• Sorry for the delayed report. Real life got in the way. I hope to have the season’s first PAIN report on Monday

• Charlie Blackmon lands on the DL with turf toe. Not a lot of news on his injury yet. I expect more today after the Rockies have a news conference. Looking back at past turf toe injuries, a three to four-week timetable is about right.

• Well, the Pablo Sandoval’s DL situation seems like a great drama, but not much more. Sandoval basically put himself on the DL after hurting his shoulder (probably trying to tighten his belt).

Sandoval, who lost his starting job to Travis Shaw late in Spring Training, made just one start in the Red Sox’s first seven games. He is 0-for-6 with four strikeouts in seven plate appearances.

“I woke up this morning with soreness, so something happened,” Sandoval said. “We’ll see what was going on later on, when the doctor gets here. I had this injury before, in 2011, but that was swinging a bat during the game. I don’t know what happened right now.”

“To give you an exact moment when it took place, I don’t have that, to be honest,” said Red Sox manager John Farrell. “He’s been hitting a lot extra before [batting practice] and during the game and in the cage. He’s got very limited range of motion. That was revealed after he went through a battery of tests with the medical staff. He’s unavailable.”

I think his time as a Red Sox regular is done. The issue keeping a trade from happening will be how much of his contract the Red Sox will have to eat to find a taker. Truthfully, they may need to eat nearly all of it and only a get a 40-grade prospect in return. In shallow leagues, I would move on past Sandoval. In deeper leagues where he can be DL’ed, wait to see how the situation plays out and if he finds playing time on another team.

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• Daniel Winkler fractured his elbow after throwing a pitch this weekend which leads to a bigger story.

Medicine will help Daniel Winkler deal with the physical pain that he will feel over the next few days. But there might not be a remedy for the mental anguish the Braves reliever will feel as he deals with the reality that his promising start to this season was derailed by a gruesome injury that casts some doubt about his future as a Major Leaguer.

…

An X-ray taken at the stadium showed Winkler fractured his right elbow. A MRI exam, which could be performed as early as Monday, will show whether the 26-year-old right-hander incurred any other structural damage to the elbow, which was surgically repaired via Tommy John surgery during the 2014 season.

A fractured elbow is the injury Jarrod Parker is dealing with again. After reading some of Jeff Passan’s book, The Arm, this elbow breakage shouldn’t be a surprise for a pitcher who has had Tommy John surgery. The doctors need to drill holes in the pitcher’s arm and in the case of Parker, his bones may look like Swiss cheese at this point. The bone is weakened to a point where the new UCL is stronger and the old bone just breaks.

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• Ben Revere is headed to the DL with a strained oblique.

Revere injured the oblique during his first at-bat in Monday’s season opener against the Braves. After he struck out, Revere decided to stay in the game, but he had a hard time breathing during his next at-bat two innings later because of pain in his rib cage. After he grounded out, Revere decided to take himself out of the game.

Revere said he felt pain even while trying to make a play on a home run by Freddie Freeman in the first inning.

At first, the Nationals didn’t think the injury was serious but, according to manager Dusty Baker, Revere was more sore on Wednesday even though he came in for treatment at Turner Field on Tuesday.

Looking at return times for hitters with a strained oblique, the average time is 29 days with a median time of 24 days.

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• I am still trying to fill in as much information into the disabled list spreadsheet at the end of ht article. I have checked twice and I have all the players added. Right now I am trying to find the information on some lesser known players. Also, I need to do some updates on players who haven’t really seen their status change. I am going to keep updating the sheet and it will hopefully be done in the next day or so.

• Go ahead and bookmark this spreadsheet for April. It will have all the pitcher velocity speed changes from 2015:

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• Don’t expect a bunch of analysis on Monday (I will write up any major injury though) as I will be dealing with transferring the injury database from off-season to in-season mode. I hoped more teams would have officially placed some players on the 15-day DL, but I only have three as of this morning. I expect I will have 50 or so to do come Monday with a few unreported injuries.

• Andrew Miller is out with a bone chip in his non-throwing hand.

The Yankees have been blessed with good health for most of the spring, but those fortunes took a turn on Wednesday afternoon when lefty reliever Andrew Miller was hit on the right wrist by a line drive.

Initial X-rays were negative, but a CT scan revealed a chip fracture in the wrist. Miller will visit a hand specialist to determine the next step, but it is possible that the Yankees will begin the season lacking two-thirds of their vaunted bullpen trio.

I tried to look back to find any past occurrences of this exact injury, but could find any. Looking at just a hand fracture for pitchers, the average return time is 66 days with the minimum at 42 days. I think I will go with 45 days lost until more information is available.

Last minute update. It seems like Miller will try to pitch through the injury.

"It's my right hand; I don't really need it"- #Yankees' Andrew Miller vows to pitch despite fractured right wristhttps://t.co/XF3zsRsvSE

— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) March 31, 2016

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Last Friday, I asked our RotoGraphs readers on how they would approach my Tout Wars mixed 12-team head-to-head auction. The strategies stated in the comments were similar to the approach I took. But that is not how the rest of the teams operated and it threw me for a loop.

A person must remember the rules to this league are fairly unique with a head-to-head component making up 80% of  the league’s wins and a roto component being the other 20%. A full rule set can be found here and the abridged set here.

Going back to the comments from Friday’s, here are the approaches the various readers would have taken.

Pitching Strategy

Few high K starters to make minimum IP, RPs otherwise
dparker713
jbona3
David
schulni
HappyFunBall
OutOfTheBox
Brad Johnson Read the rest of this entry »

• Injury information is being reported more frequently, but with fewer details. Make sure you check the spreadsheet at the bottom for the latest details as I wasn’t able to write a blurb on every player. If you want more information, click on the “Source with Link” date for the player’s latest article.

• Ryan Braun and David Wright look to be couple headaches for their owners in leagues with Weekly lineups. It has been reported each will not be playing full time and take days off when needed. The playing time in weekly leagues may drive an owner nuts. They may drive owners in daily lineup leagues also nuts, but, at least, those owners can move them out of the lineup if they aren’t playing. They may be bought on the cheap a month or two into the season when their owners are tired of dealing with them.

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A week ago, I participated in a new Tout Wars league which is called the Head-to-Head league, but it has a roto component. It was interesting to prepare for a highly competitive league with no previous similar leagues to reference. With the new format, first I had to decide how I would approach the league and second how my opponents would approach it, and how to find some advantages. Today, I will go over the rules and then ask you, our readers, about how you would approach the league. Later, I will go over my approach.

Here are the simplified rules with the full set being available at the Tout Wars website.

Rules Read the rest of this entry »

• Tomorrow, March 25th, is the date when most players who start the season on the Disabled List get their DL stints backdated to. Being able to backdate the DL days means players can have shorter DL stints when the season starts.

• Andre Ethier will be out two to four months with a fractured leg.

Dodger’s outfielder Andre Ethier has a broken leg and will be sidelined 10-14 weeks. Ethier suffered the injury fouling a pitch off his leg on Friday.

Initial x-rays were negative, but continued pain led to a bone scan on Monday that revealed the right tibia fracture that the club announced Tuesday afternoon. President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said the injury is not expected to require surgery.

“Obviously it’s a freakish injury,” Friedman said. “We’ll re-X-ray it in four to five weeks and to the extent it’s healing properly, it might be sooner. If not, it might be longer. The range is not incredibly precise.”

This move solidifies Joc Pederson in the outfield and may bring Carl Crawford and/or Scott Van Slyke off the bench.

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• Brad Boxberger will miss about eight weeks with a core injury (hernia).

News Friday that the nagging discomfort Brad Boxberger felt in his core area resulted in surgery to repair a muscle tear means the bullpen will be without its only experienced closer for at least the first six weeks of the season, and potentially into early June.

Which means to say hello to Alex Colome or Danny Farquhar or Steve Geltz or someone else who hasn’t done it much trying to protect ninth-inning leads for a team expecting to compete in the American League East.

It will be interesting to see who picks up the Saves in Tampa. In shallow leagues, I may stay away from the situation, but in deeper leagues where every Save is huge, I would take a chance on Colome.

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