A Snapshot of injuries: Jun 2056

[RonCo]

I’ve seen a few folks chatting about injuries over the past coupe weeks (poor Charm City, right?), and then saw Nashville’s Juan Rivera’s latest bump in the night. I’ve also been thinking about Sacramento’s horribly timed injuries of both Carlos Flores and Ruben Vazquez, and wondering how they stack up. So now that I’m finally back in town and almost settled, I set up my scripts and ran them again.

And since one of those scripts is about injuries, I dug into the data a bit.

What follows is – first – a tabulation of all our regular season injuries, sorted by division and total injuries. You’ll see who has lost how many players, and get some idea of how long they’ve been lost. That last bit, I normalized to days, using a mid-point for any spans that were involved (for example, 1-2 months was estimated as 45 days.

After that, just for kicks, I pulled out the lost-time injuries to pitchers and sorted that list by duration.

So, first I’ll post the overall table, and then make some comments…and then I’ll post the pitcher stuff.

Here’s the overall table.

Rumination #1: Yes, Charm City is having a tough go of it. 21 total injuries, 9 lost time bumps and bruises, and a league leading 770 days lost (though some are still running and will eat up some days in the off season. Even the set-back they’ve hit has led the league at 90 days. So, yeah. Shitty year for them. And it’s not over.

Rumination #2: In that same Atlantic Division, Jacksonville has been cruising along with only 5 DTD events, and Atlantic City has had only four injuries, with two of them minor DTD events.

Rumination #3: Boise is running a close second to Charm City. Six losses for 661 days, including big injures to both SPs David Molina and Daniel Camacho. Yikes.

Rumination #4: Five teams are yet to have a lost-time injury. Sorry for the jinx, guys.

Rumination #5: Of course I looked at the Pacific division, where we see Sacramento’s loss of both Flores and Vazquez was not particularly egregious relative to some other numbers – except, of course, that’s 40% of the rotation, and the top end. Other teams of interest include Long Beach, who are second in the division for number of events, but have lost relatively little time on the field. Vancouver, though is drawing to an inside straight, it seems. One fewer injury than the Surfers, but where as Long Beach has only suffered 102 days of impact, the Mounties are sitting at 617. Holy moly.

Rumination #5A: I should note that since this chart does not include Sprint Training losses, it ignores another big injury for Vancouver, so their plight has been even worse than it looks.

Rumination #6: Despite the severity of the Rivera injury, Nashville’s season has been closer to Long Beach than Vancouver. Their Heartland competition has had a bit tougher roads, with TWC, CHI, MAD, and OMA all having lost twice as much (or more) time.

I’m sure there’s more to be gleaned here, but I’ll leave it to others to think through.

In the meantime, here is the full list of all pitcher lost-time injuries (including Spring Training this time).

Month	Day	POS	Team	Player	Injury	Type	Activity	Duration Number	Duration	Days Est
5	22	SP	Vancouver Mounties	Marcus Olivares	torn UCL	OUT	pitching	15	months	450
3	1	SP	Chicago Black Sox	Wilson Milligan	torn flexor tendon (elbow)	OUT	pitching	15-16	months	450
5	31	SP	Charm City Jimmies	Carl Vincent	torn elbow ligament	OUT	pitching	11	months	330
6	5	SP	Boise Spuds	Daniel Camacho	partially torn UCL (elbow)	OUT	pitching	8	months	240
4	2	SP	Boise Spuds	David Molina	shoulder inflammation	OUT	pitching	6-7	months	180
3	6	SP	Long Beach Surfers	Travis Wilson	torn triceps	OUT	pitching	4	months	120
2	26	SP	Yellow Springs Nine	Kayahan Ercan	partially torn labrum	OUT	pitching	4	months	120
6	13	SP	Portland Lumberjacks	Byron Cooper	elbow inflammation	OUT	pitching	2	months	60
5	22	SP	Sacramento Mad Popes	Rubén Vázquez	hamstring strain	OUT	pitching	2-3	months	60
3	5	SP	Chicago Black Sox	Vanya Elliott	elbow strain	OUT	pitching	2-3	months	60
6	10	SP	New Orleans Crawdads	Arturo Trevino	sprained ankle	OUT	pitching	8	weeks	56
6	15	SP	Rocky Mountain Oysters	Chris Thompson	recurring back spasms	OUT	pitching	6	weeks	42
5	5	SP	Charlotte Flyers	Josh Clark	elbow strain	OUT	pitching	6	weeks	42
4	17	SP	Sacramento Mad Popes	Carlos Flores	shoulder inflammation	OUT	pitching	6-7	weeks	42
3	13	SP	Charm City Jimmies	Norm Collyer	biceps tendinitis	OUT	pitching	6	weeks	42
3	6	SP	San Fernando Bears	Keith Mays	sprained ankle	OUT	pitching	6-7	weeks	42
4	22	SP	Rockville Pikemen	Jon Keys	hamstring strain	OUT	pitching	4	weeks	28
3	14	SP	Des Moines Kernels	Marshall Taylor	herniated disc (back)	OUT	pitching	4	weeks	28
6	16	SP	Chicago Black Sox	Carlos Moya	bone spur (elbow)	OUT	pitching	3	weeks	21
3	19	SP	Twin Cities River Monsters	Jerry Stone	hamstring strain	OUT	running	3-4	weeks	21
3	13	SP	Seattle Storm	Lúcio Juárez	shoulder inflammation	OUT	pitching	3	weeks	21
2	27	SP	Sacramento Mad Popes	Rubén Vázquez	biceps tendinitis	OUT	pitching	2	weeks	14
4	23	SP	Brooklyn Robins	Stephen Clulow Jr.	biceps tendinitis	OUT	pitching	1	week	7
3	17	SP	Mexico City Aztecs	Eiichi Takahashi	elbow inflammation	OUT	pitching	1	week	7
3	11	SP	Montreal Blazers	George Panagoulias	virus	OUT		1-2	weeks	7
5	2	SP	Vancouver Mounties	Dave Cain	fever	OUT		4	days	4
5	12	SP	Twin Cities River Monsters	Doug Smith	food poisoning	OUT		3	days	3
5	11	SP	Rockville Pikemen	Ravindiran Nayak	food poisoning	OUT		1	day	1

[DaveB]

Can add another pitcher to that list. Dorsey out for the season.

[RonCo]

Can add another pitcher to that list. Dorsey out for the season.

Yeah...those are just SP. I should probably do a bunch of different lists.

[pandan]

Not familiar enough with the players to have a good gauge, but am curious what the average age of these players are -- ie is it mostly older guys getting beat up all at once or is it a more random distribution?

Thanks for putting this together.

[Knucklehead254]

I suppose injuries aren’t exactly helping stop our collapse

[ae37jr]

I love that injuries are back up. Challenges depth and makes you make decisions that you wouldn't normally make. Also great for league parity when the grim reaper takes out a couple of players on probable playoff teams and lets an over achieving tweener team have a legit shot at sneaking in.

[Dington]

I’ve been blessed with pretty good health over the years. Amazes me there are some teams this late into the season with no IL stints.

[RonCo]

I suppose injuries aren’t exactly helping stop our collapse

Yeah, probably not.

[RonCo]

I love that injuries are back up. Challenges depth and makes you make decisions that you wouldn't normally make. Also great for league parity when the grim reaper takes out a couple of players on probable playoff teams and lets an over achieving tweener team have a legit shot at sneaking in.

Yeah. It's a balance, of course. But I do like the issues injuries cause.

[RonCo]

I’ve been blessed with pretty good health over the years. Amazes me there are some teams this late into the season with no IL stints.

They could have put DTD on the IL. But, yeah.

[RonCo]

Not familiar enough with the players to have a good gauge, but am curious what the average age of these players are -- ie is it mostly older guys getting beat up all at once or is it a more random distribution?

Not sure if I can get ages or not. I'll have to look at it more closely and see if I can get to the proper data somehow.

[RonCo]

This is semi-close ... so I'd say it does look like older players are getting hurt more often.

Age	Players	Injuries	Inj/Player
18	7	1	0.143
19	18	3	0.167
20	21	3	0.143
21	24	7	0.292
22	25	12	0.480
23	46	30	0.652
24	65	34	0.523
25	63	31	0.492
26	57	29	0.509
27	56	21	0.375
28	63	20	0.317
29	116	35	0.302
30	155	56	0.361
31	78	24	0.308
32	41	16	0.390
33	45	21	0.467
34	14	10	0.714
35	96	54	0.563
36	33	24	0.727
37	18	11	0.611
38	6	2	0.333
39	10	12	1.200
40	3	2	0.667

[RonCo]

Here are injuries for just position players, FWIW.

Age	Players	Injuries	Inj/Player
18	4	1	0.250
19	10	2	0.200
20	14	2	0.143
21	17	4	0.235
22	10	4	0.600
23	30	9	0.467
24	37	16	0.541
25	31	6	0.290
26	21	7	0.714
27	21	9	0.524
28	34	7	0.324
29	52	15	0.442
30	73	18	0.452
31	31	13	0.516
32	12	6	0.917
33	21	9	0.571
34	8	6	0.875
35	74	33	0.649
36	24	15	0.708
37	17	4	0.647
38	4	2	0.500
39	9	12	1.333
40	3	2	0.667

[Bob Breum]

So now that I’m finally back in town and almost settled, I set up my scripts and ran them again.

Are these scripts something that you would be willing to share?

[BaseClogger]

There are more older players too so the above is not conclusive. That said, I expect that age is a major contributor.

Edit: never mind, it’s injuries *per player*.

[pandan]

Interesting to see -- helpful to see which demographics are most impacted by this most often.

I agree with Alan -- appreciate the challenge of managing through injuries, more realistic and rewards building depth. I find it can be easy to stockpile players who you could reasonably field, but seldom have reason to unless one of your top guys goes out. Emergent gameplay and all that. Not to say it isn't frustrating when it happens all at once, but to me that's part of the challenge of being a GM.

[RonCo]

So now that I’m finally back in town and almost settled, I set up my scripts and ran them again.

Are these scripts something that you would be willing to share?

They are perl scripts... done with my own ugly coding. In happy to share them if you want to dig into them. My only request is that you share anything you learn from them.

[Trebro]

This is all extremely fascinating. Thank you as always Ron!

[cheekimonk]

I'm not sure if I don't feel so bad about our play of late or this is just depressing. I do have an older roster with a pretty good amount of young depth in my system. But I don't want to burn rookies in a lost season. FWIW you can add super-utility man Xinpeng Zhào who's also out for the season.