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
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
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
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
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
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
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.