Does Aaron Judge’s Size Make Him Injury Prone?

Smaller players certainly get hurt, too. Altuve, for example, has been on the injured list five times since 2018. So wouldn’t the wear and tear of playing baseball be relative to the person’s height, weight and strength? Not exactly.

Although Buffi said much more remained to be studied about the movement of the human body, he pointed to a 2019 study published in the American Journal of Human Biology that found that the skeletons of taller people were not simply proportionally expanded versions of shorter people. In taller people, researchers found “a significant increase” in the percentage of body mass that was bone, especially in the limbs, and thus a possible explanation for the correlation between height and fracture risks.

“There’s theoretical reasons why a bigger person might be more prone to injury, which is just that their bones are proportionately a little bit bigger,” he said. He added later, “It’s also theoretically possible that a bigger person, because they’re using the same or similar sized bat as a smaller person, they’re exerting less effort to swing that bat and to make contact with that same size baseball. There’s just competing factors in both directions.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/03/sports/baseball/aaron-judge-yankees-size.html