Agree... there isn't one way to go. Everyone is not the same, and most should be judged as individuals... just a personal preference overall.
But when you are saying Bundy was able to come back from his lost years and become a durable starter... for me, with my bias, I see a difference. Even when Bundy had lost his years, I looked at who he was physically (partly the known workout regime) and believed he could overcome those injuries.
I look at Harvey, and after he's missed basically 4 years... I'm less inclined to believe he gets past that as a starter.
Maybe he does. We'll see.
I do expect they will continue to use him in a similar way as they did last year. Hopefully he just stays on a mound.
No, I get what you're saying, that you had more faith in Dylan coming back healthy cause he had that built like a truck thing going, which should make him more durable. I get that part, and with a lot of injuries I agree with you.
But I think when it comes to the elbow and shoulder, it doesn't matter how built you are in other areas. ONE bad pitch, ONE time out of slot, ONE time with a little too much spin on a breaking pitch is all it takes. It's crazy, but it really doesn't matter how much you build up the surrounding muscles, how much strain you try to take off with your core and legs (as you should), because the stress at those two points at one given time during a delivery can wash all that out.
I can't help but think about Jimmy Key a little bit. He's got that same type build as Hunter. Never threw as hard as he does, but had a bunch of injury time between like 88-98 when he retired, that's over half his career with some on and off injuries. A bunch of that was elbow related, which I never understood on one level cause he's not that high velocity guy, but apparently Andrews went in a few times to remove bone chips and that was good enough to keep him going. Point being that he had great mechanics, didn't throw hard, by all means was about as low of a risk for elbow/shoulder problems as you can get, but still missed a ton of time. Probably just the nature of being a pitcher and the repetition, more than too high effort that some people get into trouble with, but he also worked through those 10 years and had a great career through it.