Are todays players "soft"

[Sox 42]

Don't expect all to be Gehrig or Ripken but playing 150 out of 162 should not be unusual.  Now they get hurt swinging the bat or running the bases (you fill in the names).  Used to be they got hurt crashing into walls or taking a pitch to the head (Tony C).  The IR list is longer than the active roster.  Image is important.  To me Devers looked out of shape (also a bad fielder).  Won't compare him to the Panda!

[Maxbialystock]

Casas is the exception, not the rule.  

Devers was the same weight when the Sox signed him to that big contract, which was based on his hitting.  He just moved to 1b, which might be the right position for him.  

Mookie Betts best season ever was 2018 when he played in just 136 games.  No one on that team, the best Sox team ever, played more than 150 games.  

I think managers are in the best position to decide how many games a player should play in.  I do think 6.3 games a week for 26 weeks (1/2 year) is a slog.  

 

[Hugh2]

I think a better question would be, are today’s players more injury prone? 
 

ain’t no one playing thru a completely torn ACL.  1925 or 2025.  

[Sox 42]

I agree on the torn ACL.  But don't they have trainers to make you do proper stretches and exercises?  When you are paid $40M to play a game you should be available to play the game.

[Sox 42]

1 hour ago, Maxbialystock said:

Casas is the exception, not the rule.  

Devers was the same weight when the Sox signed him to that big contract, which was based on his hitting.  He just moved to 1b, which might be the right position for him.  

Mookie Betts best season ever was 2018 when he played in just 136 games.  No one on that team, the best Sox team ever, played more than 150 games.  

I think managers are in the best position to decide how many games a player should play in.  I do think 6.3 games a week for 26 weeks (1/2 year) is a slog.  

 

 

[SPLENDIDSPLINTER]

Charmin soft. Please don't squeeze the players.

[Bellhorn04]

How many iron men have there been?  Gehrig and Ripken are 2 players out of tens of thousands.  The vast majority of players have been non-iron.

Baseball at the major league level is hard to play and hard on the body.  There are a lot of short careers.

[Bellhorn04]

Was Fred Lynn soft?  He got the nickname Fragile Freddy because he got injured a lot.  But there are very few Sox fans who think trading him to the Angels was a good move.

[Hugh2]

10 hours ago, Sox 42 said:

I agree on the torn ACL.  But don't they have trainers to make you do proper stretches and exercises?  When you are paid $40M to play a game you should be available to play the game.

I'm sure they have all kinds of athletic trainers, nutritionists, and exercise scientists doing all sorts of things. 

The problem is there's a difference in results vs. how you train.  How you train has a very real physiological response in your body that may not match up with what's best for you physically in the long run.  

Baseball is maybe the best example of this, or at least the baseball pitcher.  The pitching motion is an unnatural one, with some pitches being even worse than others E.G. the splitter. The training is functional to performance, and that comes at the cost of increased risk of injury

You can teach all the proper strength training, nutrition, and stretching in the world and guys are still going to blow their elbows out.  In todays game, they're getting to kids younger, they're getting them into pitch labs, and they're getting more velocity and more spin from today's pitchers than every before.   The downside of this has been the uptick in injury. 

Proper stretching and strength training to reduce the likelihood of injury isn't moving in lockstep with the increased pressure that throwing a splitter faster does to the human elbow. 

I think it's very easy for someone, who doesn't feel like jumping in to take a look at everything under the hood to just say something along the lines of "players just aren't built like they used to be" 

I don't believe that.  The average athlete today is much stronger, bigger, and faster than they were just a few decades ago.  To reiterate my earlier point - Sports specific training is functional to that sport, and at times that can be at the cost of increased risk of injury over the long term.  

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

24 minutes ago, Bellhorn04 said:

Was Fred Lynn soft?  He got the nickname Fragile Freddy because he got injured a lot.  But there are very few Sox fans who think trading him to the Angels was a good move.

Lynn averaged 135.5 games and 5.2 WAR in his six seasons in Boston. 

Evans averaged 132.3 games and 3.4 WAR in that same span, 1975-80. Nobody ever called Dewey fragile.

Rice was the iron man in those years, averaging 150 games and 4.4... but he DHed in a third of his games, so wasn't subjected to the daily rigors of outfielding.

For a modern slant, Mookie averaged 133 games played and 6 WAR in his four full years in LA. Though there is some concern about his current struggles, no one connected with the Dodgers regrets acquiring him (but everyone connected with the Red Sox regrets giving him away).

[mvp 78]

I think it comes down to a few things:

1. The way the players train and how their bodies are built. I think their overall build these days is more prone to injuries.

2. The constant max effort (especially in terms of pitchers and spin/velo) directly influences injuries.

3. There is a lot more $$$ in the game today. To protect your investment, it's better to hit the IL than do whatever it takes for a playoff run. 

[Bellhorn04]

One thing I wonder about is if we'll see more hitters sustain injuries like the one Casas did because they're swinging the bats harder.

[Charlie Hoke]

The travel schedule is heavier nowadays with much more cross-country travel, and there is benefit to giving the regulars some rest, while also keeping the bench players fresh with playing time.

In the old days, you carried a bullpen catcher like Ralph Houk in 1950 who started 1 game and appeared in 10.

Now the bullpen catcher is a non-roster player.

[notin]

16 hours ago, Sox 42 said:

Don't expect all to be Gehrig or Ripken but playing 150 out of 162 should not be unusual.  Now they get hurt swinging the bat or running the bases (you fill in the names).  Used to be they got hurt crashing into walls or taking a pitch to the head (Tony C).  The IR list is longer than the active roster.  Image is important.  To me Devers looked out of shape (also a bad fielder).  Won't compare him to the Panda!

Gehrig never played 162 games in a season.  Not even if you count the post-season…

[Bellhorn04]

4 minutes ago, notin said:

Gehrig never played 162 games in a season.  Not even if you count the post-season…

You're right, but the OP didn't say he did.

And to be really irritating about it, during his streak there were a bunch of seasons Ripken didn't play 162.  

[mvp 78]

6 minutes ago, notin said:

Gehrig never played 162 games in a season.  Not even if you count the post-season…

Also, they had a uniform advantage. They had fabric the helped them breathe. Cotton is king! Modern players couldn't dream anything could be so soft and fluffy. 

[notin]

4 minutes ago, Bellhorn04 said:

You're right, but the OP didn't say he did.

And to be really irritating about it, during his streak there were a bunch of seasons Ripken didn't play 162.  

But the point with Gehrig is important because it was a lot easier to be an Iron Man when the regular season was 8 games shorter and the postseason maxed out at 7 games.  The real question should be “were players softer back then?”

No one considers Andrew McCutchen as an Iron Man, but he played more regular season games from 2011 through 2018 than Gehrig did during any 8 year stretch of his career…

[Bellhorn04]

1 hour ago, notin said:

But the point with Gehrig is important because it was a lot easier to be an Iron Man when the regular season was 8 games shorter and the postseason maxed out at 7 games.  The real question should be “were players softer back then?”

And that's a rabbit hole.  So much was different back then.  And it's not really fair to Gehrig to penalize him for not playing in non-existent games.

I think the only sensible view is that players were not soft then and they're not soft now.      

[notin]

3 minutes ago, Bellhorn04 said:

And that's a rabbit hole.  So much was different back then.  And it's not really fair to Gehrig to penalize him for not playing in non-existent games.

I think the sensible view is that players were not soft then and they're not soft now.      

It’s not about penalizing him; it’s about having some perspective.  The OP threw this out there as if the game has been the same since 1876.  Sure, he didn’t explicitly state Gehrig played 162 games per year, but it was also the only length of a season he acknowledged.

And this is not to single out the OP; it’s a common myth among baseball fans, who say things like “today’s pitchers are soft.  I remember back when Ol’ Sandy “Rapid Ryan” Gibson would throw 400 innings as a starter, another 200 as a reliever, play outfield when he didn’t pitch, and in his spare time he’d get drunk and beat up a milk horse.  Back then, men were men.”  And then pretend nothing changed except players getting softer.  They’d ignore big factors like the schedule getting longer, the postseason expanding, the game getting faster, increases in specialized roles, escalating salaries that turn players into assets, increased international participation that expanded the talent pool, breaking the color barrier, etc…

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

What about all those barnstorming games Gehrig played in the offseason to supplement his reserve clause wages? You don't think dodging all those cow patties in the pastures made him a rugged dude?

[notin]

16 hours ago, Hugh2 said:

I think a better question would be, are today’s players more injury prone? 
 

ain’t no one playing thru a completely torn ACL.  1925 or 2025.  

Until TJS came along, a torn UCL wasn’t an injury; it ended your career…

[notin]

12 minutes ago, 5GoldGlovesOF,75 said:

What about all those barnstorming games Gehrig played in the offseason to supplement his reserve clause wages? You don't think dodging all those cow patties in the pastures made him a rugged dude?

What about them?

Gehrig did have a reputation for not participating in those leagues and instead using his celebrity status as an off-season job.  He also declined to participate in the 1934 MLB promotional tour in Japan, the one more known for espionage than baseball, as MLB player Moe Betg took several photographs of Japanese military bases that were later used in WW II…

[jad]

I think the main problem is that we fans sometimes think professional athletes should be as bad-ass tough as we  are.   But they're not, and sometimes we just need to drop the free weights, put the brass knuckles back in our pocket, and accept that.

[notin]

3 minutes ago, jad said:

I think the main problem is that we fans sometimes think professional athletes should be as bad-ass tough as we  are.   But they're not, and sometimes we just need to drop the free weights, put the brass knuckles back in our pocket, and accept that.

Sarcasm noted and called out so no one misses it.

Also the tendency is to highlight the toughest players from the past and pretend they were the norm.  Gehrig suited up every day and didn’t miss a game. Know who of his contemporaries also did that? No one!

[dgalehouse]

Now, I'm not any kind of expert on athletes' durability or fortitude, now or in the past. And I have no idea if athletes in the past were any tougher than today's athletes. But I'm pretty sure that if there were eight more games in the season in his day, Lou Gehrig would have played in them. I chalk this debate up to " notin being notin ".

[notin]

10 minutes ago, dgalehouse said:

Now, I'm not any kind of expert on athletes' durability or fortitude, now or in the past. And I have no idea if athletes in the past were any tougher than today's athletes. But I'm pretty sure that if there were eight more games in the season in his day, Lou Gehrig would have played in them. I chalk this debate up to " notin being notin ".

Still only reading one line of posts, I see…

[5GoldGlovesOF,75]

1 hour ago, notin said:

What about them?

Gehrig did have a reputation for not participating in those leagues and instead using his celebrity status as an off-season job.  He also declined to participate in the 1934 MLB promotional tour in Japan, the one more known for espionage than baseball, as MLB player Moe Betg took several photographs of Japanese military bases that were later used in WW II…

I only did a quick Google search of Ruth and Gehrig barnstorming, and immediate links appeared for tours recapped on SABR (from 1927), MLB.com (1927), the Hall of Fame (1928). and Lindenhurst Memorial Library from Lindenhurst, LI... where the boys dined at Barnacle Bill's on the Montauk Highway and played Addie Klein's Lindy Nine (1930).

[notin]

3 minutes ago, 5GoldGlovesOF,75 said:

I only did a quick Google search of Ruth and Gehrig barnstorming, and immediate links appeared for tours recapped on SABR (from 1927), MLB.com (1927), the Hall of Fame (1928). and Lindenhurst Memorial Library from Lindenhurst, LI... where the boys dined at Barnacle Bill's on the Montauk Highway and played Addie Klein's Lindy Nine (1930).

Makes sense.  I mean, why pass on a chance to dine at Barnacle Bill’s?  Pass on the clam chowder, as it is made with tomatoes (which is illegal in Massachusetts and a violation worthy of inclusion in the Ten Commandments), but the Arctic Char and the wood grilled salmon are proof of the existence of God…

[mvp 78]

2 minutes ago, notin said:

Makes sense.  I mean, why pass on a chance to dine at Barnacle Bill’s?  Pass on the clam chowder, as it is made with tomatoes (which is illegal in Massachusetts and a violation worthy of inclusion in the Ten Commandments), but the Arctic Char and the wood grilled salmon are proof of the existence of God…

Barnstorming, clam chowder AND fighting off the Montauk Monster in one offseason? Probably didn't even have time for pole sitting. 

[notin]

10 minutes ago, mvp 78 said:

Barnstorming, clam chowder AND fighting off the Montauk Monster in one offseason? Probably didn't even have time for pole sitting. 

The Montauk Monster is a dead raccoon, so the fight was presumably very easy.  Probably even easier than taking down that toy submarine that’s been terrorizing Loch Ness for decades…