Days Lost: Impact of Injuries In 2036

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Days Lost: Impact of Injuries In 2036

Post by RonCo » Sun Nov 18, 2018 11:22 am

We know intuitively that injuries change everything for a team—or, perhaps better said, the opposite—staying healthy—is a key to victory. You can build the best team in history, and if you can’t get them onto the field, then that team will crash and burn.

Our new StatsPlus environment gives us an interesting cut on data—specifically, the number of player-days a team loses to the disabled list. This is an interesting measure, ripe for dissection. Of first note, of course, is that it doesn’t take into account the quality of a player on the list. A day is a day as far as it’s concerned, regardless of whether that day comes from a utility guy or a super star. It also doesn’t weigh day-to-day injuries at all. So, yeah, it’s not perfect. But, you know, those utility guys are valuable if you want to win a lot, and sometimes those dtd bumps and bruises don’t seem to matter at all, so you can use your own views here.

Still, the data is interesting. And when we compiled it against performance across the league, it became even more interesting. This season has been a little weird, after all. Lots of separation between teams, gaps between the haves and the have-nots. Could injuries be part of that?

Well, let’s see.

I’m going to start by looking at DL days by division, then finish by doing some more interesting comparisons.


JL Atlantic

Code: Select all

Team	W	L	PCT	Days	$
RCK	95	67	0.586	187	0.5
MNT	94	68	0.58	416	12.45
ATC	90	72	0.556	417	8.96
BRK	80	82	0.494	742	8.54
CCJ	56	106	0.346	1006	26.83
Rockville managed to nip Montreal at the very end of the season, a feat made even more interesting when we see that the Blazers suffered considerably more loss due to injury. (This is made even more startling when we see that literally the ONLY guy the Pikemen lost during the season was a 5th outfielder). Atlantic City was in the same area code as Montreal (417 days lost vs. 416). Then we drop to Broooklyn at a fairly harsh 742. Wanna know why Charm City was as dramatically bad as they were? Perhaps it helps to know that they lost 1,006 days to injury. Yikes.

Regardless, looking at the tight race here, one has to wonder if injuries (or the insane health of Rockville) cost Montreal that 1-game that lost them the division. It should be noted the the Pikemen did suffer a lot of dtd dings.

JL Southeastern

Code: Select all

Team	W	L	PCT	Days	$
JAX	99	63	0.611	145	3.02
HNT	88	74	0.543	723	9.44
NSH	80	82	0.494	955	7.5
NO	77	85	0.475	176	2.83
LOUs	63	99	0.389	502	2.09
Jacksonville was a beast this year but they weren’t hurt by the fact that, at 145 days lost, the Hurricanes could be argued to have been the healthiest baseball club in the BBA. Huntsville lost 723 days, which is a pretty big gap—but we’re not sure even closing that gap would have brought the Phantoms a division title. It might, however, have gotten them over Atlantic City for the last Wild Card slot. Of interest is Nashville’s 955 days, which is on the high side. The Goats raised eyebrows with their progress this year. How much stronger could they have been with half the loss?

Then we look at Louisville and New Orleans. Neither were particularly good this year, and unfortunately neither can really use injury as a reason why. Louisville did lose 502 days, but the average league loss was 519.8 days, so technically the Sluggers were a little healthier than norm. New Orleans lost only 176 days. So, read into that what you will.

JL Sunbelt

Code: Select all

Team	W	L	PCT	Days	$
MEX	95	67	0.586	442	6.32
LV	89	73	0.549	966	22.2
WIC	75	87	0.463	1170	29.7
PHX	75	87	0.463	616	14.3
SA	64	98	0.395	381	8.06
Holy crap, look at Wichita. Vegas wasn’t much better, but rumors are the Genius had to sink so much money into expanding their trainer’s room that he’s going to have to make extra trips to South America this winter to ensure certain supply lines are expanded. Still, they won 75 games and their fan interest seems stuck on “rabid,” so perhaps he’s already made those trips. The Aztecs, I’ll note, lost more days to injury than any other division winner…perhaps a testament to their depth of solid players. That the Hustlers lost 966 days and still made the playoffs says something, too—and that something has to include Matt’s magical ability to juggle rosters. For perhaps the first time, San Antonio’s front office can’t point to injuries as the reason they struggled this year. They lost only 381 days, but admittedly a few were biggish names. Bottom line there is that a rebuilding team that gets dinged has only limited options. (duh, right?)


FL Heartland

Code: Select all

Team	W	L	PCT	Days	$		
YS9	101	61	0.623	282	3.48
OMA	98	64	0.605	384	7.99
TWC	85	78	0.521	512	6.76
DM	79	83	0.488	757	3.75
MAD	69	93	0.426	408	8.79
In the end, Yellow Springs was the healthiest team in the division, a fact that almost certainly helped us slip past Omaha in the last month of the season. That said, the Heartland was a fairly healthy division, with every team except Des Moines below that 519 league average. Des Moines got bit pretty hard at 757 days lost (and with many of them being ace Ragnar Lothbrock). Of interest is Twin Cities, who lost 512 days, and the Pacific’s Long Beach, who lost 485 and who edged the River Monsters in the play-in game. Could that 27 day difference have cost Twin Cities a Wild Card spot?

Madison lost 408, which is low relative to the league as a whole, but just under average for the division (I’ll note that many of those days were lost from Mons Raider, which is a pretty big loss). At the end of the day, though, it seems that Madison fans have to look other directions than pure injuries to explain the huge falloff they saw this year.

FL Heartland

Code: Select all

Team	W	L	PCT	Days	$		
CAL	106	56	0.654	333	4.31
SFB	96	66	0.593	176	4.44
LBC	86	77	0.528	485	12.73
VAL	69	93	0.426	731	2.49
HAW	60	102	0.37	653	5.78
At 176 days lost, San Fernando was one of the healthiest teams in the league, but California (333) wasn’t that far behind. Still, California was just flat-out so good that it probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Of more interesting question, perhaps, is how much of the 309 day gap between San Fernando and Long Beach influenced that 10-game difference between them in the standings—especially given that so many of those days were assigned to Mike Bailey.

What is pretty clear, however, is that injuries almost certainly impacted the rebuilds of Valencia and Hawaii. Both are young teams that had a little buzz going on around them in the pre-season. Valencia lost 731 days to injury, however, and Hawaii was only a little more fortunate in losing 653. If San Antonio is the case of a rebuilding team being unable to deal with excess loss, the Stars and the Tropics may well be poster children for the impact on young teams coming up the curve.

FL Frontier

Code: Select all

Team	W	L	PCT	Days	$		
SEA	96	66	0.593	198	0.96
BOI	71	91	0.438	569	2.57
CLG	68	94	0.42	406	9.38
EDM	64	98	0.395	446	6.29
VAN	63	99	0.389	411	3.71
As can be predicted by their margin of victory, the division leader Seattle lost only 198 days to injury, best by a long shot—though the fact is that on the whole, the Frontier was the healthiest division in the league. At 569 days lost, Boise was the only team below average. Of course, the other aspect of the Frontier is that, to put it kindly and to speak of everyone except Seattle, their health did not seem to matter. The division is pretty clearly the worst performing division in the league. In that sense, having been healthy just makes matters worse.

At 406, 446, and 411 days lost, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver showed it’s possible to have semi-full rosters and still win less than 70 games. All three of these teams have different vibes happening , however. Calgary fans are walking around with those WTF stares. Edmonton’s are still trying to figure out who’s on first in the front office, and Vancouver’s are wondering if the rebuild got put on the back burner. Whatever, though. None of them seem to be able to blame the injury bug for their problems.

OVERVIEW

The obvious relationship of health to success is pretty clear here. On the whole, it’s fair to say that division winners tended to be healthier than the rest, and so on down the line. Here’s a breakdown of average days lost by position in the division.

First: 264 days lost
Second: 539 days lost
Third: 657 days lost
Fourth: 578 days lost
Fifth: 560 days lost

In other words, there was a very big step down from first to second (on average), and after than it was a mixed game.

DIVISION/LEAGUE BREAK-OUTS

Realizing this is a data point of just one year, I thought it was interesting to look at the divisions and leagues:

Johnson League: (Average: 589.6 days lost)
Atlantic: 553.6
Southeastern: 500.2
Sunbelt: 715

Frick League: (Average: 450.1 days lost)
Heartland: 468.6
Pacific: 475.6
Frontier: 406.0

As noted above, the Frontier was the healthiest division in baseball by this measure. The Sunbelt was the most injury-prone.

But look at the difference between the Johnson (589.6)and the Frick (450.1). That’s a 139.5 day gap between the divisions. What’s in the water there? Is something going on in Johnson trainers’ offices? Something the Frick knows that the Johnson doesn’t?

The truth probably lies is random luck. But it’s interesting to think about, eh?

FINAL WORD:

I’m not sure what to make of this specific look into injuries. As I noted above, it has a lot of flaws. But the information is interesting, and I suppose that it could be leveraged to look at other aspects if you wanted to spend the time. Specific players could be tagged, or links attempted to be made to trainers, or even to Randy’s pitcher abuse database.

I’d love to see someone do that kind of stuff, but right now that someone won’t be me.

In the meantime, I read this mostly as a general confirmation that in OOTP (and the BBA in particular), as in real baseball, injuries have a real role to play in the eventual success (or not) of your team.
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Re: Days Lost: Impact of Injuries In 2036

Post by Ted » Sun Nov 18, 2018 11:53 am

Great post! Frankly I expected to be a bit better. Avoiding injuries has bee na huge part of my success the last decade. I'm not going to try to pretend it's a skill or that I did much of anything to made it happen. It's just one of those things that in retrospect you note made a big difference.
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Re: Days Lost: Impact of Injuries In 2036

Post by ae37jr » Sun Nov 18, 2018 5:58 pm

This season was a demolition derby for a lot of teams. I'm willing to bet I had more days injured this year then the past 10 combined. These numbers don't even include players who got released during the season,
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Re: Days Lost: Impact of Injuries In 2036

Post by Fat Nige » Sun Nov 18, 2018 6:10 pm

Yes, good article. I figured as much that Louisville weren’t hit so hard by injuries, we didn’t have many major injuries but a lot of nagging injuries. That combined with loss of form by three or four key players cost us the 12 games we dropped.

I like the stats, don’t think I have the energy/time to dig into this year’s stats but I might well compile stats next year as they come in. Anybody got any ideas about what would be the most useful things I could do with the stats? It would give me something useful I could do for the league next year?
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Re: Days Lost: Impact of Injuries In 2036

Post by udlb58 » Sun Nov 18, 2018 10:11 pm

We needed this season. We've been crushed by injuries the last 4-5 seasons.
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Re: Days Lost: Impact of Injuries In 2036

Post by bcslouck » Mon Nov 19, 2018 8:14 am

I knew we were getting crushed this year but didn't think it was that bad. Winson and my 2 big money FA's were a big part of that chunk too.
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Re: Days Lost: Impact of Injuries In 2036

Post by 7teen » Mon Nov 19, 2018 4:14 pm

I think the loss of Raider was a pretty big loss for us early on. We were playing right around .500 at that time. We were 11 games under .500 total in May, June, and July, the 3 main months he was out. We were 13-13 in April and 6-2 in May when he got hurt. We were 14-14 in August, a month he played in. So yeah, we were nearly a .500 team with him healthy.

Granted you could counter by saying how does that explain the 7-20 September when Raider was healthy and my counter would be we were pretty much out of the race by September and I got a little crazy with my roster. Of course Steve Dempsey also got hurt so I tried to replace that with some other guys here and there and then we suffered a lot more injuries in September.

So long story short, I think Madison was a .500 or so team if everyone stays healthy, especially Raider.
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Re: Days Lost: Impact of Injuries In 2036

Post by GoldenOne » Mon Nov 19, 2018 9:20 pm

RonCo wrote:
Sun Nov 18, 2018 11:22 am

JL Southeastern

Code: Select all

Team	W	L	PCT	Days	$
JAX	99	63	0.611	145	3.02
HNT	88	74	0.543	723	9.44
NSH	80	82	0.494	955	7.5
NO	77	85	0.475	176	2.83
LOUs	63	99	0.389	502	2.09
Of interest is Nashville’s 955 days, which is on the high side. The Goats raised eyebrows with their progress this year. How much stronger could they have been with half the loss?
That number includes 49 days to Kamade (a big part of the Goats offense and defense) and 602 days to pitchers that started the season on the ML roster. The Goats have some pitchers in the minors but not a lot that were ready to be called upon for a ML role. A couple that were close to being ready still lost 388 themselves. Was this due to having to rush them up? Who knows. The Goats managed to step up their winning a little in July and August when guys were getting back healthy but then ran into a few more injuries in September. Would love to have seen what might have happened if the injury days were at least at league average.
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Re: Days Lost: Impact of Injuries In 2036

Post by agrudez » Mon Nov 19, 2018 10:20 pm

As I've already written about a few times, the biggest problem for Huntsville was the targets of the injury. 900 games lost in the bullpen, outfield, 1B/DH or C wouldn't have hurt me so bad. Targeting my already thin rotation over and over and over again then taking out my entire middle infield late in the year were exactly the right moves if the goal was toppling my house of cards. Gonna try to do better to aggregate some depth this offseason - maybe at the expense of a more splashy FA signing.
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