Jim Ingraham: Guardians' injury history, and present, is full of bad breaks

Say what you will about the Cleveland Guardians and all the trials and tribulations that tend to endlessly stalk one of the major leagues' most luckless franchises, but ... no, really, go ahead. OK, I will start. Will the baseball gods ever give these guys a break? Where is it written that the financially challenged baseball team from Cleveland must constantly overcome injury after injury after injury ... and then a couple more injuries after that? What does the ghost of Abner Doubleday have against the modest little ball team, peddling as hard as it can on the banks of the Cuyahoga? No, seriously. Almost anywhere you look in the course of a baseball season, you can find a player from the Doubleday Guardians who is either injured, rehabbing from an injury, contemplating a new injury, almost recovered from an old injury, waiting for the X-rays from a forgotten injury or seriously considering leaving the game altogether in order to pursue a career in cartography. I mean, who could blame them? This isn't a baseball team. This is a circus troupe trying desperately to get through the lunch line, unmaimed, before those dang reptiles show up. I mean, really? The top two prospects in the Guardians' system this year, both former first-round picks, have played a combined total of no major league games. One of them has played 42 minor league games this season, the other has played 40. Both of them are projected to be elite major league hitters, but neither has had a single major league at-bat. Not because they aren't good enough, but because they aren't healthy enough. It's a Cleveland tradition like no other. Two highly-regarded, high first-round draft picks — by a team desperate for star power — who can't get on the field because both of them can't get un-injured. Again. And we wonder why this team has not won a World Series since the Truman administration? The Guardians don't need better hitters. They need better luck, because right now they have none. Every time they draft a stud he turns into a dud. Not because he can't play, but because he can't play because he is injured. Who do we blame for that (he chuckles)? Either the injured list or the ghost of Abner Doubleday. Do the Yankees or the Dodgers or the Mets or the Padres or any of the other big-market teams have to deal with stuff like this? I don't think so, because when those big-market, big-bucks teams have an injury to a key player, they just go out and buy another one. The Guardians? They wait until next year. ... or the year after that ... or the year after that. The Guardians and their fans are really good at waiting because that's all they do. They have no other choice. The big-market teams, meanwhile, do have some other choices. When Major League Baseball's big spenders lose a player or two or three, they simply go out and trade for another one. They can do that because they have rich owners with lots of money and a fan base insistent that the team spend that money whenever it loses a key player or two or three. Hey, when the big-market teams lose a key player to injury, it's nothing more than an "easy come, easy go" transaction to go out and trade for, or simply purchase, another key guy they can employ until that player gets hurt. Then they can go out and buy another one somewhere, no matter what the cost. It's a jungle out there, boys and girls. The rich get richer and everyone else gets Daniel Schneemann. Or an injured Travis Bazzana or an injured Chase DeLauter or the franchise's latest utilityman from the cast of Hamilton: Jace LaViolette. So the Guardians' last three top draft picks are all currently question marks, two because they are injured and one because, well, just because, since we don't know yet what affliction is looming in the wings, ready to strike the Major League leader in players most prone to come down with something that will prevent him from becoming the next Jim Thome. Because in baseball, as we all know, it's always something. In the meantime, entertain yourselves by wishing DeLaughter and Bazzana speedy recoveries, LaViolette, everyone! Contact Jim Ingraham at jingraham4@gmail.com.