couldn't find anything in a serach, and not sure if anyone has a real good handle of this, or if its a crapshot, but I've got a solid pitching prospect I drafted w/ the 3rd pick in my 1st ever draft. Only problem is, he's a 42 health right now, projected to 50, but at 22, I assume he doesn't get all the way there.

G_Guerrero

What are the odds that he suffers a major injury, something that would set him back? I know in HD, durability means pretty much nothing, but I've definently seen more injuries here in HBD. Should I try and move the kid for something else? Can I protect him more by limiting his pitch count? He hasn't been injuried thru the first 2.5 years of his career, and I'm probably a good 3-5 seasons away from really contending once I get my house in order after some early mistakes and learning curve issues on contracts and whatnot, so I'd hate to have him just starting to get expensive and a huge injury risk as someone I'm counting on just as I'm starting to feel like we have a W-S contender.

I'd say you'd be better off trading him to a non-observant owner in your league for a guy with slightly LOWER ratings, but higher health.

A major injury will almost guarantee a ratings drop-off that he's too old to recover from.

Normally, that health rating would be pretty scary. A major injury or two and this guy may never finish developing or may never recover. However, he has a few things going for him that will help. He has a very high patience rating and a good makeup rating. Both of these will help him recover and/or still develop should an injury occur.

Obviously, if you can get a similar pitcher with better health, that would be preferred. But, I wouldn't take a major talent downgrade just because I am worried about his health. Even guys with higher health can suffer injuries.

Obviously, a higher medical budget will help in situations like this as well.

The guy is 24 years old. With the training bug "fixed", guys 27 and older will NOT gain significant ratings points, so when he gets an injury (with 42 health, it's a case of "when", not "if"), he'll never get the points back.

He might be of value to someone planning to contend NOW, who might be willing to trade a prospect who is much younger but with similar potential.

I think it's a crapshoot. I've seen both ends of the spectrum with high health guys getting major injuries and low health guys who never have a problem. If the guys ratings are that good, I'd take the chance. I'm a little surprised there wasn't anyone better at pick #3, although I can't see his projections which may be phenomenal.

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not sure why the why the skill line got a space off to the , but as you can tell, he's solid enough, but not mr perfect either when disregarding his health.

It looks like he's already got very good patience and makeup-- given that, while he is certain to get injured over the course of his career, his skills may not decline precipitously. Like people above said, he's not exactl a Cy Young pitcher to begin with, but if you can't get fair value for him, it might be reasonable to hang onto him and hope that his injuries are fairly small; if they are, he should come close to his projections. Also make sure to put a ton into your medical and training budgets to reduce the risk of injury and to lessen the extents of injuries when they're inflicted.

He'd be in the top 15 in my league if he hits those projections. Not a bad find. If your medical is 15+ I think you'd be okay.

I wouldnt worry too much about injuries. I see 99 health guys go down for 6 months and 10 health guys play injury free for 5 seasons. If the guy is a cornerstone of your franchise, boost medical and training up. Otherwis,e take your chances and if you get lucky you have yourself a solid pitcher.

thanks for all the input. I somehow got by on smoke & mirrors the first season in plumpyrules, made the playoffs as the 2nd WC then predictably got murdered in round 1. Thinking I wasn't that far off, but knowing it was a bit of smoke & mirrors as well, I made some additional poor decision in year 2 w/ some contracts before finally realizing we didn't have the overall talent to really make a run for it. So rather than toil away year after year, hanging on the verge of a WC bid w/ no real shot to advance deep, I figured I'd sell of some of my pieces and start building for a sustatained run. Guerrero would enter the majors just as our run was building, and should be in his prime as recent draftees and acquired talent hit the show, hopefully giving us a 5-10 year window where we could compete.

My experience-based guesstimate is that guys with health in the 40s have an expectation value of about 0.75 injuries/year. Since a rather large proportion of pitcher injuries are devastating (30%, maybe?), that makes it quite likely that your guy will have a devastating injury early in his career; I'd guess it's about 2:1 in favor of major injury. And he's no better than an SP4, 2 seasons behind when you expect him to hit the majors, if he does have a major injury.

What a gosh-awful draft that must have been. I drafted an incredibly similar pitcher 10th in Clemens* S3, and that was considered to be a weak draft, and they've beefed up the drafts since then.

Well for reference, here are some other picks from that glorious draft:

#1: http://whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=2533137

#5: http://whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=2532438

#10: http://whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=2533157

#11: http://whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=2533138

#12: http://whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=2533172

#13: http://whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=2533178

#14: http://whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=2533124

Run of pitchers there from 9 thru 14. There was some decent talent at the top, nothing all world, it died out pretty quickly and after the top 10 it was pretty much suck. Some decent relievers and role players, but nobody that was going to star in your everyday lineup. Perhaps there have been worse drafts, but this is a fairly experienced world (this was season 11) with many owners in multiple worlds, and most agreed it was the worst class they had seen.

I am hurt you didnt include pick #7 Ricardo Piniero in the list of crappy picks in that draft..

Before the draft he was a stud, once he signed I was VERY dissapointed.

Understanding that I'm guessing at projections, 1 and 5 are OK. After that it looks like about 12-15 good players just went missing, like they forgot to create the entire second tier of the draft; 7 and 10-14 look like a very reasonable 21-26 picks.