Quote:
Originally Posted by flubug31
There's a word for a 20-year-old star position player's career being ended by a torn labrum: that word is "stupid." Monumentally stupid. Even if it compromised his ability to throw with any strength whatsoever -- a wildly implausible scenario -- he'd simply play first base. Hell, if he were rendered completely incapable of throwing, and thus could not play the field at all -- now we're in the realm of pure fantasy -- he'd carve out a Travis Hafner-like existence. Most likely, he'd play through it and have surgery in the off-season, if so required. Absolute worst-case scenario, he resembles a late-model Shawn Green.
There should of course be old players who decide it isn't worth the effort to rehab an injury for the sake of playing one last season, and players who become fringe talents and eventually quit after an attempted comeback yields poor results, but career-ending injuries as the game defines them should only happen once in a blue moon, because honest-to-goodness career-ending injuries -- Juan Encarnacion-type stuff -- actually only happen once in a blue moon. It's best to zero out the fourth column in the injury file -- save, perhaps, skull fracture -- and go about one's business, I say.
I believe post-concussion syndrome's default frequency was set to 3, while regular old concussion with no lingering effects was set to 1. Should almost certainly be the other way around.
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This.
Even if Harper tore his labrum and needed major surgery, he would still come back as a 1B/DH. Maybe he would be successful, maybe not, but the idea that one of the best hitting prospects in the last 15 years would just end his career because of a torn labrum is pretty silly.