After I had mentioned, "All statistics, all mathematical models aside, have you watched players you just knew were Hall of Famers?" and the said I was thinking about Garciaparra, in the 2018 hof ballot thread, grimshaw suggested starting a thread to discuss players who's injuries cut short promising careers. He specifically mentioned Eric Davis, who I will leave to others.
While Nomar had fewer than 100 PA in his first call-up, during the next four seasons he won Rookie-of-the-Year while leading the league in hits and triples and later becoming the first right-handed batter to win back-to-back batting titles since Joe DiMaggio. In his first four full seasons he averaged .337/.386/.577/.963/142 OPS+.
Then he hurt his wrist.
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Another player who started strong but then was destroyed by injuries. According to his SABR bio:
"There is no official count of [his] baseball injuries, but the best guess reads something like a dozen collisions with unpadded fences, five skull fractures (though he claimed only four), a chronically dislocated shoulder, two broken ankles, damaged knee cartilage, torn muscles in his left leg, and two beanings in the days before batting helmets. As a player, he was carried off the field on a stretcher eleven times—six times conscious, five times not.'
"As a fourteen-year-old at Holy Ghost Parochial School, he impressed a local soccer scout enough to earn $50 a game—more than his dad was making in a week." [And he] "was good at every sport he tried."
He won the NL batting crown in his rookie season, while leading the league in double, triples, runs scored, total bases, and slugging percentage and had an OPS+ of 164.
He began the next season even stronger and on July 18, 1942 he was on an 11-game hittiing streak, batting .356 when his team began a series at St. Louis. In the bottom of the 11th he went after a long drive to center, catching it but immediately colliding with the cement wall and dropping the ball with the batter scoring. He was carried off in astretcher and found to have a fractured skull and brain injury but that did not stop him from coming back about four games later. However, he performance dropped off and then he spent three years in the Army.
"Pistol" Pete Reiser, who although he is listed as batting left and throwing right was sufficiently ambidextrous that he would switch hands if his throwing arm was injured and who did not always bat left-handed.
https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/92638bc5 Article was written by Mark Stewart is an interesting read. I quoted part of it and paraphrased parts of it.
While Nomar had fewer than 100 PA in his first call-up, during the next four seasons he won Rookie-of-the-Year while leading the league in hits and triples and later becoming the first right-handed batter to win back-to-back batting titles since Joe DiMaggio. In his first four full seasons he averaged .337/.386/.577/.963/142 OPS+.
Then he hurt his wrist.
---------
Another player who started strong but then was destroyed by injuries. According to his SABR bio:
"There is no official count of [his] baseball injuries, but the best guess reads something like a dozen collisions with unpadded fences, five skull fractures (though he claimed only four), a chronically dislocated shoulder, two broken ankles, damaged knee cartilage, torn muscles in his left leg, and two beanings in the days before batting helmets. As a player, he was carried off the field on a stretcher eleven times—six times conscious, five times not.'
"As a fourteen-year-old at Holy Ghost Parochial School, he impressed a local soccer scout enough to earn $50 a game—more than his dad was making in a week." [And he] "was good at every sport he tried."
He won the NL batting crown in his rookie season, while leading the league in double, triples, runs scored, total bases, and slugging percentage and had an OPS+ of 164.
He began the next season even stronger and on July 18, 1942 he was on an 11-game hittiing streak, batting .356 when his team began a series at St. Louis. In the bottom of the 11th he went after a long drive to center, catching it but immediately colliding with the cement wall and dropping the ball with the batter scoring. He was carried off in astretcher and found to have a fractured skull and brain injury but that did not stop him from coming back about four games later. However, he performance dropped off and then he spent three years in the Army.
"Pistol" Pete Reiser, who although he is listed as batting left and throwing right was sufficiently ambidextrous that he would switch hands if his throwing arm was injured and who did not always bat left-handed.
https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/92638bc5 Article was written by Mark Stewart is an interesting read. I quoted part of it and paraphrased parts of it.