The Attrition War, Giants
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 Giants.
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 Giants had 31 pitchers who appeared at least once on a Baseball America Top Ten prospect list from 1995-2004. It seems like they traded almost all of them, which is one way to avoid having them get injured.
Of those 31, pitchers who injured their elbow and required surgery: 3 (Foppert, Soderstrom, Vogelsong)
Of those 31, pitchers who injured their shoulders and required surgery: 2 (Esteves, Threets)
(generally, I’m looking for major surgeries that require ~1y off)
Readers are, as always, encouraged to to add/correct information here in the comments or by email. Citations are particularly welcome.
Detailed data
David Aardsma, 3/2004
Traded to the Cubs in May 2005 as part of the Latroy Hawkins deal.
Kurt Ainsworth, 1/2000, 2/2001, 3/2002, 2/2003
Traded to the Orioles in July 2003 as part of the Sidney Ponson deal.
Darin Blood, 7/1997, 8/1998
Unknown.
Boof Bonser, 2/2002, 6/2003
Traded to the Twins in November 2003 as part of the A.J. Pierzynski deal.
Jason Brester, 9/1997, 7/1998
Traded to the Rockies in July 1998 as part of the Ellis Burks deal.
Nate Bump, 4/1999
Traded to the Marlins in July 1999 for Livan Hernandez.
Matt Cain, 2/2004
Pitching in the minors.
Kevin Correia, 6/2004
Pitching in the minors.
Felix Diaz, 5/2002
Traded to the White Sox in July 2002 as part of the Kenny Lofton deal.
Shawn Estes, 1/1996
Traded to the Mets in December 2001 for Tsuyoshi Shinjo and Desi Relaford.
Jake Esteves, 2/2000
Rotator cuff surgery in February 2000.
Joe Fontenot, 2/1996, 1/1997
Traded to the Marlins in November 1997 as part of the Rob Nenn deal.
Jesse Foppert, 6/2002, 1/2003
Ligament replacement surgery in September 2003
Keith Foulke, 10/1997
Pitching in the majors.
Jason Grilli, 1/1998, 1/1999
Traded to the Marlins in July 1999 for Livan Hernandez.
Ryan Hannaman, 8/2003
Traded to the Orioles in July 2003 as part of the Sidney Ponson deal.
Scott Linebrink, 4/1998, 2/1999, 10/2000
Traded to the Astros in 2000.
Francisco Liriano, 4/2003
Traded to the Twins in November 2003 as part of the A.J. Pierzynski deal.
Fausto Macey, 5/1995
Traded to the Angels in November 1996 as part of the J.T. Snow deal.
Joe Nathan, 6/1999
Missed a couple months in 2000 with shoulder surgery. Traded to the Twins in November 2003 as part of the A.J. Pierzynski deal.
Russ Ortiz, 9/1996, 5/1997, 3/1998
Signed with Atlanta in 2003.
Joe Rosselli, 4/1995
Unknown.
Steve Soderstrom, 3/1995, 6/1996, 6/1997
Seemingly injured his elbow in March 1999 and that was it. Details of surgery, etc, unavailable.
Andy Taulbee, 6/1995
Unknown.
Erick Threets, 8/2002, 10/2003
Shoulder surgery in May 2004.
Juff Urban, 8/1999, 8/2000, 10/2001
Last seen in Fresno in 2004, but no injury news.
Merkin Valdez, 1/2004
Pitching in the minors.
Mike Villano, 4/1997
Traded to the Marlins in November 1997 as part of the Rob Nenn deal.
Ryan Vogelsong, 5/2001
Elbow surgery in late 2001.
Craig Whitaker, 8/2004
Pitching in the minors.
Jerome Williams, 4/2000, 1/2001, 1/2002, 3/2003
Minor elbow surgery, only missed a couple months total. Traded to the Cubs in May 2005 as part of the Latroy Hawkins deal.
Comments
6 Responses to “The Attrition War, Giants”
It’s Robb Nen, not Rob Nenn.
Doing a newspaper search…
Darin Blood is probably out of baseball by now…he had surgery Xmas 1999, tried to come back that year and was stuck in the minors in 2002.
Joe Roselli, probably out of baseball, no surgeries.
Andy Taulbee, probably out of baseball (last mention he was in the minors in 1999), no surgeries.
One thing that struck me as I read over the names is the amount of pitchers that were traded. Would’ve been nice to see the local team use some of their surplus arms of the last decade in the same way.
“Jason Grilli, 1/1998, 1/1999
Traded to the Marlins in July 1999 for Livan Hernandez.”
Ouch. Grilli is 29 years old now and is in the White Sox organization I believe. 5-5 career with a 6.78 ERA before 2005 for his major league stats.
Just to clarify, Nate Bump hasn’t done a whole lot either, and he was also included in that deal for Livan.
That’s generally the result of a payroll fire sale eh?
the one thing that we can be glad about this ownership is, they’ve never taken an entire good team (like the 97 Marlins, 94 ‘spos) and unilaterally declared that they couldn’t afford an exploding payroll and burned all there success by trading everyone at once. money has been an issue with this fo. bringing in NEW talent, but not so much on letting current talent leave (except maybe in the case of Johnson..still, that trade did end up working out pretty well for us)