I’ve written before that true injury prediction is the holy grail of all sports medicine professionals as well as those who follow the players and teams. It doesn’t matter if you’re a writer or a fan, it effects you one way or the other. For someone involved in fantasy baseball (or any other sport for the matter), knowing when a starting pitcher will be hurt can make the difference between a championship or 6th place. That’s why I’ve been working on the injury prediction front for a while. You haven’t seen much from me lately because I’ve been focused on entering data (day to day, minor league, training camp) and some programming to try and make this data easier to use and visualize.
So when I saw someone else write about predicting time lost due to pitching injuries, I of course made a note of it to read. After reading it, I came away disappointed. It creates more noise in the process of injury prediction and it’s not for a lack of trying. Being an Athletic Trainer, I’m required by laws and governing bodies to keep up to date on many issues in sports medicine today. As a result, I read a couple hundred articles from scientific journals each year and unfortunately this study falls short of my criteria and I see many potential issues in this study. My criticism below isn’t personal at all but more of a discussion as to why it’s so incredibly difficult to predict injuries. I don’t doubt that his heart is in the right place but there are many points to consider. Read on in no particular order:
- BMI is not the best way to track analyze someone’s health. A person who is 6′3″ and weighs 200 pounds has a BMI of 25 (which is what he uses as the cutoff for healthy/unhealthy) regardless of whether or not the person has a fat percentage of 7% (healthy athlete) or 32% (obese).
- If we assume that BMI is a proper way to evaluate health in athletes, can we really trust that the heights and weights on the rosters are accurate? Using the Red Sox as an example since I follow them the most, can we safely assume that Brad Penny, David Ortiz, and Aaron Bates are all 6′4″ and 230 pounds while someone like Masterson weighs in at 260. Even if the weights are correct can we assume that Pedroia is 5′9″.
- This study doesn’t explicitly remove players who have suffered multiple injuries. If a player suffers two DL stints of 25 days each to the same body part (think hamstring, shoulder) in a very short time (say 55 days from beginning to end of the 2 DL stints), it changes the average days lost to a lower number rather than counting it as 50 days when in fact it is the same injury.
- Categorizing someone as healthy versus hurt based only on DL transactions is ignoring a lot of data and also ignoring a lot of injuries. What about those pitchers who get their start skipped and don’t go on the DL or have their start pushed back a couple of times? Based on a 35 start season, every start counts roughly as 3% of his season. If he has 2 starts skipped over the 6th month season, that’s 6% that’s lost but not counted in the DL transactions.
- The 120 IP mark does not take into account those pitchers who came up to the bigs for 3-4 starts, went back down to the minors and was hurt in the minor leagues. If it does take those pitchers into account, it does not explicitly say so.
- It also appears that the 120 IP mark doesn’t factor in injuries for that season. If a player is used to throwing 180 IP, gets hurt that season but still ends up throwing 125 IP and then goes on the DL in year +1, he counts just the same as a guy who throws 125 IP for 3 years and gets hurt in year + 1.
- Finally my personal opinion as a practicing Athletic Trainer, is that a 3 day difference with high BMI/ low BMI across the board is not significant enough to really decide that we’ve found the mark. 3 days is having a start pushed back and/or just skipping the start.
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Since the end of last season, Peavy has been the subject of trade rumors, proposed trades, and ankle pain. Peavy is somewhat of an old schooler and willing to pitch through pain or run through a brick wall for you. Sometimes this can be counterproductive and after seeing him limp on the field yesterday, is the pain effecting his pitches?
It was first reported that Peavy was suffering through some ankle tendinitis on May 28th after his start on May 27th. Tendinitis never really just starts up in the middle of a start. Usually there is an underlying factor that didn’t reach the level to cause pain until he starts to feel it. Peavy showed a similar trend in the graph below.
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Pitch FX Jake Peavy, Pitch FX
What was a promising season for the Reds is likely going to take another hit as Edison Volquez had to leave after 1 inning coming off the DL. He left with numbness and tingling in his pinkie and ring finger which indicates something is either pressing or irritating the ulnar nerve in his elbow. This can either be ulnar neuritis or worse be the result of instability in the elbow leading to surgery. He most likely won’t require Tommy John surgery but if the neuritis is severe enough and it’s deemed to be the result of biomechanical issues, he very well could end up getting the ulnar transposition surgery. He’s one of those players that you can’t just drop in case it isn’t too severe, but you should start to think of other possibilities in case he ends up on the DL for a while.
Jose Valverde finally threw a bullpen session as he returns from the severe hematoma in his calf. Even though it was only 25 pitches, he didn’t report any pain or problems with his calf afterwards and it was a very important first step in his recovery. He has kept his arm strength up during his rehab so now he just has to retrain the kinetic chain. He’s likely looking at a mid June return approximately.
In a surprising turn, Grady Sizemore’s elbow may end up needing surgery despite not having major structural damage if the pain does not go away after the DL stint. What would likely happen is a debridement of the area and that’ll put him out around 6 weeks or so, although I wouldn’t be surprised if there was minor bone spur that was cleaned up too.
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injury analysis Edinson Volquez, Grady Sizemore, Jose Valverde, Josh Hamilton
Each year there are surprises in all aspects of fantasy baseball and in particular pitchers. Last year Sonnanstine surprised many of us and ended up with a very respectable 3.91 FIP, 3.35 K/BB, and a decent 1.29 WHIP. He was able to turn all of that into a 13-9 record for the AL champs and put himself on the fantasy radar in 2009. What came next was even more surprising to fantasy owners in 2009.
Sonnanstine started the year off badly and has been inconsistent (I’m in a kind mood today) at best since then. So far his FIP is close to 5 (with an ERA even worse), his K/BB ratio is down to 1.81, and his WHIP is an astronomical 1.78. The fact that he has been so horrible came as a complete surprise in the bad way. After his latest beat down, I had to see if there was anything in the Pitch Fx (from Fangraphs) that would show what’s different from last year.
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Pitch FX Andy Sonnanstine, Pitch FX
With the slow day today hopefully there won’t be too much new injury news this afternoon. Let’s catch up on the last couple of days.
Carlos Beltran had an MRI which showed bone bruising at the top of his tibia inside the knee. He received a cortisone injection into the area and Carlos described the injection as successful. I’m a little suspicious of how effective it will be long term because the bruising wasn’t a result of an outside force but it the force was produced by his own body. He underwent bilateral knee surgery to clean up his patellar tendons at the end of 2007, so it’s not unprecedented for his body to be producing detrimental forces across his knee. Right now, I don’t think this current situation is anything long lasting but it may require a couple days here or there later in the season.
Brett Myers came off the mound yesterday with inflammation in his hip and xrays revealed “jaggedness” according to an Xray. This isn’t the news that he or the Phillies wanted to hear and likely means he’s facing an extended DL stay if not surgery. If there are bony changes in his hip that show up on xray the structural change will not go away with rest and rehab. There will need to be some procedure to clean that up or fix it. Whether or not it can wait until the end of the season is a question that will likely be answered after an MRI and subsequent evaluation.
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injury analysis, news Brandon Backe, Brett Myers, Brian Bruney, Carlos Beltran, Cliff Floyd, Edinson Volquez, Hanley Ramirez, Jorge Posada, Kelvim Escobar, Melky Cabrera, Roy Oswalt, Ryan Braun, Ryan Freel, Xavier Nady
After seeing the debacle of Liriano’s line, I immediately thought of two things. First, the Sox must be very happy and second, my fantasy team just took a hit. We all know Liriano’s history by now but a quick recap. Johan-Lite came up and lit it up big time. He was as unhittable and as feared as Johan was and he was just a rookie. Unfortunately, the devastating slider that made him so great also seemed to hurt him and so in late 2006 he went under the knife, subsequently missing all of the 2007 season in rehabilitation. In 2008, he returned and was largely ineffective over his first 4 starts before being sent down to the minors where something clicked and he dominated once again. In a cost saving move, the Twins left him down there longer than he needed to be while others got lit up like a Christmas tree. Eventually, Liriano returned and was effective with some brilliance showing up now and then but he still didn’t have the same zip or the same bite on his pitches.
Which brings us up to the present. There’s been so much anticipation of Liriano returning to even 90% of 2006-levels that he was taken in the early mid-rounds of many drafts. Tommy John patients often aren’t back to their “normal” until 2 years after the operation and he’s now more than 6 months over that threshold. By all accounts he hasn’t quite reached the velocity he had prior to the surgery in 2006. He’s down approximately 3 MPH (now at around 91 and change) on his fastball and about 2 MPH on his slider (now at 85.7 MPH). Let’s take a look at the PFx data (from Fangraphs):
Pitch FX Francisco Liriano, Pitch FX
Sorry for the lack of post the last two days. I’m been working on the mystery wrapped in an enigma within a conundrum named Liriano. The post will be up tomorrow so I hope everyone will read it.
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My weekly summary is up at Rotosavants. Check it out.
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