This guy sounds like one of them new fangled saber-nerds trying to make his point using statistics and such.

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It seems kind of cruel to post a Murray Chass blog that 99% of the snarkers on BTF won't be able to snark about. Doesn't this violate some sort of unwritten code of ethics?

MY FAVOURITE PLAYER WAS HURT IN A MEANINGLESS GAME AGAINST CHINESE TAIPEI, MR PRESIDENT

Ichiro had a stomach ulcer, which presumably didn’t result from the WBC.

Of course it did... he was worrying about getting hurt!

I read the article to see what it had to do with tattoos. Chass mentions Elvis Andrus having to miss a day of spring training due to tattoo soreness. Don't really know what his point is.

Hmm, some Murray Chass I agree with.

Of the 73 major leaguers who opened the 2009 season on the disabled list, only two (Ichiro Suzuki and Rick VandenHurk) played in the World Baseball Classic.

Isn't this simply selection bias? Most of these guys were probably hurt or hurting before the WBC, so couldn't play in the WBC.

Isn't this simply selection bias?

Well, it definitely reflects selection bias. But surely some of the 71 non-WBC players in the sample were healthy to begin with and got hurt playing spring baseball. So the question is what these percentages are, relative to the population.

Obviously the point isn't that WBC players are more likely to get hurt playing in the WBC (although that Canadian catcher is singlehandedly trying to change that), but that WBC players are liable to get hurt outside of the supervision of the training/medical staffs of the MLB organizations with which they are under contract (though at least for Red Sox and Mets players, this is actually a huge plus).

Well that's good. Because I was about to blame tattoos on the WBC, until Murray Chass told me not to.

Chass mentions Elvis Andrus having to miss a day of spring training due to tattoo soreness. Don't really know what his point is.

He's poking fun -- guys get hurt in regular spring training for all sorts of reasons, including tattoos. The WBC doesn't cause injury any more than it causes guys to get tattoos.

I've never really bought the injury threat complaint but it is based on the idea the players will try harder in the WBC than they do in spring training, and therefore get hurt. So would this be evidence that players should put in more effort early or is it evidence that WBC-MLB players are taking it easy in the WBC?

Also if MLB is that worried they can dip into MLB's slush fund to provide better-qualified trainers for the WBC.

the less injured part also has something to do with that really injury prone guys probably would be more inclined to not participate in the WBC, but it is true that the odds of WBC really hurting player is meh.