Tuesday, March 27, 2007 |
Baseball Crank's EWSL Picks Angels To Win Division
Injuries are a huge issue with the Angels right now. Colon is still rehabbing, and Weaver won't be ready for Opening Day, giving Saunders, at least, room in the rotation, and possibly Dustin Moseley. Figgins could be out several weeks. Dallas McPherson is sidelined for a year.I share his pessimism about Anderson, but his comment about Kotchman goes unsupported; is Kotchman's mono due to recur? Or is he expected to get a grounder take a bad hop to his jaw? So far, Casey's injuries have been of the freak variety, and there's been no indication that they'll recur; his terrific spring (.327/.357/.538) speaks for itself. As for Izturis, I've compared him unfavorably with Cabrera before, but I find myself agreeing with others who say he's about OCab's equal offensively while burning far fewer dollars.I could have used a subjective adjustment to bump up Kotchman, but then he has an injury history himself, and EWSL is also rating Rivera and Izturis high based on their prior playing time, and the Angels have a lot of flexibility to slide people between OF, 3B, 1B and DH. If Kotchman can't establish himself, Kendry Morales will eat his lunch. Also expect Brandon Wood to enter the picture, probably as a result of Cabrera getting dealt.
I'm pretty pessimistic that a 35-year-old Garret Anderson will produce and last in left; the sooner they get Rivera out there, the better. End of the day, the Angels are division favorites on the strength of their starting pitching - if the starters can get healthy, they will be formidible, if not they don't have the offensive firepower to overcome that loss.
Labels: angels
As Randall Jarrell argued, nothing thwarts narrative movement more than the cocktail of humor and logical analysis. You end up spinning a pretty phrase, but move no closer to the truth.
Here are is number of games played in each full year of his career:
2002: 81
2003: 64
2004: 115
2005: 141
2006: 32
Which one looks like the outlier here? Other than one season with a whopping 141 games played, his career high is 115. You can attibute his injuries to 'flukes' but there not so fluky if they keep on happening. I forget who made it, but I like the comparison to Nick Johnson.
And what kinds of injuries were those? Outside of a torn hamstring in Fall, 2002, they were getting hit by a pitch in both the face and wrist. That's hardly the basis for a "injury-prone" tag.
It would be correct to say that Kotchman has been "accident-prone," in that a series of unintended events have caused him to suffer injuries; but there is nothing about any of them to suggest that he is injury-prone, and there is a huge difference.
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