[BirdWatcher]

Given that injuries have been a big part of the Brewers story thus far in the 1975 season, I thought it might be a good time to look at how the players on the team (and some of the key prospects at AAA) stack up in terms of perceived durability/fragility.

I'm not going to talk about our head trainer here (partly because I'm not in front of the game right now and don't have access to that information) but suffice it to say that in general he is quite good at his job and likely that is one of the reasons that the team has been very fortunate in terms of injuries the past several seasons.

Let's start with the Brewers players who have the Iron Man reputation.
It is only two: Chad Brown and Andrew Kennedy.
I don't think I even realized until I was looking at this last night, but in his entire career- which is into year 11 at the moment- shortstop Chad Brown has never missed a day due to injury or illness. Nada. Zilch. And he has routinely been near the top on the team in games played and plate appearances per season. Chad might be seeing more games from the bench these days due to a lack of offensive prowess (and even some defensive decline) but never once in his entire career has he been unable to go if called upon.
Andrew Kennedy has also emerged as particularly durable and has only missed a few games in his career thus far due to illness or minor injury.

And these are the Durable players: Cheol-han Lee, Ben Flynn, Jeremy Walker, Kirk Patnode- among the current active roster Brewers. Among players in the minors: Sekien Hamasaki, Brian Murray, John Weaver, Brad McManus, Garrett Farrar, Brent Taranto, Oscar Vargas (on rehab assignment), B.J. Drew, Nick/Nate (I can't remember) Ward, Kevin Flieder.
So among current Brewers are our ace Cheol-han Lee, who not long ago was considered an Iron Man, two young relievers (Flynn and Walker) and our backup catcher. Many of the minor leaguers with this distinction are middle infielders or utility infielders (Farrar, Taranto, Vargas, Drew, Ward, Flieder.) Two of them are probable future Brewer starting pitchers: Hamasaki and Weaver- so that bodes well.

Most of the Brewers, of course, profile as Normal in terms of injury proneness: Starting pitchers- Steve Green, Sadahige Kawasaki, Harry Lyerly, Erik Sloan, relief pitchers- Jaden Francis, Mike Lizarraga, Eric Marino, Antonio Nieves, Tim Shore, catcher- Zacarias Martell, first basemen Sepi Koller and Bobby Erbakan, second basemen- Jonathan Koch and Joe Willemse, third baseman- Rodrigo "RodRod" Rodriguez, and outfielders- John Flores, Joe McPhillips, Ryan Rodgers, and Josh Schaeffer.
In addition prospects David Bennett, Jorge Gonzalez, and Zack Cook all are considered normal in this regard.

Now the interesting bit here is that Ryan Rodgers, who just a few short years ago was an Iron Man, and then suffered his first injury- a freak arm injury sustained while arm wrestling in a Denver dive bar (storyline), has dropped from Durable earlier this year to normal at this point, having already missed time this season due to injury. He is 36 years old, so it was inevitable that his invincibility would evaporate at some point.
There is some concern that youngsters Joe McPhillips and RodRod may be showing some signs of becoming more injury prone as their careers progress.

And the lone Fragile Brewer: Matt Helm.

The Brewers have been lucky that their team captain and valuable southpaw in the starting rotation has mostly experienced only minor injuries in the past several seasons, and many unrelated to his throwing arm.
How long this luck can last is anybody's guess.