That’s Right, Nats. Blame it on the Trainers
The Washington Nationals are puzzled about why they’ve suffered through so many injuries this season. So puzzled, that blame is falling on the shoulders of an old familiar friend in sports and two people who should be on monster.com after this story hits front porches this morning.
Bad luck, and the Nats trainers.
“I think bad luck is probably the right word,” team physician Ben Shaffer said. “You know, honestly, that’s probably what I would attribute it to. The injuries don’t have much in common. Ryan Zimmerman, he was sliding. Nick Johnson, it was swinging a bat. Austin Kearns, he had loose bodies in his elbow. None of those are conditioning things. None of those have to do with training.
“If there was something we could identify from a conditioning standpoint, we would address that. But you look at it, there is no overlapping, root cause. I can’t think of things in particular I would advocate doing differently.”
Cool. Now let’s take a crash course in PR. Just because a reporter asked about the trainers’ responsibility in the injury-riddled season, doesn’t mean you have to go soft on the answer. Come out and say, ‘we like the job our trainers’ are doing, and this has definitely been a snake-bitten season.’
Instead, Chico Harlan of the Washington Post got enough Charmin out of that quote to roll through the rest of the story on the assumed premise of the trainers’ being at fault, which given the extreme circumstances of the season, is a valid premise.
The trainers’ response?
“I’ve got to rely on what they’re telling me,” (Lee) Kuntz said. “I can’t get in their heads. Because different guys — one guy may tell you ‘I’m fine,’ and then another might tell you that, ‘Hey, I’m dead.’ You know, you’ve got to know the player and see it for what it’s worth. You’ve got to observe him, too, when he’s on the field. A lot of it is observation.”
It’s possible that the Nats are over training, a frequent mistake on the part of all athletes trying to sustain their careers and productivity. Or bad luck just may be the culprit. But with so many advances in sports science and training, you can only have but so many cases of bad luck.
And in this case, the luck of the Nats’ trainers’ having employment may just have run out.
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What happened to blaming Lenny Harris?