Buxton's Greatest Strength Is His Greatest Weakness

It's Paul Molitor's responsibility to make Byron Buxton wear hand protection when he's running the bases. He should also make him wear a chin strap if his helmet keeps flying off. What good is the helmet going to do him in a collision at second when it's rolling onto the outfield grass between first and second base?

Clearly Buxton needs to learn to protect himself better from the repercussions of his own blazing foot speed. Jujitsu lessons?

Isn't this injury the reason that a lot of guys hold on to their batting gloves when they're on the basepaths?

Enough with the head first slides! How many injuries will it take before someone tells them, no more!  Paul Molitor, I'm talking to you! It's like running with scissors -- stupid! 

Remember when this happened to Cuddy? Cost him half a season. Those shoes have spikes on them. It's insane.

It's a crazy, needless risk. You may as well tell them to go ahead and drive drunk.

And don't say it's just hustle. You can go all out on a feet-first slide too.

This is not Nick Punto we're talking about. He can slide head first. This is the future of the entire franchise! 

Seriously, if I were manager, I'd make it clear if you slide head first, you get benched. And fined. And spanked. Whatever it took.

Enough with the head first slides! How many injuries will it take before someone tells them, no more!  Paul Molitor, I'm talking to you! It's like running with scissors -- stupid! 

 

Remember when this happened to Cuddy? Cost him half a season. Those shoes have spikes on them. It's insane.

 

It's a crazy, needless risk. You may as well tell them to go ahead and drive drunk.

 

And don't say it's just hustle. You can go all out on a feet-first slide too.

 

This is not Nick Punto we're talking about. He can slide head first. This is the future of the entire franchise! 

 

Seriously, if I were manager, I'd make it clear if you slide head first, you get benched. And fined. And spanked. Whatever it took.

Could not agree more.  Doesn't anybody teach feet-first sliding anymore?????

If this is true then it's a legitimate concern. However, let's give him time. One injury marred 2014 and an awkward slide isn't cause for panic.

Carlos Gomez...Bryce Harper...Byron Buxton...Andre Agassi....

Players who have a ton of natural talent and absolutely go for it at 100mph on every single play. Early in their career they can't harness that speed. But when they learn to control it, they become stars.

Carlos Gomez...Bryce Harper...Byron Buxton...Andre Agassi....

Players who have a ton of natural talent and absolutely go for it at 100mph on every single play. Early in their career they can't harness that speed. But when they learn to control it, they become stars.

This says it for me. As long as he doesn't have any injuries that actually lower his ceiling (ala Kubel's knee injury), I just have to believe this will work itself out as Buxton matures.

Quantifying the skill of staying healthy is even earlier in its infancy than applying metrics to defense.  And it will probably lag behind most other forms of empirical sports analysis even when it's been studied more.

In the mean time, we'll just have to go mostly by what we see on the field.  And in that regard, one reassuring thing about Buxton is that it's extremely unlikely that his injuries are the product of his body carrying twice its natural muscle mass like Jose Canseco.

It appears almost equally as improbable that Buxton's injuries are arising from his playing the game with the supple grace of a donkey basketball power forward like David Justice.

That leaves the potential of being both blessed and cursed with an athletically gifted body composed mainly of soap bubbles, like perennially frustrating All Star talent J.D. Drew.  But so far Buxton at least subjectively does not seem to be that sort of player either.

Instead, it looks like the injuries are more likely just the product of bad luck and a lack of polish with his self defensive skills, as several posters have mentioned.  The head-first slide is the most obvious and easily correctible, but situational awareness near the wall and his teammates, along with some other improvements to his game, should go a long way toward keeping him healthy.

In any case, it's awfully early to make any judgments about BB yet, let alone one as subjective as whether he'll be able to avoid injuries.  At this point the concern seems to be much more a product of what he potentially means to the future of the franchise than being due to an alarming trend.

Put another way, Trevor Plouffe has quietly become a fairly valuable yet somewhat fragile ballplayer, but how much handwringing has there been about his ability to stay healthy?