Royal Pains

I really enjoy Buster Olney's daily baseball blog, not only as an invaluable source of baseball links, but also for the insight he regularly provides. Unfortunately, he said something today that I suspect is wrong.

In pointing out the recent shoulder problem for Mike MacDougal that will keep him out for several weeks, Olney said the Royals were simply unlucky. I beg to differ. They may well be unlucky, like when Mark Quinn lost a karate fight with a chair, but MacDougal's injury isn't an example of that. To me, it's just another in a long line of silly injuries like strains and pulls and blisters that have befallen Royals players in recent years, and often for no good reason. Mike Sweeney, Jeremy Affeldt, MacDougal and others have missed time for a lot of things that other clubs regularly avoid. And they have a really disturbing trend of major arm injuries to young pitchers. I mean, just take a look at the team's first-round picks of pitchers in recent years:

2002 - Zack Greinke: Rushed to the big leagues, now AWOL with emotional problems.
2001 - Colt Griffin: Rotator cuff surgery in August, 2005.
2000 - Mike Stodolka: Tommy John surgery in 2003, now converting to first base.
1999 - Kyle Snyder: Tommy John surgery in 2000; Surgery to repair a torn labrum in 2003 and 2004.

And that doesn't even count the arm problems suffered by Denny Bautista, Miguel Ascencio, Runelvys Hernandez and others who weren't first-round picks. Isn't it time we started looking at whether or not the Royals know what they're doing when it comes to managing the health of their players?

Other Royals News:

• Speaking of MacDougal, I'm perfectly comfortable with Ambiorix Burgos in the closer's role. We need an audition from him in that role anyway
• Perhaps my favorite quote thus far in the Buddy Bell Era: "I’m not really into errors and all that stuff. For me, it’s about range. Take away hits. Make the good plays. Turn the big double play." Hallelujah! A major league manager who recognizes that it's more important to get to a lot of balls and make a few errors than it is to get to few balls and make no errors. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Bell's career range factor at third base was over 20% above league average, while his fielding percentage was less than 1% above average. I think we know where he spent his practice time.