As with any part of baseball, injuries are visually deceptive. What our eyes tell us may not necessarily be the truth, and is subject to the tests of objectivity and science, with the occasional fallback to experience and educated guesses. Things that appear serious can be nothing, things that appear innocuous end seasons, and things we don\’t even notice add up to disaster. Sports medicine is often more art than science, but we should never feel like we can use a simple formula; there is no 1+1=2 for a medhead. The equations are far more complex, the data often flawed, and the platform ever-changing. It\’s just a reminder that while injuries are an overlooked part of baseball, it\’s still subject to the same vagaries that tell us never to trust our eyes.
I’ve been getting a fair share of e-mail asking whether Barry Bonds’ first few weeks of 2004 have been the hottest start to a
season any player has ever had. I’ve been hesitant to answer, in part because
the sample size was pretty small, and in part because that’s not the easiest
thing to research.
With April all but in the books, however, I think it’s safe to say that Bonds’
.472/.696/1.132 line is historic. It’s not only the best start anyone has had
in the past 30 years, it’s the best month any player has had in that
time.
Now, when I make a statement like that, you can be pretty sure it’s been
researched by someone smarter than myself. In this case, Keith Woolner put
together a list of the best months, by OPS, as far back as 1972…
One of the other cool things about having a knuckleballer–because, let’s face it, we all think knuckleball pitchers are cool–is that you can slate them for relief between turns, and then can usually roll with it when you do what the Sox just did in activating Kim and re-shuffling their rotation. It covered them through the doubleheader against Tampa, and their rotation is prepped to run in turn from Saturday on, after getting Arroyo one last start before he heads back to the pen. Add in that Kim’s a pretty good pitcher, and you’ve got the first of what ought to be a trio of important reactivations in the weeks to come that ought to help the Red Sox make tracks in the AL East. Plus, Kim gets his first two turns against the D-Rays and the Tribe, and past transgressions might even be forgotten. Well, you can always hope. I don’t think New Englanders have learned to turn the other cheek since Cotton Mather started wondering whether that whole innocence-guilt thing was crimping the justice of good ol’fashioned witch-burnings. Not that that stopped people where Dan Duquette was concerned.