NEW YORK -- Baseball got healthy this spring.
There were 69 players on disabled lists at the start of the season Sunday, down from 106 last year and 97 in 2007. The only lower total since the major leagues expanded to 30 teams in 1998 was when there were 66 in 2006, the commissioner's office said Monday.
Rob Manfred, MLB's executive vice president of labor relations, said the figure counters those who say the World Baseball Classic causes more players to get hurt.
"It certainly does not support the theory that the WBC causes more injuries," Manfred said. "More important, the WBC injuries were, almost exclusively, the type of small injuries [oblique strains] that are common in spring training, with or without the WBC."
There logic is because many players are healthy on Opening Day, during a WBC year, that the WBC does NOT cause injury
While I believe offensive players who get injured during the WBC could have just as easily gotten injured during a spring training game (i.e. sprained and sore muscles, David Wright fouling a pitch off of his foot), the same can not be said for pitchers.
The logic for pitchers is that because they put undue stress on their arms more so in a WBC year than a normal year, that as a season wears on, pitching during the WBC catches up with them. For example, a complaint heard about Carlos Marmol is that he's a reliever and he's supposed to pitch as least amount of innings as possible. Pitching a lot of inning in the WBC, means Marmol pitches WAY too much innings. Jake Peavy had one of his worst statistical years the year he pitched in the WBC, because extra innings means a shittier regular season.
So way to go MLB for proving your point! Awesome!
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