

Harden is the latest in a lengthening line of players departing Oakland and it was the roster’s inability to turn up to work each day that made GM Billy Beane start a rebuilding process.  The A’s have already placed someone on the DL on eighteen occasions this season, after losing a combined 1,259 player games to the DL in 2007.  Eric Chavez and Bobby Crosby have been two of the serial offenders over the last couple of seasons and few Oakland fans are shocked that both are currently banged up yet again.  The only surprise is that the A’s haven’t added a ‘Fragile: Handle with care’ warning on to their uniforms.

Harden has been able to take the mound in his last eleven scheduled starts, but some Cubs fans are concerned that Beane has traded him now because he knows his luck is about to end.  They remember what happened to Mark Mulder when Oakland traded him to their NL Central rivals, the Cardinals, just before Christmas in 2004.  After starting thirty-two games in 2005, Mulder has only started 21 games since and seventeen of those came in 2006.  His return from rotator cuff surgery this week lasted a mere three batters before he had to leave the field in pain having re-injured his shoulder.  Sadly, it looks like he may have pitched his last game.

Johhny Damon may not be enjoying his enforced absence from the Yankee line-up at the moment, but at least he will be returning soon.   Not all players are so lucky.

Week fifteen wrap-up

This time last week, the Rays (55-38) were riding a six-game winning streak.  Now they are mired in a six-game losing streak, allowing the Red Sox to close within half a game in the AL East.  Meanwhile the teams are in a holding pattern in the Central and the West, with the White Sox (54-39) leading the Twins by 1.5 games and the Angels (56-38) leading the A’s by five.

In the NL East, the Phillies (51-44) had opened up a 3.5 game lead seven days ago, only to go 3-4 on the week.  That’s not a terrible record, but the Marlins went 6-1 and the Mets 7-0 (part of a current eight-game winning streak), allowing both to close within half a game.  The Cubs (57-37) have put some distance between themselves and the chasing pack in the Central, for the time being at least; they are 5.5 games in front of the Cardinals.  The D-Backs (46-46) were finally caught by the Dodgers in the West, but they were unable to overtake them and Arizona has now squeaked out a two-game lead to hold on to that top spot.