Will Middlebrooks had a fairly promising future with the Red Sox after being called up in 2012. His 2013 season did not go as planned. A couple of injuries and a demotion caused havoc on his season. Going forward into 2014, his career will be at a cross roads for several reasons.
Dustin Pedroia’s wrist pushed back my look at pitchers coming back from Tommy John surgery. While doing the Pedroia article, I created a query to look at HURT values on a month to month basis. While it isn’t really needed for the off-season, it will be ready for the start of the 2014 season.
• Dustin Pedroia is supposed to have thumb surgery on Tuesday and will be out for 6 to 8 weeks (link).
To say Josh Donaldson’s 2013 season was a surprise would be a huge under-statement. He put up a MVP caliber season at a premium position. The exact cause for his turnaround is not exactly known. It could have been his new bat or finally feeling comfortable in his transition to 3B. No matter the cause, since being promoted in the second half of 2012, he has been on a hitting tear.
Injury news is really beginning to come to a halt. I moved the MASH Report to just once a week and soon it may go to every other week. To keep it going more regularly, I could look at look at specific injury types and their recovery rates. I would like to run analysis on different injuries like I did with groins today. If there are any specific injury cases you want compared, please let me know in the comments. Next week, I will probably look at pitchers who recently had Tommy John surgery, but I could use other injury types as the off-season goes on.
• The big injury news of the week was Miguel Cabrera having groin surgery which altered his game at the season’s end. He basically could not lift his front leg (source):
“The doctor said he didn’t understand how I could have played with so much pain,” Cabrera told Rojas. “It hurt so much that I almost couldn’t lift my right leg, and that was the reason I couldn’t reach the outside fastballs at the end of the season.”
The Seattle Mariners 2B situation was a disaster in 2013. As group they hit .229/.299/.340 with Dustin Ackley and Nick Franklin getting most of the plate appearances. The Mariners expected not to struggle because both Ackley and Franklin were highly touted prospects. According to Baseball America’s Top 100 prospects, Akley was ranked #11 in 2010 and #13 in 2011. Franklin was the #53 in 2012 and #79 in 2013. Both struggled in 2013 and the outlook for 2014 isn’t much better.
About a week ago during one of the RotoGraphs podcast, Eno Sarris and Mike Podhorzer were discussing Adrian Gonzalez’s walk rate falling off the cliff. It was basically cut in a third going from 18% in 2009 to 6% in 2012. Over the time frame, Adrian’s eye didn’t change, instead he just was not intentionally walked (IBB) as much. Today I am going to look at the effects of intentional walks on walk rates and some player whose walk rate have recently been bloated because of them.
Today I will look at a few injury updates, notably Matt Kemp and Miguel Cabrera, and then look at hitters with past back injuries and the struggles they may experience next season.
• Miguel Cabrera “may” require surgery to repair his groin. (source)
“He has a groin [injury], they say Grade 2, Grade 3, which means there’s some tearing of fibers in that area,” Dombrowski said. “It was not going to heal with rest, we were assured of that.”
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If Cabrera does have surgery, Dombrowski said, he’s expected to be fully recovered in time for Spring Training.
Putting a finger on Eric Hosmer’s true talent level seems tougher than the over cooked pork crops my mom makes. Hosmer was good his rookie season. Then he was horrible in year two. He started last season off horribly, but then turned his season around. While he seemed to be all over the place, his production change can be focused to a period of an extremely low BABIP
Mike Zunino came into the 2013 as a highly touted prospect. Baseball America had him as 17th ranked prospect and here at FanGraphs, Marc Hulet ranked him 12th overall. It looked like he may spend a good portion of 2013 in the minors, but he was promoted after Jesus Sucre’s hand got injured and the Jesus Montero experiment failed worse than the new Lone Ranger. Going into 2013, the 23-year-old power hitter looks to be the Mariners future everyday catcher if he can work out some contact issues.
For the first time ever in the history of MASH, it happens to be hitter only news. I will update four hitters on the mend and look at the end of season HURT rankings.
• The latest report has Manny Machado returning in 6 months (link)
Manny Machado will miss Spring Training and almost certainly be delayed to start the 2014 regular season, as the Orioles third baseman’s recovery timetable following Monday’s knee surgery is approximately six months.