Kicking Rocks: WBC Bummer
Let’s a give a big round of applause to the idiots at the IOC, shall we? The need to draw more attention and revenue to the Olympics led these buffoons to killing the Games’ integrity by removing the amateur status requirements to participate so they could draw in more professional and marketable athletes. While that may have been fine and dandy for the basketball world, as the NBA season ends in June and the summer Olympics don’t start up until late July, it was an epic fail for baseball as players were asked to leave their MLB teams in the middle of the season to go and compete. MLB complied and allowed players to play, but there were no marquee names headed for the games and in the 2004, the United States didn’t even field a team.
So what does the IOC do? Rather than accept the fact that baseball, an Olympic sport since 1904, would be without its money-generators like Derek Jeter, Randy Johnson and Barry Bonds and once again, showcase only lesser-known up-and-coming youth, they voted the sport out in 2005, citing “…a need to have a sport with a following, [a] need to have the best players and [a] need to be in strict compliance with WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency).” That, in turn, opened the door of greed which the higher ups of MLB happily walked through and birthed this debacle of a tournament which is based on the almighty dollar yet hiding behind the shroud of international pride. It takes place right in the middle of spring training and is slowly but surely ruining the player pool for us fantasy owners.
When it was announced that Gio Gonzalez would replace Kris Medlen on Team USA for the upcoming World Baseball Classic, I immediately crossed him off my list of potential protects in my keeper leagues. And now, my suggestion to you, as you’re preparing for your upcoming fantasy drafts, is to head on over to the WBC web site and take a look through the finalized rosters. Then go grab your biggest red marker and start crossing off names on your cheat sheets, paying special attention to the pitchers and any position player with even the most remote injury history. You’re probably not going to want to use them this season as the potential for injury or, at the least, a second half drop-off increases.
The whole point of spring training is to give the athletes the opportunity to gradually work themselves into regular season form. Pitchers are tweaking mechanics, honing their delivery and developing new pitches while the hitters are easing their way into the rigors of daily field play and working out any hitches in their swing. We give them roughly a month and a half to do so. But with the WBC kicking off in early March, the players are expected to be in early to mid-season form and to play with an intensity usually found when chasing a pennant down the stretch in September. Pitchers arms are being heavily taxed far too soon and with limited time for proper conditioning, position players increase their chances for injury.
Take a look at what happened to several MLB players after participating in the 2009 WBC tournament. Roy Oswalt missed a handful of starts as his back issues flared up from an obvious increased workload. His 4.12 ERA that year was the highest of his career to that point. Ted Lilly missed roughly seven starts with an array of arm issues. Edinson Volquez got shut down mid-season and headed for Tommy John surgery. Jose Reyes tore a calf muscle in May that year. Jake Peavy strained an ankle tendon. Shane Victorino pulled a disappearing act in the second half. Chipper Jones strained his oblique during the tournament and put up the first under-20 home run season of his career. Francisco Rodriguez saw a decrease in strikeouts, an increase in walks, posted the worst ERA of his career (5.14) and had an unusually low ground ball rate. The list actually goes on further, but you get the point. This is what you want for your fantasy team?
Now obviously injuries are a steady part of the long, grueling baseball season, and there are also players who thrived during the MLB season following their WBC appearance. But you’re looking at almost one out of every four guys on an MLB roster who had some sort of issue following their participation in the tournament and for me, that’s just too many. The risk of injury is already great enough. Why do we have to increase it for what really amounts to a series of meaningless games?
I’m not saying that you have to scrap the WBC altogether. But leave anyone on an MLB roster out of it. It is the MLB teams who are paying the salaries of these players and if you want to take it a step further, it is the fans who are helping pay as well with ticket sales, merchandising, concessions and everything else that now costs and arm and a leg to see a professional baseball game. I don’t spend money on season tickets and a jersey so that I can watch my favorite player, who coincidentally sits on all of my fantasy teams, get hurt in a take-out slide by some overzealous Australian and miss the entire regular season. I don’t want it in real life and I certainly don’t want it in fantasy.
Howard Bender has been covering fantasy sports for over 10 years on a variety of websites. In addition to his work here, you can also find him at his site, RotobuzzGuy.com, Fantasy Alarm, RotoWire and Mock Draft Central. Follow him on Twitter at @rotobuzzguy or for more direct questions or comments, email him at rotobuzzguy@gmail.com
Hmmm… BleacherReport seems to have acquired a new URL.
Strongly dislike the WBC. That is all.
For those interested in actual research (as opposed to cherry picked examples) on the hypothesis that WBC participation causes injuries/decrease in performance, consider these:
http://espn.go.com/mlb/blog/_/name/stark_jayson/id/8853591/busting-world-baseball-classic-injury-myth
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=19425
thanks for this. the article here made me wonder if howard steers clear of drafting all stars or guys who might participate in the futures game in his fantasy league too. the idea that the WBC must be inherently a greater injury risk than mid-march spring training strikes me as patently absurd.
I generally appreciate the kicking rocks articles because they’re a nice change of pace from the usual fantasy articles, but this one seems like a contrarian first draft argument based on anecdote, when I could pull as many anecdotes to counter it. Fangraphs has some of the more thoughtful analysis on injuries as they relate to fantasy baseball in the MASH reports, I guess this article is meant to counter those posts with the same hot sports opinions i turn off talk radio to avoid.
As Peter points out below, that Stark piece has serious issues with cherry picking itself (I knew something felt icky about referring to a Jayson Stark piece as ‘research’…).
Here’s another interesting study, with caveats that it looks only at team USA pitchers for some reason, and doesn’t compare to non-WBC pitchers:
http://baseballpress.com/article.php?id=1256
I like WBC. I think it can be a stage to promote the game to other countries where baseball is not famous. having said that, there is too much money tied with MLB on a team-level and player-level that neither see any incentive in participating in WBC. That has to change somewhat. All you see is risk of getting injured and costing yourself playing time in MLB which could lead to serious money. If the contract itself were to include some clauses related to WBC, that could affect the pool of players that participate.
Jerry: Talk about cherry-picked. The MLB study says twice as many non-WBC players were on the DL “that April.” The other stats Starks cites also are April-centric. What about the players, including the ones mentioned in this post, who may have seen their bodies (or body parts) wear down later from workload or altered preseason preparation?
You disagree with this post? Fine. But don’t knock selective research, then offer selective research as evidence.
Extremely good point.
What about those players who get injured later in the year, Peter? Aside from over-anxious sportswriters or commenters falling victim to “correlation=causation” I have seen no meaningful analysis pointing to participation in exhibition games or tournaments as more of an injury risk than anything else. If the hypothesis is that pitchers straying from altered preseason preparation is more likely to cause injury down the stretch, fine. But plenty of pitchers play winter ball every year without any clear signs that this leads to greater injury risk, and there are stricter innings limits imposed on the WBC than there are in winter ball settings as far as I can tell.
It shouldn’t be the people who point to logic and reason who have to defend their position. An article saying that every player who participates in the WBC is a greater risk to real life and fantasy teams is the thing stating a case without any real evidence.
I hope Zimmerman or one of the more analytical writers here writes a follow up where this subject gets some true thought and evidence around it, rather than pure gut reaction.
“An article saying that every player who participates in the WBC is a greater risk to real life and fantasy teams is the thing stating a case without any real evidence.”
Maybe you should read the post in its entirety. Nowhere does it say every player. In fact…
“Now obviously injuries are a steady part of the long, grueling baseball season, and there are also players who thrived during the MLB season following their WBC appearance. But you’re looking at almost one out of every four guys on an MLB roster who had some sort of issue following their participation in the tournament and for me, that’s just too many.”
Freddy, I point to another quote from the article I didn’t read:
Go grab your biggest red marker and start crossing off names on your cheat sheets, paying special attention to the pitchers and any position player with even the most remote injury history. You’re probably not going to want to use them this season as the potential for injury or, at the least, a second half drop-off increases.
That’s the thesis of this article. The paragraph at the end with the caveat “i’m not saying EVERYONE” doesn’t change the fact the point of the article is “EVERYONE”. If there is a baseball player for whom “the most remote injury history” does not apply I guess he gets to be the exception.
You’re making an assumption that he means everyone when he isn’t actually saying it. Not saying that I agree with the article because I’m actually on the fence about the issue. I can see both sides. But the bottom line is that the sample size is too small and there is no real statistical evidence proving either side. The author is throwing out an opinion. You can choose to listen or not listen.
you’re right that it’s not the whole point of the article. The true point of the article is clearly summed up in the final 2 sentences. Those sentences also remind me of the article on notgraphs a while ago, about tim lincecum’s haircut.
I like the kicking rocks series’ style and thought-experiments, they can be a nice escape from the more detailed analysis of rotographs and I don’t want to expect this column to be more than it can be. But the specific topic here seems especially wrongheaded to me. Nevermind my opinion of the validity of a person deciding to represent his home country in a sport being maybe slightly more important than my personal fantasy team or jersey sales. The reason given against the WBC here is that it could lead to injury or, if not that, maybe a poor second half due to extra strain in 2 weeks in march. The logic of this specific article is the sort of thing i would expect an epic dave cameron or klaw rant against small sample sizes and correlation doesn’t equal causation.
It’s been a long week, I guess.
Right off the bat you’re wrong: “amateur” is the biggest crock of shit in sports. It’s just a way to avoid paying workers. The IOC deserves credit for dispensing with it.
can’t wait for the article in 3 weeks where there is a list of breakout performers from the WBC i should target in my draft
Baseball was decidedly not “an Olympic sport since 1904.” It was played sporadically as an exhibition sport from 1904 through 1988, and not even at every Olympics. It was an official Olympic sport from 1992 through 2008, hardly a rich and storied history at the Olympics.
Oops. Italics fail.
This is Rotographs, I understand that, but man the WBC is so fun to attend. How often do MLB fans care as much as a section full of bandannaed koreans banging their drums and singing for 9 innings? If you’re nearby, don’t miss a game, its great, intense, meaningful baseball. What’s not to like?
They should move the WBC to replace the allstar break or after the World Series, when the MLB players are properly conditioned. Why do they insist on March?
November seem to be the most logical time to hold it.
Every star player should be able to attend with the entire offseason to recover from any acquired injuries. It’s not like it’s warmer anywhere in March, and they should have been scheduling this in warm weather cities or domes anyway (SF? Really?).
Howard Bender: the sworn enemy of rigor.
Some of you guys need to relax for a second. This is a kicking rocks column. He gives no pretense that this is a well-researched, thoroughly-analyzed article. He presented three ideas:
1) Baseball should remain an Olympic sport.
2) The creation of the WBC was based on the greed of MLB executives.
3) The WBC presents an increased injury risk to players.
The first two opinions are subjective, but the last one can be validated with research. If you want WBC research, why not do it yourself? I’d have a problem if this sort of column showed up in FG+. Here, it’s just another idea worth exploring.
Actually it’s this:
1) opinion
2) speculation
3) lack of research
I don’t like SP’ers that go to the WBC though. They require a very precise schedule to build up their innings. For most other players it’s not much different than spring training.
I want to the avoid pitchers with WBC involvement. I think the time away from their pitching coaches during the beginning of the year tends to lead to more mechanical issues (injury/ineffectiveness) and I want more of a sure bet. With the added uncertainty, it’s enough to drop most pitchers 1-2 rounds on my board.