UTK Special 4/29/20
The BioDome plan never had a chance.
With America starting to re-open, sports has not yet really cracked its doors. The return of the Bundesliga might offer some hope and I’m sure US sports officials are keeping a very close eye, but there’s little in the way of parallels to follow there, inside or outside the stadiums.
Instead, sports are still in a weird limbo. The NFL can keep its year-round pseudo-sports party going and NBA camps might open in places, but that’s as much of an issue as actually playing. MLB is the hard one and with the most fractious leadership *and* a looming labor issue, either this is a breaking point or a coming together and there are arguments to be made on both sides for which way its going.
The surprising part is that thus far, the players have been largely silent. There’s been no great presence online - the MLB The Show tourney was sparsely attended and wasn’t nearly as satisfying as something like iRacing has been. There’s been no complaints either. Players seem to be staying inside, staying out of trouble, and staying in shape.
There’s hints here and there, like Marcus Stroman showing off his dock-cum-pitching alley just outside his Florida mansion. Largely however, players seem to have just been quietly putting in work, which is the best case scenario for teams. The lack of a social media presence or even real stars is showing itself here. I can tell you what LeBron James is doing, but we’ve barely seen Mike Trout. Tom Brady is walking in the wrong house, but Clayton Kershaw may never have left his.
Over the last few days, I’ve been talking with a number of players and stakeholders, like pitching coaches, coordinators, and medical staff. By and large, they’re very positive about their ability to get players back to camp and quickly get them ready. Almost to a man, they think all they’ll need is some time, some games, and we’ll be at a situation where baseball can be played again.
”I saw your piece on tandems,” one said “and we don’t need it. My guys are simulating games now and they’re at five innings, so give me a month of camp and they’ll be more than ready. If someone really pushed, we could go now, if you give us five more arms on the roster.”
There’s less of a consensus on where arms are, but in general, it seems that teams think they’ll need at least three weeks of games, maybe four. “I have to get five guys up to six innings and if we go four starts, you’re looking at 20 games? That’s something like 4-5-6 and then we just watch their counts,” said one coordinator. Yes, I cringed in that he’s only using pitch counts and innings, but he knows that.
I want to feel good about what I’ve heard and in the cases where I know teams are very hands-on and have good data monitoring, they don’t seem more confident than the teams that are old-schooling it through the pandemic. Maybe we’re all missing something and this unprecedented pause will create problems we couldn’t have foreseen, but I’m feeling better that we won’t see the big jump in pitching injuries that many, including myself, expected.
Two caveats here: First, I think we are going to see more muscular issues across the board. These should come early in ‘camp’ for both pitchers and players, but I don’t think it will be any great surge. Second, I do think we’re going to see a normal number of Tommy John and other arm injuries. These happen all the time and whether or not some pitchers didn’t put in the work, we’re going to see the chronic nature of these injuries show itself. If they come in a burst, especially quickly, they will be misinterpreted.
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This has not been a normal time. I want to thank each and every one of you for reading Under The Knife in this weird, freewheeling space we’ve had for a month and then some. I’m hoping we can return to the normal discussion of injuries and sport, but until then, this will remain free.
I do need help growing this so that we can continue to do this. Please take a moment and forward this, or another column that you think a friend would enjoy. I’d love to double the number of people who get this column during May and the only way to do that is by you. I’m not sure if it’s word of mouth if you’re just hitting “forward”, but that is the key. Please?
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Probably of interest to no one but this whole column was done on my iPad with the new “Magic Keyboard.” It might just make me a convert over to working from the laptop. Part of the issue is that my MacBook Pro has the troublesome keyboard and I’m hoping to soldier through until Apple decides to fix the keyboard on a smaller Pro model but hopefully switch over to ARM processors. However, the iPad plus keyboard may just be a good alternative.