Absolutely. It's bad for the team, bad for the fans, bad for the game.
I've argued for a long time that teams need to be a lot smarter---and a lot firmer, depending---regarding
injuries. Playing through injuries may get you cred but it can damage your team and shorten your career.
Classic examples:
* Carl Crawford. Played through a bad elbow after signing a gigabucks deal with the Red Sox. Turned out
to need Tommy John surgery in 2012. Admitted he kept his mouth shut for fear of being called a quitter---
especially when Bobby Valentine (who once denounced Mets pitcher Pete Harnisch as a quitter when
Harnisch was actually suffering clinical depression while withdrawing from smokeless tobacco addiction)
managed the Red Sox.
* Leo Durocher was notorious for denouncing injured players as quitters. Among other things, that was
a key reason why the 1969 Cubs collapsed down the stretch: injured players feared speaking up. At one
point, Durocher fined players $500 for not reporting injuries, then fined them for reporting them claiming
they'd reported them "too late." Hell if you do, hell if you don't.
* When Burt Shotton managed the Brooklyn Dodgers, he believed the best way to recover from injuries
was to play through them. It wrecked the career of pitcher Carl Erskine, who pitched through his first
shoulder injury and, though he had a fine 13-year career, never became the ace he was predicted to
become and pitched his entire career in pain.
* David Ortiz tried to come back too soon from an Achilles Tendon injury in late August 2012 . . . and
ended up having to miss the rest of the season.
* Sandy Koufax called it a career after pitching two heavily-medicated seasons with an arthritic elbow.
The Dodgers wouldn't contend again until the 1970s.
* Remember Mark (The Bird) Fidrych? Spring training following his sensational rookie season: injured
his knee, came back too soon, and made a habit of coming back too soon from assorted injuries until
he learned the hard way his rotator cuff had been shredded completely: he learned it after he retired.
* Butch Hobson. Played the game like it was fourth and goal. Played through a shattered elbow and
became notorious for trying to re-arrange the bone chips in both elbows at the plate; set a record for
errors by a third baseman; never got a third of what he should have gotten out of his talent.
* Wayne Garland. Desperate to live up to one of the first long-term big-money free agency contracts,
Garland pitched through a shoulder injury in its first year. Learned after that season it was a rotator
cuff injury he pitched through. Had surgery but was never again the 20-game winning pitcher
for the Orioles that lured the Indians into signing him in the first place, though he did earn a
reputation for guts for trying to pitch on anyway. Fat lot of good it did him.
* Roger Maris. Lost most of his long ball power through a series of hand and wrist injuries, many
of which the Yankees actually tried to hide from him, the better to keep him going out there and
use his remaining box-office appeal as the team faded away in the mid-1960s.
* Jerome Walton. 1989 National League Rookie of the Year. Stole bases like they had his name on them.
Never again equaled that season: a broken wrist and hand turned him into a journeyman, barely.
* Steve Avery---Pitched through an armpit injury in the year he made his lone All-Star team; further
injuries in 1994 finished him as a winning pitcher.
* J.R. Richard---Could throw a shot put through concrete. Pitched through shoulder miseries in
1980, suffered accusations of it all being in his head. After the All-Star break: stroke. Career over.
Just to name a few.
