The Attrition War, Brewers
Part of a continuing series, follow-ups to the initial post detailing the Mariners history over the same period.
Do the Mariners, in comparison to other teams, suffer a higher rate of injury to their pitching prospects than other teams? Here, I look at the Brewers.
Please note that I am trying to refrain from drawing any conclusions or making any comparisons, guessing at causes or relationships, or doing anything but presenting straight data. When the series is finished, I’ll have a summary post where I talk about those things.
In every organization so far there have been are several cases where those stats seem to ignore something important. I’m going at attempt to address those in the summary post, as well as methodology and thoughts on future research directions.
The Brewers had 25 pitchers who appeared at least once on a Baseball America Top Ten prospect list between 1995-2004.
I had particular trouble tracking injury dates and the nature of injuries for this installment, and encourage readers familiar with the Brewers organization to add/correct information here in the comments or by email. Citations particularly welcome.
Of those, pitchers who injured their elbow and required surgery: 3 (Diggins, Gold, Santos)
Of those, pitchers who injured their shoulders and required surgery: 5 (D’Amico, Jones, Mieses, Neugebauer, Peterson)
Mystery injuries: 1 (Browne)
(generally, I’m looking for major surgeries that require ~1y off)
Detailed data:
Comments
11 Responses to “The Attrition War, Brewers”
Looks like it got munched on posting. But still, yet another team better off than us (if only slightly).
How are you picking the teams to research, whichever strikes your fancy or pulling names out of a hat?
How are you picking the teams to research, whichever strikes your fancy or pulling names out of a hat?
Hmmm, let’s see: after he did the Mariners he did, in order:
Angels, Astros, Athletics, Blue Jays, Braves, Brewers…
I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict the next team will be…Cardinals
9 out of 25 for the Brewers vs 9 out of 29 for the Mariners.
Slight (but probably not significant) edge to the Mariners in keeping prospects healthy.
I’ve been combing through the Attrition threads and compiled the following running tally from Derek’s research:
Injuries/BA Prospects/Failure rate
Mariners 9/29/31%
Angels 5/28/18%
Astros 7/29/24%
Athletics 0/32/0% (unGodly)
Bluejays 3/24/12.5%
Braves 8/27/30%
Brewers 9/25/36% (and our leader on the course)
I know its early to be asking this, but there’s a heck of a lot of variation there. What on Earth have the Oakland A’s, Toronto Bluejays and to a lesser extent the Angels figured out that other teams haven’t? I doubt if it can be explained only by luck.
4: What I find odd is that Oakland and Toronto are the only “moneyball” teams on that list. One wonders if maybe the players they draft/sign are lower risk, too?
#5 I’d almost be inclined to believe that theory also, except for the fact that Toronto has only been a “moneyball” team for the past 3 years or so and this study goes back a full ten years. I think that the “moneyball” theory of drafting college pitchers rather than high schoolers could be a contributing factor, but not the main factor.
I thought that too, but the data predates by a long way Toronto’s hiring of JP Ricciardi. It doesn’t seem as if that could be the case.
I suppose we should heed Derek’s advice, and avoid conjecture until we have data on all 30 teams. I just wanted to have a running ticker because I couldn’t remember or hadn’t seen all the posts.
Although, that points up the omission of statistics on whether these prospects are drafted from high school college, or signed as international free agents. It seems that could be a valuable addition to the study.
re 8
Yeah, well that can be added later. As has been said before, this is a prelim…let’s see it as a whole first, then it can be modified…
I am wondering if after all the teams have been studied, whether climate is a factor underneath the statistical noise. The Braves didn’t do too well, but are Braves farms down south?
Is there anyone willing to correlate farm city temperatures with injuries?
The difference between the Brewers and M’s is that the Brewers have made reducing pitching injuries a priority. How serious are they? They spent money on their own high-speed video setup and (FWIW) brough me to their organizational meetings to discuss possible techniques like tandem starters, refinements of PAP, and other stuff. It worries me that Derek seems to be doing more work than the Mariners at finding a solution to their problem.