They must be playing a World Baseball Classic somewhere that we don’t know about. Players, after all, are being injured, and that’s what happens when they have the Classic, isn’t it?
The first global major league tournament was staged in 2006, and it prompted complaints from major league personnel that players were suffering injuries unnecessarily.
That is, pitchers were pitching competitively before they were ready and hurting their arms, and other players were hurting various parts of their bodies because, they, too, were playing not only prematurely but also in games that shouldn’t be played in March.
The response was typical to something that was new and different. The World Baseball Classic altered the familiar pattern of spring training, and some people, fans included, just couldn’t adjust. But this spring the Classic is in the middle of its four-year hiatus, and darn if players aren’t getting hurt nonetheless.
Actually, more players seem to be injured in springs when the WBC isn’t played than in springs when it is.
Major league records show that in the past 10 years fewer players have opened the season on the disabled list in springs that included Classics than in springs that didn’t.
In 2006, the spring of the WBC inaugural, 66 players began the season on the disabled list; the number in 2009, the year of the second WBC, was 69. The numbers in the other eight years of the past decade, the non-WBC years, ranged from 77 to 104, averaging 90 per year.
The point is injuries happen, but it’s interesting that the perception that they occur more often because of the WBC is erroneous.
The St. Louis Cardinals know the truth. Spring training had hardly begun this year when their 20-game winner from last season was already out for this entire season.
Adam Wainwright suffered a torn elbow ligament and needed ligament transplant surgery, the operation that made Tommy John a baseball household name. Wainwright didn’t injure the elbow pitching against Mexico or Japan.
The 29-year-old right-hander had surgery last Monday and is expected to be out for 12 to 15 months. Some transplant pitchers have made it back in a year so if Wainwright is lucky and rehabilitates well he will be ready for the start of the 2012 season.
Wainwright and 35-year-old Chris Carpenter, who won 21 games in 2005 but incurred disabling elbow and shoulder ailments in 2007 and ’08, were supposed to form a formidable 1-2 combination this year.
However, the day after Wainwright’s season-ending surgery, Carpenter left an exhibition game in the third inning after feeling a twinge in his left hamstring. He was diagnosed with a strained left hamstring.
There is more. Mitchell Boggs replaced Carpenter but had to leave himself the next inning with a strained lower back.
Neither Carpenter nor Boggs suffered his ailment pitching for Team U.S.A. against the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua or Japan.
The Cardinals didn’t have these problems in the WBC springs. In 2006 they began the season with Rick Ankiel and Larry Bigbie on the disabled list. Ankiel missed that season following knee surgery, and it was the last year of Bigbie’s unspectacular career.
In 2009 pitcher Jaime Garcia and third baseman Troy Glaus opened the season on the disabled list. Garcia, who had yet to break into the Cardinals’ starting rotation, was recovering from Tommy John surgery performed by the same doctor who did Wainwright’s elbow.
Glaus played in only 14 games after recovering from shoulder surgery.
Their spring injuries figure to have a greater impact on the Cardinals this season. The Cardinals, remember, won the World Series in 2006.
The Boston Red Sox are the popular favorite to win the American League pennant, but that was not a good omen when Josh Beckett, one of their top starting pitchers, was hit in the head by a batted ball and was diagnosed with mild concussion symptoms,
The unusual nature of Beckett’s injury was the direction of the ball that struck him. It traveled not from home plate or the plate area or even the infield. Ino Guerrero, a spring training instructor, was hitting balls from the outfield back to a bucket near second base when one ball took an errant path and hit Beckett.
The 30-year-old right-hander, who had a disappointing 6-6 record and 5.78 earned run average last year, was cleared medically to resume working out but was pushed back in his next start from Thursday to Tuesday.
Other pitchers populated the spring injury list. Matt Cain of San Francisco was held out of his first scheduled exhibition start because an MRI showed inflammation in his right elbow. Cain had the MRI because he had felt soreness in the elbow.
Vicente Padilla, a Dodgers’ starter, had forearm surgery last week and isn’t expected back for more than a month.
Aaron Cook of Colorado has missed his first start because of soreness in his right shoulder, and his teammate Ubaldo Jimenez was delayed in making his second because of an infection in the nail on his right thumb.
Among non-pitchers, right fielder Corey Hart of Milwaukee is out for two weeks with a strained lower abdominal muscle in his left side. He hurt himself in throwing drills last Saturday, and the ball he threw did not have a World Baseball Classic stamp on it.