He will stop getting called injury-prone the moment he plays a semi-full season for this team and not a second before. He's had two years completely destroyed by injury, so being skeptical of his ability to stay on the field during the duration of this contract is entirely warranted.
At some point reality has to take precedence. Last year he played 94 out of a possible 162 games, and this year has has played 0 out of a possible 106 games. You cannot look at those stats without wondering if he will ever be semi-durable again. His time in Boston can only be described as disappointing not only due to injuries but due to the fact that his offense last year was pretty mediocre as well (OPS+ of 100). Not what the team was hoping for given his $20 million annual salary.
And it's more than fair to wonder if a guy who has just suffered an arm injury, a guy whose throwing arm was already reported to be in decline before signing with Boston, can handle the rigors of playing shortstop every day. He was a superior defensive second baseman last year, but in large part his arm isn't as strained at second as it will be at short.
I can't help noticing how often when you argue you speak in absolutes: "not a second before," "completely destroyed," "reality has to take precedence," "you cannot look at those stats without wondering if he will ever be durable again..."
Rather than doing that, let's get into definitions and actually talk about the facts of his injuries (since, as you insist, reality must take precedent!) here, because I'm beginning to think we just have different definitions. What do you mean by injury prone? Does getting your wrist broken by a pitch make you injury prone? What about food poisoning? Because that was the majority of Story's time missed time last year. To me, that's bad luck, which is distinct from injury proneness.
My idea of injury prone is, this guy has a musculoskeletal condition that leads him to have all kinds of hamstring or back issues (yes, I'm aware he needed UCL repair, we'll get to that), or this other guy over here has torn his ACL twice, or this guy has a degenerative knee condition. They're injury prone because their constitution and the injuries they've had indicate they're at risk for further injuries of similar or the same type. Would you disagree with that definition?
To wit, is Justin Turner injury prone because he missed most of spring training after getting hit in the face? Is Tanner Houck injury prone because he got hit in the face with a line drive? What if Tanner Houck got hit by a bus before he came back from getting hit in the face? Would we then say he is prone to getting struck by fast-moving objects? Or would we say, man, that is a
miserable coincidence?
When it comes to UCL reconstruction... pitchers have been returning from Tommy John surgery for decades now with an arm that's just as strong, stronger, or slightly less. There
are risks to UCL reconstruction, but with pitchers (who obviously carry more risk as they have to throw way more than shortstops), the success rate is reportedly 80-85%. It's not the death knell that a torn labrum or rotator cuff is, so why are you so skeptical that his arm will be less strong?
If he was a pitcher coming back with a reconstructed UCL, would you assert that he was injury prone because he had his wrist broken from an errant pitch and exactly one Tommy John surgery? Story played 92% of his games in Colorado - does that all go out the window too?
What I'm getting at is that luck
does exist, and that Story has had a combination of some bad luck in his first year and a bad elbow, but that we don't really have reason to believe his elbow is bad anymore. Is it
possible the UCL reconstruction fails? Yes. Likely? No: he's not being asked to throw 40 pitches every two days or 100 pitches every five days, he's being asked to make three or four throws from shortstop once a game, which he has handled without any setbacks in the minors
or in his rehab before that. Now, if you want to call Adalberto Mondesi injury prone, be my guest: he can't stay on the field and couldn't get his ACL reconstructed without setbacks.
As for his hitting, more than fair to point out he was less productive than he was in Colorado. He still was very productive: a WAR of 2.4 in 94 games is pretty good any way you slice it. I'm hoping the reconstructed elbow will herald a return to hitting form. His K% spiked by 7% coming to Boston, which is pretty crazy.
