Quote:
Originally Posted by Syd Thrift
I appreciate the idea behind it - theoretically, a third baseman throwing to first ought to be prone to the same kinds of injury as a pitcher throwing to the plate - but I think it fails largely because the game's smallest sequence is the at-bat, not the individual pitch, and as such (I think) a pitcher's injury chances get checked, say, 30 times a game (once for each batter faced, plus a couple more for plays the pitcher was a part of in the field) as opposed to 90-100 times. I'm sure there are multipliers built on pitchers and everyone gets adjusted based on fatigue, but it still has flaws. The reason you don't see many 3rd basemen go down with torn rotator cuffs is that they make that throw like 5 times a game if they're really busy whereas even a 1-inning reliever makes that throw 15 times a game or more.
I feel like slicing the injury.txt file up further into "pitcher throws" and "hitter throws" feels like it's going to require a lot of duplication (or at least extra fields) but I don't know, maybe that's easier than what I'm talking about above...
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Just to respond to this myself, I’ve been reading the old Scouting Report books produced by Brooks Robinson in the 80s and Gorman Thomas, the former center fielder turned DH for the Mariners, moved to that position because he tore his rotator cuff. That’s one of the most “pitcher” injuries there is, to be sure, and while non pitchers definitely do get throwing injuries, I think it affects them differently. For a pitcher that surgery requires they miss a year and OOTP does model that possible loss of ability from long term injuries fairly well IME. For a player, yeah, it can be devastating, but it’s more of a thing that at worst kills their arm and forces them out of positions that require that (in Thomas’ case he had stated that he wanted to return to the OF but the Mariners at the time had younger guys like Phil Bradley and Ivan Calderon in the corners and figured they’d field better). In Thomas’ case you could make a case that it also affected his contact - the report on him said he might have more of a loop to his swing after the injury, and it’s true that he didn’t hit for average at all after 1984. If a catcher or a third baseman suffers an injury like that, they’d better hit well enough to play a different position or else their career is over.
There are also several other OFers, I should note, where the report says they’ve lost arm strength due to some major injury or other (Don Baylor is one name I remember, I think Dan Ford was another). What I’m saying isn’t that fielders shouldn’t get torn rotator cuffs or torn labrums or what have you, I’m saying it should impact them differently.