Sports Time Radio

There seem to be quite a few injuries this season in Major League Baseball and we’re just coming up to June 1st. It seems like most of the injuries I’ve seen have something to do with the players legs as I see the word hamstring a lot. These injuries are piling up and we’re not even counting the obligatory arm injuries that pitchers suffer every season.

Now just to be clear what we’re talking about here: the hamstring is a group of three posterior thigh muscles that are in between the hip and the knee from medial to lateral semimembranosus, semitendinosus and biceps femoris. I’m sure we’ve all seen a player running down the baseline grab that back of his leg. Well what that player is grabbing at is the hamstring.

I’m not sure why we’re seeing so many of these injuries this season, but there always seems to be one injury that pops up quite a bit during a baseball season. You might remember that a few seasons ago it seemed like everybody had an oblique injury of some sort. this season it looks like the hamstring is the injury everyone is going to get.

Now the only explanation I’ve heard anybody try to give for this rash of injuries is the short season in 2020, but I’m not really sure that’s a contributing factor. While they did only play 60 games plus the playoffs last season they had a full off season and a complete spring training unlike the NHL and the NBA.

Now early in the NBA season their where some injuries that where blamed on the short off season, but you never heard anything from any NHL player about their off season. I can’t say I’m surprised by that as the NBA features the biggest bunch of complainers in professional sports.

Now if you look at the short 2020 season as the reason for these large amount of injuries that means we’re saying that a player who had an entire off season and a full spring training didn’t prepare himself for a full 162-game baseball season. Do you buy that? Because I don’t think I do. These players and coaching staffs know what needs to be done for the longest season of any professional sport and there’s very little chance a player who wasn’t injured either coming into the off season or in spring training didn’t prepare themselves for a 162-game season.

Now there are a few things that can cause a hamstring injury, but obviously in baseball these injuries happen when a player is running. It’s possible that the player has poor flexibility in his hamstring muscle and as he pushes it to beat out an infield hit or maybe get an extra base the muscle strain itself. It’s also possible that the player has a muscle imbalance If the muscle in the front of a players thigh (the quadriceps) is stronger than the hamstring muscles this can lead to a hamstring injury.

Those are two pretty solid medical reasons for a player to injury his hamstring, but there is one more not so much on the up and up to that might be contributing to these injuries. I’m not saying that any of these injured players are using Performance Enhancing Drugs (PED’s), but the extra strain that PED’s have shown to put on muscles and tendons can easily lead to more injuries. Now to be fair there have been no reports that any of these injuries players have tested positive for PED’s and their have been no suspensions issued to any of these injured players, but unfortunately it is a possibility.

I did have one other thing that might be why we’re seen so many more injuries in baseball this season. It might be something as simple as the advances we’ve made in medicine and trainers, doctors and other staff members being able to diagnosis more injuries than before. Obviously it’s clear when a player grabs a body part that there’s something wrong, but how many times has a player come out of a game when it didn’t look like he was injured? It’s amazing how much these people know about the human body and how it works and what is wrong with it when something happens to it.

You also have to remember that more or less players are investments for teams and owners. When a player like Mike Trout, Bryce Harper or Fernando Tatis Jr. or any other star player gets injured their team is going to take extra time to make sure that they’re 100% before they’re allowed back onto the field. Owners have hundreds of millions of dollars invested i these players and while their contracts are insured to protect the owner if he truly wants his team to win he needs that star player healthy and on the field. Let’s not forget that it also helps the owner when it comes to attendance as these type of players put fans in the stands.

What do you think might be the cause of this what seems like a large amount of injuries?

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Have a safe Memorial Day