M.A.S.H. Report

by
April 6, 2010

Way Not to Use Your Head

Has anyone told the players that Spring Training doesn’t count. It doesn’t matter, especially if you are a regular. Why take a chance to miss part of the season? Well Alex Gordon and Coco Crisp will be missing a month of time each this season because they broke a finger each sliding in head first. How many of the 81 players that are on the DL are because of sliding in feet first, none. Maybe Alex and Coco didn’t see it as a problem, but now they and other players should.

Beginning the Season on the DL

The last few days, teams have been busy adding players to the disabled list. A decent percentage of the total number of DL trips happen at the beginning of season on average. Mainly this happens because of players recovering from off-season surgeries.

Over the past 8 years, there have been an average of 439 trips to the DL over an entire season. To start off this season, 81 players are on the DL or about 18% of an average season’s total. Twenty-eight of those trips are now for players still recovering from surgeries.

Not so Greatest Shape of Their Lives

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At the beginning of Spring Training, Dave Cameron looked for players that said they were in the greatest shape of their lives. Of this group of 28 players, only one is currently on the DL, Daisuke Matsuzaka. I figured there was going to be more. Quite a few more games are left to play, so the list may change quite a bit. I plan on coming back to this list at least every month to see how these workout studs hold up over the season.

Unique Injury

Each team reports to MLB the nature of each player’s injury for reporting. Lance Berkman was said to have a “cranky” knee. Maybe the knee sees the team the Astros put together and becoming more disruptive with its complaints.





 

Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.

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GPS
15 years ago

Regarding injuries, I’ve been thinking that spring training is way too long. You’ve got a marathon, six-month season ahead of you, and spend six weeks playing meaningless games and getting hurt. Just have the pitchers and catchers show up about St. Patrick’s Day and play catch for a few hours each day!

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Jeff ZimmermanFanGraphs Staff
15 years ago
Reply to  GPS

I totally agree. It is all about the money. Two weeks of games would be fine.

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