Archive for Injuries

• Chris Sale will miss at a minimum of three weeks with a fractured foot. Then he will need to get up to speed before being able to start.

Chris Sale sustained an avulsion fracture on the lateral side of his right foot as the result of an accident at his Arizona home Friday. The left-hander is expected to be sidelined three weeks before resuming baseball activities.

Looking back at previous pitchers with foot injuries, they saw a 0.4 BB/9 and 0.25 ERA bump. Some loss of production, but not too much. The White Sox won’t need another starter until mid-April, so they may be able to go with four starters until then.

Read the rest of this entry »

• OK, MASH will be twice a week for the seven or so months with all the baseball news coming in. There is just a ton of Fluff right now and useful new information is a little tough to find.

• Michael Saunders will be out until around the All-Star game with a torn meniscus in his knee. This is a mess for the Blue Jays. Right now they look to replace him with internal options.

… Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos said he expects to fill Saunders’ vacancy in left field with internal options. Kevin Pillar, Ezequiel Carrera and Andy Dirks are the early favourites to win the job out of Spring Training.

Here is the projected wRC+ for the trio.

Name: wRC+
Pillar: 92
Carrera: 83
Dirks: 99

Dirks looks to have the inside track statically, but he is current still dealing with a back injury which cost him his 2014 season. If the 28-year-old Carrera gets the job, he could be a sneaky SB play with 50 SB in 2014 between the majors and minors.

Read the rest of this entry »

• I will steal the words of the great philosopher Ned Yost to intro this list of broken down ball players:

“… everything being written at this time of year is just ‘fluff’.

So much ‘Fluff’ right now. I am getting a ton of small updates with how everyone is feeling great and/or making outstanding progress. I am not going to write about each of these “Best Shape in Whenever” reports, but will put them into the injury spreadsheet. I will just try to concentrate on bad news until some games start.

• The Braves Shae Simmons will miss all of the 2015 season because of Tommy John surgery. He was the first player to officially go on the DL in 2015. Chris Withrow and Brandon Beachy has since joined him.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Victor Martinez will miss 4-8 weeks with a torn medial meniscus in his left knee. This puts him getting healthy in the middle of spring training or a couple of weeks into the season.

The Tigers announced Thursday that Martinez has torn the medial meniscus in his left knee. Martinez tore the cartilage last week during workouts in Florida and underwent an MRI and exam on Wednesday in Lakeland, Fla., where the tear became clear.

Looking at V-Mart, he may see a loss of average and power because of the knee injury. Using the spreadsheet linked in this article on how injuries affect production, here is the average loss in production from players with knee injuries.

Rate Stat: < = 30 DL Days, > 30 DL Days
AVG: -.007, -.014
OBP: -.013, -.014
SLG: -.024, -.045
ISO: -.017, -.031

If the injury brings down his projections, he will be closer to his 2013 version (.301/.355/.430) than the 2014 version (.335/.409/.565).

Read the rest of this entry »

• Troy Tulowitzki has been dealing with a labrum tear since 2008 in which he finally had surgery for at the end of 2014.

But for years, Tulowitzki and the Rockies knew that his hip labrum was damaged. The area has been a problem since he suffered a torn left quadriceps tendon early in 2008. He had surgery to remove scar tissue from the left groin area in 2012, but he hoped to continue to play through the underlying labrum damage.

Did the surgery finally put an end to the problems?

Not even Tulowitzki knows.

“It’s been a battle for me, no doubt,” Tulowitzki said. “I do everything I possibly can to prepare for the season and make myself healthy. Hopefully, all these things are past me. I can move on and go out there and play 140, 160, however many games it is, I love to do that. I have every intention to. We’ll see how it goes.”

I guess we can finally see if he can stay healthy for an entire season.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Two items to start with. First, quite a few update are in the spreadsheet at the article’s end. Information is becoming more available, but it restates a lot of old information.  I will continue to give the updated sources. Second, thanks for your support and suggestions as I got this series up and running. It got some recognition at the latest Fantasy Sports Writers Awards.

Hey! FanGraphs won an award! Or, really, the excellent @jeffwzimmerman won an @fswa award for his MASH series on health issues. Congrats!!

— Eno Sarris (@enosarris) January 17, 2015

Thanks.

Read the rest of this entry »

• A bunch of small updates in the spreadsheet at the bottom of this page. More news has been coming out over the past couple of weeks as we get closer to the start of spring training.

• Miguel Cabrera may not be ready for opening day.

Cabrera’s big test comes in February when he consults Robert Anderson, a Charlotte, N.C., orthopedic surgeon who also repaired the broken ankle of retired Yankees star Derek Jeter.

“His rehab has gone well,” Rand said. “He’s in a partial weight-bearing stage, six weeks in a boot, which began just before Christmas. He’ll got back and see Dr. Anderson next month and hope the CT scan will show that everything’s well and that he can move into a full weight-bearing program.”

The Tigers, though, acknowledge Cabrera will have work to do even if he gets a thumbs-up at next month’s exam. They cannot say with assurance their spotlight hitter will be 100 percent on Opening Day.

We will find out more next month. If you have an early draft, I may stay away from him.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mat Latos began and ended his 2014 season by missing time because of injuries. Between the two layoffs, he seemed to produce like he did in the past with a 3.25 ERA (3.34 for his career). One difference between his previous couple of seasons and 2014 was a huge drop in strikeouts. They went from 8.0 K/9 in both 2012 and 2013 to 6.5 K/9 in 2014. The biggest reason for the decline in strikeouts was a near 2 mph drop in his fastball velocity. This off season he was traded from the Reds to the Marlins where he hopes regain some of the zip on his fastball, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Jason Kipnis may not be ready for the season’s start because of finger surgery.

“We are optimistic he’s going to be able to do a lot in Spring Training,” said Quinlan, adding the recovery time is variable. “To give you some idea, we are pretty optimistic he’s going to be able to do fielding and throwing and doing all aspects of baseball activity with the exception of hitting by the start of Spring Training, when he reports to Spring Training.

“As you know, the forces involved in gripping the bat and hitting are a little bit more extensive, so that will be the last thing he starts. We are optimistic he’ll also be on some form of hit-ting progression at the start of Spring Training.”

I don’t know if his value could be any lower after his struggles during the 2014 season and now this injury. It will be interesting to see where he ends up getting valued. I could see it all over the place and will step in if his value drops enough.

Read the rest of this entry »

As our own Brad Johnson stated today, one of the reasons pitchers are difficult to evaluate in their inconsistencies. One of the biggest reasons for the inconsistencies is pitcher health. While a few hitters can lose an entire season because of injury, it is just a fraction compared to pitchers who have to sit out.  To help understand each pitcher’s injury risk, I will release my 2015 starting pitcher rankings.

I have been releasing the values for a few seasons with accurate results. Last season, I estimated 50 of the 128 pitchers who threw 120 innings in 2013 would end up on the DL. I was a little low since 53 starters made a least one trip. It work out to 41% or 2 out of every 5 starters. The percentage always seems to hover around 40%.

Read the rest of this entry »