Under The Knife 8/28/24

Judge Not

Aaron Judge is “on pace for history.” That’s a bit of sleight of hand there, ESPN, as Judge’s pace is to break his AL record. Exactly no one cares about the AL home run record, which Judge has at 62. It’s odd to think that Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds all happened in the NL without someone in the AL matching up with them, especially without the DH, but we’re 30 years on and Judge is the first to even get close.

While many have done or attempted era adjustments and I don’t want to damn myself by showing how old I am, having reveled in Matt and Sammy’s amazing summer of dingers without any shade of steroids, but can we compare what Judge is doing in a tested era and with pitchers that are throwing wiffle-frisbee splinkers?

I’m not sure we can. Let’s take a look at the list of pitchers McGwire hit his 70 homers off of. Absent Billy Wagner and admitting that some of these are very good pitchers in their day, I’m not sure any with that stuff would get a look now. Glendon Rusch was the definition of crafty lefty and at the end of his career, he barely broke 90. Talking to people that played against him, they almost to a man say he didn’t go much faster in the early days.

Judge probably isn’t seeing 92 mph fastballs. I don’t have a full list, but I grabbed some randoms and it’s unclear. His 50th homer was on an 82 mph changeup, but Jeff Criswell also throws a 95 mph heater on average. If Judge is hitting mistakes, pitchers are making a lot of them.

Even with all the data we have, I don’t think we can answer the question of how much harder it is for Judge to hit now versus the good ol’ days of McGwire and Sosa. It’s probably too much to ask that we just enjoy them, regaling others with tales of having seen them play just as my dad tells me about Mickey Mantle. AI’s not so good yet to do the full simulation, but maybe if we just wait a couple weeks. For now, on to the injuries:

OLLY STONE, FB ENG (fractured back/rehab)

Olly Stone is not a baseball player. He’s a cricketer from England and a long time international player. However, the biomechanics of cricket bowling are much harder on the back. I won’t explain here, but there’s a video below:

However, Stone has been out of international play, just coming back from four stress fractures in his back. He’s credited Pilates with much of his return as he prepares to play against Sri Lanka after nearly three years.

But why am I leading with Olly Stone and not a baseball player? You might remember earlier this year that several pitchers, including Devin Williams and XXX, had stress fractures. This is a new injury and there’s lots of speculation about why - new detection technique, more force in the delivery - but few answers. Stone gives us a new direction in rehab and perhaps prevention, with the Pilates focus on long muscles, core strength, and holistic integration.

Pilates wouldn’t be new for baseball, but the experience that the sport of cricket has with this specific injury is one baseball should be taking advantage of. Bringing in people from other sports isn’t new, but some sort of technical partnerships would be smart, especially if spinal stress fractures continue to spread across the sport.

DEVIN WILLIAMS, RP MIL (inflamed shoulder)

Devin Williams missed the first half of the season with a back stress reaction not unlike Olly Stone. He overcame that and came back with the airbender intact. Unfortunately, his non-throwing shoulder is a bit of a problem. He “slept on it wrong” and threw off his mechanics. Luckily, the team noticed before he did anything and was taken down for a day or two in hopes this will clear up.

Assuming this is just a day to day problem and just something that happens in life, Williams will be back and normal. He shouldn’t lose any workload and get a couple good days of rest on the throwing side as well. That could be a positive, but if this does linger, the team was in first when he came back. The Brewers aren’t reliant on any one arm, even a dominant one, which makes them dangerous, but also makes it tougher to get out of that first round when they could run into one hot arm and end up out.

By the way, my computer keeps trying to autocorrect “Devin” to “Devil” and at some point, I’m just going to let it.