Bobby Ojeda's Left Arm

In Major League Baseball by dmick898 Comments

Bobby Ojeda has written an article that's been published on The New York Times. He talks about the pain he went through just to pitch and how he hid it from the coaching staff. It's a fantastic look at what I'm guessing a large number of pitchers go through in their lives. The pain for Ojeda began when he was 12 years old and it wasn't until he'd been in the big leagues for 7 or 8 years that he finally had a doctor look at his arm. His father was ahead of his time back then in that he didn't allow Ojeda to pitch more than once a week to protect his son's arm. Despite that, the pain was always prevalent.

Ojeda comforted his left arm with ice. Lots of ice. He slept with a long sleeve shirt on to keep his left arm from getting too cold. When that wouldn't work he turned to alcohol, pain meds and cortisone shots to help him pitch. Although it doesn't sound as if any of these became a problem for Ojeda, for some they could easily begin to define their life. Maybe it did so for Ojeda and he skipped over that part. 

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  2. mb21

    I meant to do this yesterday, but someone already did it:

    Tom Tango suggests the following simplified regression method to estimate the final W/L from the partial season. Add 35 wins and 35 losses to the record, getting 50-66 here apply that winning % to the rest of the season. Since they’ve played exactly 46 games they have 116 to go, but 46+70=116, so we can just add the 50-66 we got above, finishing with 65-97. This is very close to what you got looking at several years worth, suggesting that the method works well.

    It’s from the first comment in this article: http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/blog_article/worst-cub-starts-ever/

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  3. Rice in limbo

    That was an interesting article you linked to. I imagine the best athletes/pitchers have to get started at an early age and by the time they get to the bigs their arms already have 100000 miles on them. I’m not a terrible baseball/softball player but even playing once a week and playing catch you can feel the arm tense up as you warm up and I can only imagine the stress pitchers have to go through not just in warm ups but in actually delivering the ball to the catcher with enough velocity and movement…the arm just wasn’t designed for that kind of movement and wear, I guess.

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