Stark: A modern history of self-inflicted baseball injuries

From Audrey Stark at FanGraphs on May 9, 2019:

In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen wrote, “Angry people are not always wise.” While Jane never saw a professional baseball game, her words still have relevance to the sport. Angry baseball players sometimes make stupid choices without considering the consequences of those actions. Recently, Cardinals prospect Alex Reyes broke a finger punching a wall in frustration. It turns out this has happened more than a few times in the last 15 years. These injuries are never caused by anger at other people; it is always frustration over their own mistakes. There’s that old adage about Hall of Fame hitters failing 70% of the time; these guys are humans first, baseball players second. In this case, there are three types of failure: the immediate, the prolonged, and the sort that we can laugh at.

Some of these self-inflicted injuries happen in the heat of a single moment. For example, Troy Tulowitzki smashed his bat in 2008 after being pulled from a game in the seventh inning. The bat shattered on the ground and sliced open his right palm. He required 16 stitches, but fortunately for Tulo, there was no damage to any tendons or nerves so he was only out for a couple weeks. Immediately seeing the error of his ways, he said, “This one’s kind of a stupid injury that I could have prevented.”

Read the full article here: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-modern-history-of-self-inflicted-baseball-injuries/



Originally published: May 10, 2019. Last Updated: May 10, 2019.