WOW! Not a baseball fan whatsoever, but another #1 pick goes down! Out 18 months! Anybody on here know about this injury and surgery and why the recovery takes so long? http://espn.go.com/sports/fantasy/b...a/id/5504119/stephen-strasburg-facing-surgery
Imagine the media labeling the city of Portland as 'cursed' if the Expos actually ended up in Portland rather than DC.
The good news is that a number of pitchers have come back from Tommy John and been just as good pre-surgery/injury.
It's not good. Sports is really barren of Stars right now and that may be the vital combustible component that drives the Sports engine I think. The NBA really would be better off is Oden is healthy and dominating, same as Strasburg and Baseball. At least they're all young, so they have superior recovery ability than older counterparts.
I remember reading an article back when Strasburg was on fire that said his mechanics were off and that a major injury was inevitable. I'm not 100% sure, but I think it was Nolan Ryan who was quoted as saying that.
As to why it takes so long - I believe this is the procedure where they completely remove the damaged ligament, and transplant a new one in.
And Alex Ovechkin. But Strasburg is hardly finished...Tommy John surgery has a very high complete recovery rate these days.
He'll make it back, but probably won't be as good as he could have been, not too mention unless he changes his delivery he'll just get hurt again. His pitching motion has what's called the "inverted w" in it and that's always something to be concerned about. Also, he could just be another one of those pitchers that simply can't handle it. Not a good thing.
A lot of people have broken down his mechanics and said they're actually pretty solid. It's the 5-10 170 stick figure frame that worries most people, thinking such a little guy can't handle the continuous workload.
Yeah but who's to say that his mechanics caused the injury? Are Greg Oden's knee mechanics off, as well?
One, possibly two, of Oden's knee injuries were related to bumping knees against Corey Maggette and his knee brace. With that said, some people speculate that some of Oden's problems might be attributed to one leg being shorter than the other.
This is a good observation. I think with the influx of specializing from a young age, there are just too many "great" players in every sport and it has led to a much of mediocre players when everyone else around you just got better at defending you or hitting you or pitching to you or blocking you or covering you, etc. Tiger was great for the sport of golf, which is so boring that it needed an icon to make it bearable for the modern-aged man that has 50 things going on for any given day to be able to sit down and tune into a golf game for a few hours. But it took TIGER to do it. Baseball is desparately close to golf. It takes 4 hours to complete a game and the modern man just can't sit down and waste his 5pm-9pm evening on a baseball game with a pitcher stepping off the mound every pitch and a hitter getting out of the box after 5 seconds of sitting in there. It just can't survive unless they change the sport drastically, or get a TIGER. Strasburg was their true hope. He was the first player in 20 years to put butts in the seats simple to hold him in awe of pitching 100+ mph and possibly striking out 20+ batters. He was Nolan Ryan crazy-fast with the control of Koufax, baseball had never seen a player like that and would have been the MJ of baseball or Tiger of golf had he not destroyed his arm. Too bad. I believe we would have saw a breakout of baseball in 2011, but now it just gets ever-closer to tennis. THe NBA is better off than baseball, but I agree, it really needs a dominant big man again now that Shaq is falling and people are having to make a hero of out a glorified PF in D Howard. It would be nice to see Oden get 70+ games in this year and bring the big man iconic figure back to the sport.
The "inverted W" being a danger sign of future injury is very controversial. Mark Prior is the poster child for people who believe it's damaging, but it's far from a universally accepted theory among people who study pitchers and "biomechanics." James Shields and Adam Wainwright have the "inverted W" and have been perfectly fine.
