Quote Originally Posted by confucius say View Post
Everybody has injuries. So we're not the only team that dealt with it.

But I disagree that we were lucky with injuries. Stone and augur missed the whole year. They were 2 of our top 5 arms when they went down.
Cade and Nixon were our best two and both missed a third of the year, maybe more.
That doesn't include Pico and Nate Williams missing the whole year, both of whom we thought would be bullpen guys.
Then Dohm and Gartman both missed multiple weeks.
Pretty much every TJ surgery means that pitcher will miss the next season. Since so many pitching injuries are TJ, I don't count it as out of the ordinary for a guy to miss an entire season. LSU and Arky lost guys early last year/right before the season and they won't pitch next year either, for example.

We got lucky that our only TJ this season was Gartman, a veteran transfer that probably wasn't coming back anyway. Next year we probably get 1-2 TJs and another Loftin type non-TJ injury that still shuts him down all year. There's also ALWAYS multiple guys shut down a few weeks like you mention for Dohm and Nixon. It's just statistically what tends to happen.

In football we all recognize you need some depth because injuries happen, but in baseball we act like every injury is an anomaly that'll never happen again. Look around baseball- if you have a staff of guys throwing 92+ who did travel ball, there will be TJs. Stack depth accordingly before the season starts