Before the season started, I stated my Bold Predictions. Time to get the shaming on.
Torii Hunter will improve on his 2012 season.
After re-inventing his swing part way through 2012, I thought he could do it for an entire season. He didn’t.
81/16/92/9/.313
90/17/84/3/.304
Miss. 0 for 1
Last night, Jacoby Ellsbury had three plate appearances in his return back from a fractured foot. He had a hit and a walk after missing just 20 days. I decided to go back and look at players who fractured their foot and how they performed after returning.
With a sample size of one game under his belt, Ellsbury looks great and he feels pretty good (source)
“Yeah it was a nice game back,” Ellsbury said. “I’m definitely excited about it. I felt pretty good out there.”
Decent information is getting thin as the season winds down. This may be my last MASH for the regular season. For the offseason, I will be posting a weekly-ish article (probably on Thursday). I will update the players who will likely miss time in 2014. Also, I will go back can look at 2013 PAIN, SLOW, HURT and Zone% leaders. Also, any suggestion will be taken.
• Edward Mujica is dealing with fatigue and it doesn’t seem manager Matheny and him are on the same page. First from Mujica (Source for both quotes):
Truthfully, not a whole lot to go over. The biggest key for the next couple weeks is to play players who will be in the starting lineup, not resting or calling the season done. One item which will probably come up is playoff bound pitchers who skip starts in order to rest.
• Matt Harvey opted for rehab vice surgery. I am not 100% sure I like this decision. If I was his owner, I would be very skeptical of any 2014 production from him.
Lots of decent information today.
• Miguel Cabrera is hurting and it is killing his bat speed (source)
“All that stuff has affected my offensive numbers,” Cabrera said. “My swing is not as fast as it normally is, and those are things that you must face on a daily basis. But that won’t keep me from going out on the field and trying to help this team win ballgames.”
My main goal over the season’s last few MASH reports is to keep a good list of players out for the season, but not officially on the DL. Besides the two DL lists at the bottom, I will look at a few players and updated PAIN and HURT reports.
• Tony Cingrani is out with back spasms. I could see the Reds experiment with him to find out if he is able to contribute in the post season. I would just stay away from him over the rest of the season.
Sorry for no report at the end of last week, I had a funeral to attend. For today’s report, I have a ton of information to catch up on. First, the official and unofficial DL lists are updated. I am trying to keep the unofficial one up to date the best I can, but sorry if I miss any players. For most of the rest of the article, I will look at couple of hitters playing through injuries and about a dozen pitchers returning from the disabled list.
• Buster Posey’s has a broken ring finger, but he does think it will affect him much (source).
“From what I’m hearing from trainers and doctors, hopefully in a couple of days, once it calms down, I’ll be able to play through it,” said Posey, who called the pain “minimal.”
He has played in one game (yesterday) since the injury and got 2 hits, including a double. I would not be surprised to see his power suffer a bit as he deals with the injury.
September has started and that means tracking disabled players should becomes easier since no team puts players on it with the expanded rosters. Instead of taking the easy route, I am going to try to keep a list of players who would probably be on the DL if teams still had to use it. I will stay on the conservative side and list players who may be healthy. If they just DH or PH, I will still list them.
• A couple of interesting injury articles were recently published. First, the Pioneer Press examined changes in catcher masks and if they are behind the increase in catcher concussions. Also, Dustin Palmateer of Baseball Prospectus looked at forecasting pitcher injuries by their college pitch load. Short answer, he found no correlation.
I narrowed down the PAIN list to just August vs. the rest of the season for today. Additionally, I looked at Justin Verlander and ran an updated HURT list.
• In our Tuesday night chat, someone asked Paul Swydan and me if Verlander’s decline is because of an injury. Challenge taken. The 30-year-old’s average fastball velocity and Zone% are down over the last few seasons.
Season: Average Fastball Velocity, Zone%
2010: 95.4, 52.3%
2011: 95.0, 51.0%
2012: 94.3, 51.9%
2013: 93.1, 50.7%
Marlon Byrd was just traded yesterday from the Mets to the Pirates. The 35-year-old is having a resurgent season which may end up being a career best. He has made some swing changes to help maintain some consistency for the rest of 2013 and hopefully into 2014.
I am not going to even try to guess if he is taking some form of PEDs, even though he was caught with them in 2012. He served a 50-game suspension and is being tested more since he is an offender. He will have a cloud over him, but I will base my analysis with the assumption he is clean.
Marlon Byrd has completely changed his approach in 2013 with good results. He believes he has a good swing at times, but lost focus in the past. Here are some quotes on the turnaround.
