It is the time of Spring Training when people begin to think they know the outline of a team, who the top performers will become, and how the season might go.
It happens every year. This isn’t meant to be any kind of judgment or comment or snark, what have you. There just aren’t many things you can take for granted, and especially not elbow health. Jeff Passan wrote in The Arm that any team that figures out how to keep elite arms healthy is pretty much going to crack the code (paraphrased heavily). Looking up and down the Guardians’ roster and reflecting on the number of Cy Young winners under the knife across baseball recently makes his 2016 book feel prescient.