Is Staying Healthy Predictive?

NoXInNixon

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Mar 24, 2008
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There's lots of talk in both the Lester and Buchholz threads about how the injury histories of those two pitchers should be used to form our expectations of their performances going forward. But has it ever been statistically shown that some pitchers, or players in general, are more injury prone than others? It sure seems like some players are always getting hurt, and some players go their whole careers without a trip to the DL, but you'd expect extreme outliers even if injuries were completely random independently distributed events.
 
Perhaps it can be broken down further by the type of injury. For example, some joints have a greater tendency to be dislocated again after being dislocated once.
 
But in general is it really fair to say that because Lester has stayed healthy his entire career, and Buchholz has missed lots of time, that going forward we should expect that to be the most likely outcome? Is staying healthy a skill which a team should pay a premium for?
 

dcmissle

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Are you limiting to pitchers, or can we add the oft injured Tulo and Ryan Zimmerman in the mix? They have reclaimed their well worn seats on the disabled list.
 

NoXInNixon

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The question interests me in general, both for pitchers and position players. Although I imagine it's really two different questions since pitching is inherently more likely to cause an injury than any other position in baseball.
 

Omar's Wacky Neighbor

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Leaving in a bit to the studio :)
G38 contributed a few years back that players who have a non-major injury at an early age learned how to deal with it and how to take better care of themselves, as opposed to players who got their first injury later in life and would then get injuries more frequently after that.
 

alwyn96

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I have zero data to back this up, but it's my sense that pitchers' likelihood of injury at any given time is quite high. There may be a sort of bimodal distribution of injury likelihood, though. While it feels like a lot of younger (<24) pitchers who make it to MLB early need UCL recontruction at some point, I think generally regardless of injury history, if you assume a pitcher over say, 33, if going to be injured or ineffective in their next season, then you're probably going to be right more often than not. 
 

koufax37

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alwyn96 said:
I think generally regardless of injury history, if you assume a pitcher over say, 33, if going to be injured or ineffective in their next season, then you're probably going to be right more often than not. 
 
Sure, but does the past injury history of that player correlate to the probability of injury upcoming.  I think there is science and data to look at here, and some interesting things to study and understand qualities of it.  In my gut, I have Lester in a low injury risk pool, through a combination of his injury history, sturdy frame, easy delivery, etc.  But even if that corresponds to a lower probability of injury, it doesn't mean that he won't get hurt and a more risky player won't stay healthy.
 
But I definitely think the next five years will lead to injury prediction and prevention entering in to the market inefficiencies of the first teams to put a finger on it and decide which things correlate, starting with the very costly to a team Tommy John situation, but expanding into judging Tulo's real value, deciding if Lester should get years that CC shouldn't have, etc. 
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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koufax37 said:
 
But I definitely think the next five years will lead to injury prediction and prevention entering in to the market inefficiencies of the first teams to put a finger on it and decide which things correlate, starting with the very costly to a team Tommy John situation, but expanding into judging Tulo's real value, deciding if Lester should get years that CC shouldn't have, etc. 
 
Maybe not five years, but soon we're going to have biometrical data to work with - Stan Conte, who serves as Vice President of Medical Services for the Dodgers thinks this data is coming soon (see http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=23679) - and that should help once people figure out the best way to use the sensors and the data.
 
If someone wants to make a million dollars (I'm too old), developing a biometrical sleeve that can be worn during pitching (sort of the like the new socks that sense how one's stride is) and the associated app that tracks the data would be one way to do it.
 

hrbrendan

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wade boggs chicken dinner said:
 
Maybe not five years, but soon we're going to have biometrical data to work with - Stan Conte, who serves as Vice President of Medical Services for the Dodgers thinks this data is coming soon (see http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=23679) - and that should help once people figure out the best way to use the sensors and the data.
 
If someone wants to make a million dollars (I'm too old), developing a biometrical sleeve that can be worn during pitching (sort of the like the new socks that sense how one's stride is) and the associated app that tracks the data would be one way to do it.
 
Speaking of million dollar ideas, I had a thought the other day.  With all of the realtime pitching data available these days, I wonder if anyone is working on some sort of VR setup to allow hitters to instead of watching video of pitchers past performances, to be able to toss on a set of goggles and watching the pitches being thrown in that given game almost realtime from the batters box view, as if they were standing in the box realtime.  It would, in my head, be a valuable tool for pinch hitters mid game.
 

ivanvamp

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There are random injuries and there are chronic injuries.  I know athletes who simply have troublesome hamstrings and it's something that always plagues them.  But then you have the Ellsbury-getting-run-over-by-the-cement-mixer-named-Adrian-Beltre kind of thing that's totally random and cannot be predicted at all.  
 

koufax37

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hrbrendan said:
 
Speaking of million dollar ideas, I had a thought the other day.  With all of the realtime pitching data available these days, I wonder if anyone is working on some sort of VR setup to allow hitters to instead of watching video of pitchers past performances, to be able to toss on a set of goggles and watching the pitches being thrown in that given game almost realtime from the batters box view, as if they were standing in the box realtime.  It would, in my head, be a valuable tool for pinch hitters mid game.
 
I think VR would have to come a long way (for other applications) before that could be a reasonable experience for the batter.
 
The part I was thinking about a little more is why before a certain Yankee retired last year, the kids over at MIT didn't design a different mechanism pitching machine that accurately simulated the real rotation and velocity and release point that a cutter left his hand, to allow it to be overlaid with one of those projected images and let batters take batting practice.
 
The two wheel and even three wheel advanced pitching machines are still limited in what they can throw, but you really think that if you could more effectively simulate the real pitches of opponents you could make a while new training tool for extra swings.  The pitchFX data and high speed capture stuff is there to get a sense of what the ball should be doing.
 
We just need a better device to apply those factors accurately (axis of rotation, rotational velocity, forward velocity, release point, seam positioning at release), along with a slightly improved video projection system (although that didn't seem to be a weak spot in the ones I have seen).
 
The training advantage of seeing what a pitcher throws as many times as you want would seem pretty significant, especially for pitchers with a unique delivery or special pitch (Kershaw curve, Chapman fastball/slider, etc).
 
Maybe such a device already exists and I shouldn't be speculating in public and the men in black suits are going to knock on my door in a few minutes...hold on...my doorbell just rang...I promise to get back to the injury topic only once I get back...