{"id":503,"date":"2008-07-13T09:29:50","date_gmt":"2008-07-13T08:29:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=503"},"modified":"2009-09-26T11:53:21","modified_gmt":"2009-09-26T10:53:21","slug":"weekly-hit-ground-ball-2008-week-fifteen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=503","title":{"rendered":"‘Weekly’ Hit Ground Ball 2008 – Week Fifteen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Are you feeling lucky?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Professional sportsmen are generally terrible at watching the game they play.\u00c2\u00a0 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be easy.\u00c2\u00a0 As such, this past week must have been a nightmare for Johnny Damon.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n

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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 Damon hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been part of such a moment before (has any other outfielder?) and the after-effect was a completely new experience for him too.\u00c2\u00a0 In the thirteenth year of his Major League career, Johnny Damon finally landed on the disabled list for the first time.<\/p>\n

Injuries are an occupational hazard for ballplayers, yet some are affected by them more than others.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rare to find a professional sportsman who doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t look after himself and prepare properly nowadays, so it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s difficult not to conclude that some players are simply lucky or unlucky.\u00c2\u00a0 Damon has always played the game with an all-action style: leaping for spectacular catches and crashing into outfield fences.\u00c2\u00a0 You would have thought this would make him more prone to injuries, but he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been able to escape them up until now.<\/p>\n

His Yankee team mate Hideki Matsui had a similar \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcinvincible\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 reputation.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 His streak of 1,768 consecutive games ended on 11 May 2006 in his fourteenth professional season after he suffered a broken left wrist.\u00c2\u00a0 Since that point, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s made two further trips to the DL, including his current stint due to a\u00c2\u00a0 left knee injury.<\/p>\n

While some players earn a reputation for avoiding injuries, others have a hard time staying on the field.\u00c2\u00a0 In virtually every article about the Cubs\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 acquisition of Rich Harden this week, his injury-riddled past has been highlighted.\u00c2\u00a0 Harden has been on the DL six times in a little more than four seasons.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 The Brewers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 new ace has been on the DL only twice, in both cases due to a strained right oblique muscle.\u00c2\u00a0 The odds on Milwaukee getting more starts out of their new recruit than the Cubs do over the rest of the season are high.<\/p>\n

Harden is the latest in a lengthening line of players departing Oakland and it was the roster\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inability to turn up to work each day that made GM Billy Beane start a rebuilding process.\u00c2\u00a0 The A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 The only surprise is that the A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t added a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcFragile: Handle with care\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 warning on to their uniforms.<\/p>\n

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.\u00c2\u00a0 They remember what happened to Mark Mulder when Oakland traded him to their NL Central rivals, the Cardinals, just before Christmas in 2004.\u00c2\u00a0 After starting thirty-two games in 2005, Mulder has only started 21 games since and seventeen of those came in 2006.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 Sadly, it looks like he may have pitched his last game.<\/p>\n

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.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Not all players are so lucky.<\/p>\n

Week fifteen wrap-up<\/strong><\/p>\n

This time last week, the Rays (55-38) were riding a six-game winning streak.\u00c2\u00a0 Now they are mired in a six-game losing streak, allowing the Red Sox to close within half a game in the AL East.\u00c2\u00a0 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s by five.<\/p>\n

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.\u00c2\u00a0 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a terrible record, but the Marlins went 6-1 and the Mets 7-0 (part of a current\u00c2\u00a0eight-game winning streak), allowing both to close within half a game.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0 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.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are you feeling lucky? Professional sportsmen are generally terrible at watching the game they play.\u00c2\u00a0 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be easy.\u00c2\u00a0 As such, this past week must have been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[553],"class_list":["post-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-hit-ground-ball","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4627,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions\/4627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}