And the injuries help balance out Goro's arrogant personality as well, making you feel bad for him is a good way to counter a character that otherwise has a shitty personality, which Goro admittedly does (I don't mean this in a negative way) and also makes you want to root for him, they're really well utilized.
M a l e r y o n a m y b e l o v e d...
And yeah, that retcon with Daigo's "talent" sure is funny (though to be honest, besides his "hard work" I would also add that Daigo has nepotism on his side. His coach is a former-major leaguer and Fuurin-Oobi gets to break the rules because of the clout they have from that and also from being a girls team. If an all-male joint-team with a coach who was a nobody tried the same thing Fuurin-Oobi did, there's no way in hell they'd get away with it, so that's a nice little message for the kids lol). Here's some comments from JP readers when that chapter came out. You can tell Mitsuda has lost the plot badly lol.
Aw, I'm gonna miss talking with you here. You were one of the only few people who ever wanted to actually discuss the series lol. But we can still talk on the server, so this sadness will only last a little