List of injuries in 2012 regular season grows as compressed schedule comes into play - Part 1
In a span of 178 to 183 days, every team has to play 162 games. This nearly makes one game every day, with hardly enough gaps between the matches that teams can rest their players.
How to manage a 25-man active roster is a task that borders on being the toughest issue managers are confronting this year. Every day back pain, lat strain, hamstring, shoulder inflammation and various other forms of injuries are hitting players. The result
is: managers are dealing with things off-hand and living with the realities they will not prefer to think of before season start.
A player with a promise of shining in big moments lands on the disabled list and leaves his side experimenting with players that just don’t belong. The whole preparations and plans go awry. Managers compromise with misplaced eventualities and create hopeless
patterns out of sheer uncertainties.
Almost a month into the season and one can easily pile lists, chronicling injured players. While occasional injuries of one or two players does not hamper progress much, a bombshell or flurry of injuries to star players all of a sudden turns the whole complexion
of a team’s prospects another way. This begs the question of the background, laying a platform for all this.
It is easier to point fingers at condensed schedule players make their life around. Every game they finish brings them to another one and as they keep being rolled around over weeks and weeks like this, eventually only way they can rest their body is through
an injury. That then not only inhibits their best from coming through, also makes the teams in the season less competitive.
The San Diego Padres, it seems have borne the brunt of tough schedule. Kyle Blanks and Jeremy Hermida were going steadily, but had to fall to injuries one way or the other. As the former is on a lengthy 60-day DL now, his potential contribution to the side
now stands obliterated from the imagination of the management.
Washington Nationals are no longer a beneficiary from their left-fielder, third baseman Mark DeRosa after he suffered a strained left oblique. Chien-Ming Wang, their starting pitcher who had so much to unleash this year succumbed to Spring Training, giving
way to a suggestion that making it through the training is far bigger an achievement in baseball than playing a single game in the regular season.
Cliff Lee throws ten innings for the Philadelphia Phillies and next day, just when he can latch on his groove to benefit his side, he will be injured. Some of the players like Chase Utley and Ryan Howard are already prone to injuries. A schedule unfortunately
they will combat with once they return to the season from injuries will have no mercy on offer. Since, these three players form the backbone of the club or should we say are potential fate-changers, anything debarring them can easily put the Phillies’ fate
in the coffin.
A club which can enter the season with bright prospects can easily turn into a most hapless in a flash of a few weeks. Strong arms and a bunch of sluggers with a club have the power to guide experts in their analysis. Easily it can make them put the team
on a pedestal even before it shows up in the season. Criteria they weigh their predictions on, parameters they attach so much importance to nullify however as soon as a jinx of injuries hit the players in a team.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own and in no way represent Bettor.com's official editorial policy.
Continued in part 2
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