Under The Knife 5/30/24

The Month Ends

The end of a month is always a good time to check in on the stats. Facts are facts here, though there’s always context when it comes to any simple statistic. We don’t yet have a VORP-level stat and certainly nothing in real time to measure injuries and losses, or the value of a medical staff, so we’re left with what we have - days, dollars, and watching players like Mike Trout, Ronald Acuna, and a ton of pitchers who have Frank Jobe’s signature on their arms not play baseball.

The numbers here are as of this morning (5/30/24) and as accurate as I can get them. I like games lost versus days lost because games are what count, and they tend to show even non-IL injuries more clearly. We don’t have non-IL days off, so something like Evan Carter sitting a week or a pitcher skipping a start get lost there. Someday, MLB’s records will open up or they’ll do something like the Red Book and we’ll be able to check. Until then, we have approximations and triangulations. (I even round the numbers, to the nearest “5/0” if only to emphasize that these numbers aren’t exact.)

At the bottom, we find the Los Angeles Dodgers (600 games lost) and the Texas Rangers (590.) The Rangers have had a number of injury issues, but both teams have pitchers that are locked onto the injury-game counter after surgery. The Rays (575) have a ton of rehabbing pitchers, so it’s no surprise to see them here. The Yankees (550) and Red Sox (555) are regularly rivals, but I’m sure they’d rather be fighting on the field than down here counting how many guys aren’t on it.

At the top, we have some of the usual suspects. The Blue Jays (185) and Orioles (225) are regularly near the top, while the Padres (210) have put a greater emphasis on sports medicine and sports science in recent years. The Braves are at 200 and haven’t yet seen the season-loss of Spencer Strider and Ronald Acuna accumulate on their days lost. The note here is that while the Braves have had a number of injuries, they’ve been able to hold the days down and that kind of management is a medical staff skill.

The outlier is Detroit, with only 125 games lost. The relatively new staff led by Ryan Eubanks in his second season has been able to keep the injuries they have relatively short while maintaining what would seem to be a fragile pitching staff with significant injury histories through the first third of the season healthy. So far, just an illness for Kenta Maeda - something I doubt anyone would fully put on a team staff - and a Tommy John for Sawyer Gipson-Long really dent the record. While they may not end up on top for the season, being able to hold these games lost down is a large reason why the Tigers are outperforming expectations in what is likely a transitional year.

We have 25 of the 30 MLB teams over 300 days already, which amounts to six lost players. For all the griping owners had about adding a 26th player to the roster, most of them are functionally carrying 32 with some teams as many as 36. Even at minimum salary, we’re talking about millions of dollars, but even at the cut-rate the Rangers are paying Max Scherzer - the highest paid player on the IL - it’s $7.5m so far and almost double if you add in the Mets’ share. I’d love to see how Bob Davis or Steve Cohen would react to that kind of loss in one of their other businesses. For all the talk about great businessmen as owners, they don’t run their baseball teams like they do their businesses.

Again, these numbers aren’t perfect and they don’t correlate to wins and losses. A team like the Dodgers have long been at the bottom of the rankings because they take on more injuries and can afford to take on risks. (Imagine if they had Shohei Ohtani (Pitcher Version) on the IL as he recovers from elbow reconstruction!) It’s still notable and the medical staffs all deserve far more recognition than they get for all the work they do.

There’s still two-thirds of the season to go (and the DII World Series starts in Cary - good luck to the UIndy Greyhounds), so let’s get to the injuries:

EDWIN DIAZ, RP NYM (inflamed shoulder)
PETE ALONSO, 1B NYM (bruised fingers)

It hadn’t been a good couple of weeks for Edwin Diaz. While his comeback from patellar tendon repair has gone well physically and his stuff has shown little change, he’s a closer and they almost all go through rough patches and some more than others. Now, he’ll head to the IL with what the Mets are calling “shoulder impingement”, which is often a diagnosis when nothing else can be found. It’s not a fake injury (more on those below), but one of elimination in most cases, absent a real finding like thoracic outlet syndrome, which in itself is difficult to diagnose.

One of the most interesting injury questions of the Statcast era is “Are there signs of injury?” For years, fatigue has been one of those things some people think they can see and everyone can see to some level. I actually did a study pitting scouts against moms back in Saving The Pitcher. Moms won because familiarity with the player really matters. Watch someone enough and you might see that they’re striding shorter, changing their release point, or just doing something different. Between Statcast and AI, this is something that should probably already exist, but doesn’t. Yet.

For Diaz, the Mets have a great sports science staff that can get to work once the impingement and hopefully what ever is causing it is cleared up or at least controlled. It’s funny - Timmy Trumpets was here in Indy for the 500 Snake Pit, which I thought was odd. I hadn’t realized he was a DJ as well as a trumpet player.

What’s not funny? Pete Alonso got hit on the fingers by a James Paxton pitch. It wasn’t intentional nor was it even one that #paddedgloves would have helped, but early reports had the initial x-rays negative. (Negative is good; no fracture.) He’s likely to undergo more tests on Thursday to check for small fractures, though his physical response - ie, pain and swelling - will guide this. Any lost time for Alonso is a huge negative for the Mets, obviously, and this is one that simply is bad luck.

EVAN CARTER, OF TEX (inflamed back)

I had a talk with a member of the media I respect and he talked about the “phantom IL” that he thought was being used on a pitcher he covers. I didn’t agree, but the very next call I got was from another media member in DFW* that thought Evan Carter’s back issue was the same thing, a way to get him off the active roster without sending him down. Carter - a player I’ve like since he was drafted - has been struggling to hit, but he remains a positive WAR player and given the Rangers’ injury struggles, I wasn’t sure who the team had that was better. (The answer: Wyatt Langford coming off the IL.)

I’m assured that Carter’s injury, while it conveniently allows the Rangers to get him to the minors without the mental hit of being optioned down, this isn’t a fake injury or even a new one. The Rangers were willing to play a man down while Carter dealt with this and the fact that it’s lingering is a bit worrisome. Word is that this is muscular in nature rather than structural, but the fact that they can’t seem to get past it is problematic.

Carter’s young and back injuries are one of those things that can linger forever or get significantly worse, if not taken seriously. However, two of the examples I always use on this - Ivan Rodriguez and Vladimir Guerrero Sr - were guys that had back issues mid-career, got serious about doing the constant maintenance work, and rode that to Cooperstown.

I’m certainly not saying Carter’s a Hall of Famer, but he has that kind of talent if he can have the longevity to rack up career numbers like those greats. It’s worrisome that he’s having an injury like this so early in his career and might portend that he’s not going to hold up well, but few I’ve spoken with think that Carter’s not willing to put in the work.

*I have to be honest, when I saw the number, I immediately thought “Gerry Fraley.” Gerry’s gone, sadly, but for that brief moment, I thought of him as so vibrantly here, a guy who I wish I’d spent more time with because few loved baseball or life as much. If there’s someone you think you disagree with - and Gerry and I did, regularly - man, sometimes if you get to know them, you’ll find someone amazing. Gerry really gave me hope in people again, in a lot of ways.

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