Injury expert Will Carroll takes a look at Ryan Freel in today’s Under the Knife (subscription, but why haven’t you already?):
…I asked Joe Sheehan last night if players like Freel–the high-effort, all-out diving guys–are more danger than they’re worth. Find me one that isn’t always banged up or on the edge of losing his job. Look, you love having those guys around, but they seem fungible. My bigger question is about their tendency to affect the players around them. Norris Hopper came out of the collision fine, but what if it had been Ken Griffey Jr. coming over, or Josh Hamilton? If a player has to endanger himself and the people around him to play at the major league level, maybe we have to question if they really are at the major league level. That said, I think Freel is more like a J.D. Drew than a Bo Hart, someone who’s going to have to dial it back, as Drew has done, to have any kind of career.
Agree? Disagree?