This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
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It feels like these cycles -- hear about a pitcher, get excited about a pitcher, lose a pitcher to injury -- are accelerating. We got a few years of Sandy Alcantara, including a Cy Young campaign, before he missed a season. Cole Ragans went from the trade return for a rental to Cy Young favorite to months on the IL in less than two years. Teammate Kris Bubic came back from Tommy John surgery, had a 2.58 ERA for less than a year, and is now done with a rotator cuff strain. Jared Jones lasted 22 starts before losing a year, and now Burns leaves the stage after eight. Jacob Misiorowski, healthy for the moment, might make his eighth start tonight, even as the Brewers furrow their brows over how to pitch him less.
It’s cynical to throw up your hands and just assume all of these guys will get hurt. Some of them, the lucky ones, won’t. However, it’s hard to keep getting excited about these young men, especially the best of them, the ones that throw the hardest, the ones who make our jaws drop, make us post clips, make us turn the channel, when they disappear so quickly. We used to at least measure our time with them in seasons. Now, we measure it in starts.
