* Every year, baseball teams spend more and more money on medical staffing, equipment, testing and nutrition. They hire massage therapists. They use data to monitor and measure activity and detect fatigue. There’s new and improved technology to study biomechanics, which is supposed to ensure that players don’t place too much stress on any part of their bodies.
Meanwhile, none of it seems to matter. Injuries pile up at a record pace and, at least anecdotally, players miss more games than ever before. It seems that we know more about why injuries happen and are better prepared to detect the them occurring, but somehow, less is done to prevent or avoid them altogether.
On Opening Day, 166 players — or enough to field more than five full teams — were on the Injured List. To put that into perspective, there are 780 active players on major league rosters at all time. That translates into almost five players per team being unavailable because of one physical ailment or another.
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Unsurprisingly, more than three-quarters of injured players were pitchers, meaning, on average, about three major league-caliber pitchers were being replaced by minor leaguers who would not otherwise be on major league rosters.
The Red Sox, as an example, were without, among others, their No. 1 starter (Lucas Giolito), their starting second baseman (Vaughn Grissom) and extra outfielder (Rob Refsnyder). Other teams in the division — the Yankees, Rays and Orioles — were hit far worse.
Where this all ends is anyone’s guess. But it’s become blindingly obvious that, as an industry, baseball is asking more from its players — and pitchers in particular — than they’re capable of giving. In the endless search for more velocity, more movement, more everything, the limits of the human body are being tested, in some cases beyond the breaking point.
Fans, ultimately, are being cheated, nightly fed rosters of players who aren’t major league caliber. The product suffers as a result.
Teams will keep expanding their training staffs and investing in facilities. But they’re only fooling themselves. As currently constituted, no amount of personnel or innovation can stem the tsunami of injuries.
Instead of squabbling over arcane economic issues, it would make sense for MLB and the MLB Players Association to form a commission to study the issue and present real, practical solutions.
* It’s not true, as some have argued this past week, that Boston is a poor college sports town. In fact, it’s a terrific college sports town when it comes to hockey, probably the best in the nation. (Just try and find something with the passion and following of the Beanpot Tournament.) It’s just not a big college basketball town.
* Robert Kraft was stunned, stunned I tell you, that the Patriots facilities weren’t up to par. For a guy who has his stamp all over his organization, from top to bottom, it’s more than a little odd that so much goes on that he doesn’t know about. Let’s not forget: the Patriots finished near the bottom in player surveys the year before, so none of the failing grades should have come as news to him.
* A few days into the season, it would seem that a few umpires could use some time in extended spring training. Some of the ball and strikes calls have been jaw-dropping.
* Tampa Bay recently gave Kevin Cash a five-year, $24 million contract extension according to the New York Post’s Jon Heyman. At nearly $5 million per year, that’s significantly more than what Alex Cora (approximately $2.75 million per season) is currently earning on the final year of his deal. If a small-market, budget-conscious organization like Tampa Bay is paying its manager like that, Cora’s in for a big pay raise somewhere. And likely not in Boston.
* Neither the Bruins nor the Celtics can protect late-game leads, a trend that has been apparent since the start of both their seasons. At this point, the only question seems to be: which team will be done in first in the postseason by their failure to close out games?
* The fact that just six percent of all players on MLB Opening Day rosters are African-American is troubling. That’s one-third of the number from 1991. To its credit, MLB has funded a number of initiatives to attract African-American participation in a number of programs. But more needs to be done. Baseball is losing a whole generation of African-American athletes to the NBA and NFL.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the game featured a number of Black stars, including Andrew Dawson, Rickey Henderson, Eddie Murray, Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Tim Raines, Dave Winfield, and Kirby Puckett. Now, try naming five.
* Maybe if NESN wasn’t obsessed with inserting drop-ins and dabbling in self-promotion, it wouldn’t find itself locked out of a big moment as happened in Thursday’s season opener. The network was so busy hawking another show on its schedule that it couldn’t include a call of Tyler O’Neill’s record-setting home run.
* Pet peeve of the week: people insistent on getting into an elevator before anyone can exit. Are they giving away prizes for the first person gaining entrance?
* What, precisely, is taking so long for the NBA to address the Draymond Green problem? Adam Silver and the NBAPA should work together to get Green off the court and find him the help he needs. There’s a whole lot of enabling going on, and everyone — the Warriors, the league and the union — is dirty.
* I can’t shake the feeling that someone other than The Big Three of Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels and Drake Maye is going to emerge as the real star of the quarterback class of 2024. My money remains on Michael Penix Jr., who likely has the strongest arm of the bunch. And shouldn’t that mean something?
* Pete Rose continues to whine about his exclusion from the game and the Hall of Fame, and this past week, made unfunny jokes about wishing he had had a translator, just another example of his xenophobic “sense of humor.” You can take MLB to task for its sudden embrace of gambling and the hypocrisy within, but Rose’s sins against the game are unmatched and he deserves every bit of his lifetime ban.
Once more for those who don’t quite get it: Rose bet on games in which he played and managed, and while there’s no evidence he ever bet against his own team, he effectively did so on nights when he chose not to bet.
