Yep. These are athletes at the top of the game pushing their bodies hard. Sometimes, things snap or break even in the most well-conditioned body. I’m always happy to giggle at the White Sox, but some player injuring himself swinging sounds like an oblique strain, and not any indictment of his conditioning:
Really? It’s normal for a half dozen different players to injure themselves this way? We were out of shape and under-performed the entire season. We were picked in the preseason to be a title contender but, instead, are finishing a dozen games out of first place in a small market division that we should be dominating year after year. Oh, well, I guess you can’t expect hundreds of millions of dollars to go as far as it used to.
Weird injuries happen all the time. The White Sox rank 15th in the number of players they’ve put on the IL, 15th in total days on the IL, and 9th in the amount of money spent on IL players. That’s about as middle-of-the-pack average as you can get.
Now, Sox fans do have a legitimate grip when it comes to their conditioning department. They rushed Eloy’s rehab WAY too fast, and likely were responsible for his subsequent trips to the IL. But I certainly wouldn’t call Jimenez “out of shape”. I’d call him a guy that lacks the ability to hold back and not run full speed into a wall on a regular basis.
I’d call that a “flaw” that urgently needs to be addressed. 
Well, first of all, that’s not what you said before; what you said was that a baseball player who pulls a muscle must be out f shape. As to what’s normal; a half dozen… in a game? A month? A year?
I don’t know if you’ve ever played baseball, but it’s brutal on muscles and joints. It’s just the nature of the sport that it requires you do nothing for long stretches at a time and then go 100% in short bursts, which is terrible for your body, and many of the movements are inherently unnatural and asymmetric.
These are multi-million dollar sports organizations with a huge set of incentives to keep their athletes playing, and the athletes themselves have enormous incentives to keep playing, even when mildly hurt. The nature of the sport requires epic amounts of repetition and wear; they play upwards of 180-200 games a year and have to practice a lot. Consequently, the players are more or less perpetually hurt, sore, or fatigued; the injuries you HEAR about are the tip of the iceberg, just the ones where a guy finally has to not play to heal, but they have to basically exist just under that threshold because a ballplayer who keeps asking to sit will soon no longer be a ballplayer, replaced by players more willing to play mildly hurt.
They are not simply competing against other players who may or may not be using steroids.
Point 1, the other players are pitchers, and the benefits of steroids for pitchers vs. batters is unlikely to be identical. The benefit of additional muscle when throwing a 5oz baseball is different than the benefit of additional muscle when swinging a 32oz bat.
Point 2, hitting a home run is not just a pitcher vs. batter issue, the ballpark is part of this as well. The batter must hit the ball past a fixed point, which does not get farther away if the stadium takes steroids. Part of the steroid benefit is that balls that would have been warning track outs become home runs.
I understand. In fact, many here have made good points as to why just dumping Bonds/Sosa/McGuire is unrealistic at best and capricious and totally inconsistent at worst. My feelings about those three at this point can best be summed up with this little story.
When I was a kid, my mom would occasionally cook beets, serve them hot, or pickle them, or whatever because my dad and brother really liked them and she did too. I, however, hated them and complained whenever they made an appearance at our dinner table. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t being forced to eat them. I had to see them and smell them, so I was very petulant about it.
Well, my mom talked to me one day after dinner. She pointed out the health benefits and variety involved in having beets. She pointed out that my dad and brother, who were my male heroes, loved them. She reminded me that I never had to eat any, etc. She ended by asking, “Do you understand?”
I answered, “Yes, BUT I DON’T LIKE THEM!”
Judge himself has said Bonds has the record. Of course that’s part of his pattern of always saying the right thing. Asterisks make no sense in baseball. There have always been uneven factors. Babe Ruth played in a segregated sport. I don’t know if you can point to a date after 1947 when baseball was truly integrated but before then the best players weren’t playing each other. Many old stadiums had ridiculous dimensions (looking at you Polo Grounds). Live balls. Dead balls. Legal spit balls. Spider tack. It’s a fun but ultimately futile discussion. It’s mostly an issue because no other sport is as obsessed with statistics.
Well I’m happy that Judge got #62 last night. He has one final chance for #63 and more tonight. Now that he’s got the AL record he’ll be more relaxed, so… watch out! He may hit more.
Judge isn’t in the lineup today.
They are wise to rest him!
And you are wise for recognizing that.
Yes, smart to rest him.