Quote:
Originally Posted by Questdog
find me a player in real life who was ALWAYS getting hurt.....
|
Jim Edmonds came to mind. His most similar player on BBREF is Ellis Burks...yeah, he comes to mind also.
Beltran, who is in your list, is the most similar to Burks, but he played 159 games, or more, three times. He doesn't come to mind as a guy you just knew would have an oblique strain or something that would shelve him every year.
Reggie Sanders is another guy that comes to mind as a guy that was great when healthy, but was always getting hurt.
Ron Gant is the most similar player to Sanders. Yeah, he also rung a bell. What is interesting about Gant is that he played in at least 152 games in each of his four seasons before his motorcycle accident which cost him all of the 1994 season and never played in 140 games in any of his 10 seasons after that. I don't think it is merely hindsight and the human tendency to find patterns where none exist to make the observation that Gant became more injury prone following a traumatic accident.
Eddie Murray was less injury prone because of how he played. It was a conscious decision on his part. Rex Hudler played a different type of game in the field and on the bases and, therefore, was more likely to be injured in a game than Murray.
Pete Rose would chide George Foster about needing a new uniform once a month where Rose would need one by the third inning of each game. Two different guys put together in two different ways.
To argue that everyone is the same and that everyone that plays baseball has the same chance of being injured as anyone else (given the age parameters you offer) is, imo, your brain wanting to find a pattern of sameness across the board where it does not actually exist.