Is Zeus Injury-Prone?
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On the one hand, kudos to G-Money who was gracious about no "I tolja's." :- )
I'm a Dilbert/Scott Adams fan ... well, not in the sense of considering him an "authority" as one wag asked me in his Twitter feed. The goal is to benefit from everybody's wisdom, to gather ideas from each person, as opposed to picking a few "authorities" who speak from On High. Personally I find the tree of Adams' writings to bear handfuls of low-hanging fruit.
Adams preaches relentlessly that --- > ALL worldviews can fit the past into themselves. The test for self-aware people is whether your paradigm is making successful predictions.
G has viewed Paxton as subject to sprains and sproings, and well, here's another one, so tip o' the kelly to him first.
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ALL THAT SAID
I'm happy to predict James Paxton 2018 as being as likely to make 25, 30, 32 starts as any other starter. (By "anybody" we except a handful of pitchers like Chris Sale, Randy Johnson, etc., who seem to be made of Gumby rubber.)
And it's good news that the doctors -- who are pretty blinkin' good with those imaging machines these days, lemme tell ya -- say "three weeks optimistically" on Paxton. If we have to win 2-of-4 for him, or 3-of-5, well, I'll be here. :- )
Which is all G said too. Classy, man.
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My understanding is that GM's don't generally take a nick here, a ding there, a dent the other place as "injury prone." Iwakuma's wear and tear in the shoulder, that's another thing. But tearing a fingernail off? Turning an ankle over a base? GM's don't discount contracts based on that. James Paxton comes back from his pectoral to Lightning Bolt people in September, I'll guarantee you that as a free agent Boras would get him $200M.
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FOUNDING FATHER
The below is a brilliant and important point, I think. The human mind has a very powerful impulse to assign patterns. And it should! Many "superstitions" -- accidental positive reinforcement -- are false patterns. Like black cats crossing your path. But other "superstitions" had a basis. "I drank some chicken soup and my cold went away." Lo and behold we find chemicals in the soup that affect white blood cells. Some superstitions and old wives' tales kept primitive man alive.
Don't underestimate your brain's desire to see tendencies. Here is James on the subject:
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Paul Molitor comes to mind.
The human mind, in its relentless effort to understand everything, to have an explanation for everything, often stitches together events that are totally unrelated to one another. A player may have a broken arm one year, the mumps the next year and a serious charley horse the third year, and people will say that he's injury prone. The reality is that these are unrelated events that merely happened to settle on the same unlucky person, and there's really no reason to believe that he will continue to be unlucky.
Certainly there is SOME tendency for injuries to cluster on individuals, because many types of injuries don't really go away when they go into remission. If you have back trouble, you're going to have back trouble. It is my belief that, in certain cases, people generalize inappropriately from unrelated injuries. - Bill
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Of course, it's possible that Paxton has genetically-inferior soft tissue. He made 31 starts last year and 21 so far this year, has not had shoulder/elbow joint problems, and I like loose easy velocity for pitcher injury prediction. Your mileage may vary. I'll draft him #2 next year after Sale. Hope his pec responds this year.
Enjoy,
Dr D