Besides the 2014 starting pitcher disabled list (DL) predictions, have a few notes on some players.

• A few weeks ago I re-examined my 2013 starting pitcher DL predictions. The results were dead on as usual. For the 2014 predictions, I have put them in a spreadsheet for everyone to complain about. The main DL percentage chance is based off of age, MLB experience and past injuries.  Additionally, I have added an indication if the player has any other injury inducing traits like heavy breaking ball usage and the inability to throw strikes. While the entire list is available on the spreadsheet, here are the 10 least likely pitchers to go on the DL who also have no other injury indicators.

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Even though there has been no import injury news, some small bits of information has populated the interwebs.  Today’s article is just a small update on the progress of some players.

• The Orioles think Manny Machado will be ready for opening day.

Orioles third baseman Manny Machado continues to progress favorably in rehab from left knee surgery, and manager Buck Showalter said Wednesday the expectation is Machado will be ready for Opening Day.
“We put a real safe date on it,” Showalter said of Machado’s timetable, which initially was estimated at six months for a mid-April return. “I think he’s got a real chance to make the start of the season. [He] needs to play in [spring] games by March 15 to make the season.”

I will wait-and-see with him. It will be nice to see him run and hit before calling him 100%.

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Today I will check back on my 2013 Starting Pitcher DL Projections. Additionally I have injury updates on several players.

• Before last season, I projected the chances a starting pitcher would go on the DL given a formula I created a few season. I took into consideration age, previous MLB experience and past injuries. It is time to see how it did.

First, I removed pitchers who were not on a team in 2013 like Kevin Millwood and Randy Wolf. Next, I added the DL percentage chances for the remaining pitchers. The formula predicted 44.8 pitchers were DL bound. In reality, 44 went on the DL. I will take it. Additionally, I looked at the 20 most and least likely players to go on the DL. Of the twenty least likely, I predicted 6.2 to go on the DL and the actual number was five. Looking at the most likely candidates, I predicted 9.9 to go on the DL and nine actually went. Overall, the results were outstandinga and I will put out the 2014 prediction at a later date.

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Dustin Pedroia’s wrist pushed back my look at pitchers coming back from Tommy John surgery. While doing the Pedroia article, I created a query to look at HURT values on a month to month basis. While it isn’t really needed for the off-season, it will be ready for the start of the 2014 season.

• Dustin Pedroia is supposed to have thumb surgery on Tuesday and will be out for 6 to 8 weeks (link).

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Injury news is really beginning to come to a halt. I moved the MASH Report to just once a week and soon it may go to every other week. To keep it going  more regularly, I could look at look at specific injury types and their recovery rates. I would like to run analysis on different injuries like I did with groins today. If there are any specific injury cases you want compared, please let me know in the comments. Next week, I will probably look at pitchers who recently had Tommy John surgery, but I could use other injury types as the off-season goes on.

• The big injury news of the week was Miguel Cabrera having groin surgery which altered his game at the season’s end. He basically could not lift his front leg (source):

“The doctor said he didn’t understand how I could have played with so much pain,” Cabrera told Rojas. “It hurt so much that I almost couldn’t lift my right leg, and that was the reason I couldn’t reach the outside fastballs at the end of the season.”

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Last night, Jacoby Ellsbury had three plate appearances in his return back from a fractured foot. He had a hit and a walk after missing just 20 days. I decided to go back and look at players who fractured their foot and how they performed after returning.

With a sample size of one game under his belt, Ellsbury looks great and he feels pretty good (source)

“Yeah it was a nice game back,” Ellsbury said. “I’m definitely excited about it. I felt pretty good out there.”

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Ryan Vogelsong and Roy Halladay have returned to the big leagues. Both have had decent results so far, and ones that can’t completely be explained away by matchups. On the other hand, the underlying realities of their arsenals right now combine to make a powerful argument against trusting either veteran with a crucial late-season start for your fantasy team.

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It looks like Roy Halladay is done — at least for a while, as he is expected to hit the disabled list with a shoulder problem — but the real question is if he is Done. He’s about to turn 36 and he’s aching in the worst body part for a pitcher. Just how bad is this news?

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This week I will examine a few items, a couple pitchers making rehab starts, a couple pitchers returning from the disabled list, a couple pitchers with large velocity drops and a few hitters dealing with recent back injuries.

• Francisco Liriano and John Danks are making rehab starts. John Danks is throwing his fastball at 87 to 90 mph. These values are at or below his 2012 average value of 90.1 mph.

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When Jose Reyes slid awkwardly into second base in Kansas City on Friday night and twisted his ankle badly enough that it will keep him out until July, it wasn’t just Toronto Blue Jays fans who feared that a season already off to a poor start was quickly about to get worse. Fantasy players who had spent a high draft pick or a sizable amount of auction dollars on Reyes were suddenly left with a giant hole to fill, and few options at a shallow position to fill it. Using a random 12-team ESPN league I’m in as an example, the best available shortstops on the waiver wire today are Everth Cabrera, Pete Kozma, and Marwin Gonzalez. That’s a pretty big step down from Reyes no matter how you slice it.

However, this isn’t all bad news from a fantasy perspective. Rather than simply slide the next man in to replace Reyes, as the Yankees have done with Eduardo Nunez while Derek Jeter is out, the Blue Jays are planning to engage in a game of musical chairs that will shuffle a few pieces of their lineup into greater fantasy relevance. Read the rest of this entry »