You know, durable pitchers are pretty great. They can throw a lot of pitches and eat a lot of innings, which are increasingly valuable skills in these times of pitch counts and innings limits.
But here's the thing about durable pitchers: They're durable right up until, suddenly, they're not. An iron man can quickly become made of glass, and you just know we're going to see it happen in 2015.
That brings us to why we're here. Like we did with one-year wonders, we're here to jump the gun on the whole "time will tell" thing and try to predict which workhorses are finally going to break down in 2015.
Admittedly, this is a lot trickier. Predicting breakdowns is less of an exact science than predicting performance declines. But fortunately, there are some things we can use to make educated guesses.
Beyond taking it for granted that all pitchers only have so many bullets in them, we can borrow from FanGraphs' Jeff Zimmerman's disabled list projections and assume that age counts too. He's also found that slider and curveball pitchers are at extra risk. In addition, a study Jon Roegele did for Beyond the Box Score suggests higher velocity could mean more risk. Lindsay Berra of ESPN The Magazine is one of many who have covered the danger of bad mechanics. And lastly, Russell A. Carleton of Baseball Prospectus has found that recent injury issues tend to be pretty good predictors of future injuries.
With these things in mind, I managed to come up with a list of 10 workhorses who could be in danger this year. Let's start counting 'em down, from least likely to break down to most likely to break down.
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