[G1911]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

Recency bias's do exist...both for the good, and the bad.

The more I pore over old-timers statistics, the more I scratch my head whenever, seemingly mobs of posters, start opining about the injury proneness of today's players and how players were made of something different, something more Iron Man-ish, in the good old days (whenever those were).

Nolan Ryan is not the norm
Hank Aaron is not the norm
Willie Mays is not the norm
Warren Spahn is not the norm
Ty Cobb is not the norm
even Derek Jeter...is not the norm

Their longevity is part of their greatness, but they are the exception, the outlier, not the norm.

History is littered with players who were briefly "Great", but succumbed to one injury, malady, ailment or another, to either diminish their career, or end it...sooner then hoped.

There's been lots of "All-Stars" throughout baseball history. Been a lot less HOF'ers and All-Time Greats...for good reason.

Sure, pitchers expend more energy then they used to from pitch to pitch to pitch...and they also benefit from modern medical technology, to make a comeback, much more likely then used to be possible when the inevitable injury does occur.

I don't think anyone is expecting Nolan Ryan or Warren Spahn when we talk about pitcher fragility. The problem is we have tons of guys who are clearly talented enough and destroy their arms very very quickly. This has always happened, there has always been a Herb Score, but it seems to increase even as the complete game has died out. There seems to be a clear decrease in Lou Burdette and Livan Hernandez type pitchers that can hurl consistently over the years. Conserving pitch counts and innings limits, having pitchers throw significantly less every year has not extended careers and in fact seems to have correlated to a shortening of them. We still have the freaks of nature one offs like Verlander that just keeps going, but the problem is the not the .1%.