Beita said he had played half the season with the hernia. I have noted repeatedly on this forum that he could no longer hit those long crosses from the fullback position after that injury. Lenny’s knee problem plagued him 2 more years, right? Wondo hardly scored that season after he broke his foot. There is absolutely no sense in playing hurt. And then to have a player do so when you have a very viable alternative on the bench is to me, unethical.
Wrong morally or just inaccurate? Fisher's teams have long histories of tough dealings with players. If you don't think it's something they would do, then I suggest you do some research on the A's dealings with arbitration. Otherwise, I really don't understand what it is you are arguing. If the Quakes weren't using Tarbell despite his injury as a way to keep Bingham's contract negotiations in their favor, then the only other scenario is a team of medical staff/operations staff who are complete idiots and habitually let players play even at great risk to their careers and long term fitness. I guess that's possible given the list of players you provided, though I fail to see how that is better than what I've described.
That's a pretty harsh judgement on Tarbell. Players often risk their health for short term gains. You can't invest your time in pro sports the way you can other things in your life. Opportunity is finite and if he had it examined and they cleared him to play, I can't say I blame the guy for playing. It would certainly explain the shifts in quality from one game to the next. That doesn't mean I think it was the right decision, however. I don't think people should risk their long term health in this way, but I'm also not a professional athlete, so I'm not faced with those decisions.
Perhaps our perception of the competence of the Quakes medical staff can be informed by the example of Nick Lima...
Yeah, so far I cant' say any of us should have much confidence in the medical staff for the Quakes. Players have had numerous problems of varying types, none of which seem to have been dealt with properly. Even this year, I recall Imperiale wearing a face protector, which he would then take off at some point during the game. Why was that allowed to happen? Either he required the face mask to pass whatever requirements there are for play, or he didn't. Wearing it for some of the game but not all is a small indicator that either the Quakes are not enforcing the rules put forth by the medical team, or the medical team is negligent in their responsibilities. Neither is a good scenario of course, as players are at additional risk because of it.
There are certain kinds of injuries you can just play through with very little risk of making it any worse, you just have pain. There are others, great example being concussion, where you really should not or your upping your odds of long-term disability. I think playing with sports hernia and taking care of it in the offseason is really common.
My argument would be that if you are in pain while playing, then you shouldn't be playing. Obviously that is unrealistic to a certain extent. But if you require an operation to correct something, that seems like a pretty fair line to draw between playing and not playing. A player's career depends on their body withstanding the rigors of pro sports. Potentially limiting their ability to do that by playing them through injury seems pretty negligent to me, even if the player themselves insists on it. Of course, the responsibility then goes to the owner and staff to make sure they are fair in dealing with players who are injured, and we all know now that MLS does not care in the least about whether or not players with injuries or unforseen medical conditions get paid or not, so it's quite a mess.
Keep in mind though this may be a waxing waning situation for how much pain there is just based on how inflammed it is that day. I wouldn't go so far as to say there couldn't have been games where the pain was enough he couldn't play his best. But I don't think that it's necessarily the case that he was in that situation on gamedays. It would bother me if they played him to try to get him game experience for next season if he wasn't able to really play his best. In that sort of situation, you play Bingham even if he's not in your plans and potentially Tarbell has the surgery earlier so he really has enough time to recover. But if they think Tarbell could train and play at essentially 100% with just some nagging pain and they think Tarbell is at least equal to Bingham, then you play Tarbell if Bingham isn't in your plans so, hopefull, rookie stuff is out of the way and they have a lot more film for the gk coach on where he needs to improve. That said, the reason I originally posted that waiting till the offseason is a thing with this injury is not really do to Beita. It's because it seems to happen quite a bit in the NFL and their offseason is longer. So, knowing the true optimal rehab time should factor heavily in the decision IMO.
The NFL is not at all a model for reasonable dealings with players in any capacity, especially injury. MLS should be treating its players drastically better than the NFL treats its players. If you are arguing that it's reasonable to put off surgeries until the end of the season because it's done elsewhere, I'm going to say that's a bad argument. If your argument is that the Quakes may have been delaying the surgery in a similar fashion to how the NFL deals with their players, then yes, I think they probably are, and that is not how I would like them to handle things. I definitely understand that there is a risk analysis done for players with injuries, and sometimes you figure that playing them is worth whatever risk is present (there's always some risk, whether a player has an injury or not). Based on what we've seen with the Quakes, it doesn't seem like they are conservative enough with their assessments. Many, many players have gone out and played when it was clear they weren't fit enough to do so. I assume it has to do with them feeling like their injured starters are better than their bench players, but that's not an acceptable reason to play an injured player to me. I sincerely hope that the Quakes and the league improve in this regard, otherwise we're going to continue to watch players repeatedly hurt themselves and shorten their careers when longer term problems could have been prevented if better care was taken.
It’s sad how many former college players I’ve met who are around 30 years old and tell me they can never play soccer again due to the injuries they played through. The thing is, even if something doesn’t hurt at the moment they assess you pre-game, the injury is going to affect your running style. You are going to move differently to avoid making it worse. Then you’ll just injure something else or still exacerbate the injury. I hate when coaches play someone who is “80-85%” or “good for 30 minutes”. The players are too young to make the best decision, because they believe they are still in the age of invulnerability.
There is an awful lot of chatter here for a situation we don't know much about, but that's BS I guess - that's how we roll. Things like, did he know he had a sports hernia or did they discover it in the postseason physical? When did it occur? It is possible it happened in the last game. Do we know any of this?
Obviously we don’t know, but typically Athletes carry a sports hernia for awhile before they do anything about it. You never read about anyone who got a sports hernia in a game and immediately went out and got it repaired. It’s not like an ACL or meniscus or broken bone...
Well that brings up my next question. When did they find out about it? I know they did postseason physicals. It is possible they found out then?
Why don’t you find out and tell us? I post too much crap about the Quakes, I doubt they would confide anything in me
JazzyJ’s point is simple. Fans are criticizing the team for playing Tarbell when he was injured. If they were unaware until the after season physical, then the criticism is unwarranted. Plenty of athletes play through injuries without telling the coach and trainers. This could have nothing to do with Bingham and his treatment by the team. As an aside, I wonder if he may have injured himself in the away Whitecaps game before the end of the season. He looked very sharp in that game physically, but he was tentative against Minnesota and in the Whitecap playoff game.
"2017 SEASON REVIEW: Andrew Tarbell" (SJEarthquakes.com - Sunday, 12/10/17) (ISIPhotos.com GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
Many of us (cough cough) thought this was a terrible use of a high draft pick by Dom the genius Kinnear... after Saturday it's time for the Andrew Tarbell Experiment to come to an end as it's been a complete failure. How can his teammates have any faith in this joker? Time to "tar" and feather him and ship him out of town.... Tarbell's now allowed 9 goals from outside the box this year. Nobody's else has given up more than 5. #SJvLA— Matthew Doyle (@MattDoyle76) July 1, 2018 1013253472077086721 is not a valid tweet id I just don't understand how he gets automatically penciled into the XI every week. This is what happens when you don't have a veteran backup.— Brooke Tunstall (@YesThatBrooke) July 1, 2018
I am confident that there is a goalkeeper toiling away in a second or third tier club of some undistinguished European league who would be more than happy to help us out for no more than two or three times his intrinsic value on the market.
We used to have good goalkeepers like Cannon and Busch even when we had those bad years. I don't know if I care about Bingham or Tarbell now. Both once were promising but based on their performance now, none is reliable. Looking back, after Busch, our FO banked on young goalkeeper twice and both times didn't materialize.