MASH Report (2/25/16)

• The MASH report will be going bi-weekly from now until the season’s ends. I will not have any reports the week starting on March 7th as I will be on vacation.

• In last week’s MASH report I reported the first player was placed on the 60-day DL. Some confusion always exists around the 60-day DL, so here are the basics.

1. There is no requirement for a team to put any player on the 60-day DL. A player can be on the 15-day DL all season.
2. The reason for the 60-day DL is to open up a 40 man roster spot. Teams will wait to make this move when they have a need for an extra spot when a non-forty-man-roster rookie is called up to the majors or a free agent is signed. Not before. Five more players were added to the 60-day DL and each move was so the team could pick up an additional player.

• RotoGraphs writer, Bradley Woodrum, took his talents over to MLB Trade Rumors and created a Tommy John surgery projection.

That makes predicting UCL injuries a valuable and worthy endeavor. From the GM to the fantasy owner, being able to steer away from players with early warnings signs of UCL injuries can save a team’s season. The red flags for UCL injuries are not big, though, and many UCL injuries appear from nowhere. But using a large data set, culled from a variety of valuable resources, we can find the tiny red flags, the little baby red flags.

Great work by Bradley and I’m glad to see someone else dive into the injury fray.

• Now onto some of my own work. I heard mentioned in a CBSSportsline podcast recently that Anthony Rizzo may be injury prone because he got hit by so many pitches (30 times or in 4.2% of his play appearances). I went and took all the hitters with a minimum of 200 PA and set the dividing line for HBP/PA at 2%. I then found their DL chances. The non-HBP group went on the DL 31.9% of the time (1417 of 4446) while the hit-by-pitch crowd was at 37.3% (152 of 407). With the data, I ended up with a P-value (percentage chance the data was random noise) of 0.112 which is considered to not be enough of a significant difference. So signs point to higher HBP hitter to be injury prone, but we can’t be sure.

• Josh Hamilton will be on the DL until at least May 1st as he goes through an 8-week rehabilitation program.

Hamilton was given stem cell and platelet-rich plasma injections to help speed up the recovery, and he will be on crutches for the next seven to 10 days. The Rangers have set up an eight-week recovery program designed to get Hamilton back in the lineup by May 1.

Depending on a league’s settings, I like the option of taking him late as a DL stash. He might amount to nothing, but what else is available late in drafts with Hamilton’s potential upside. According to another article, ten players are possible candidates to replace him in left field.

• Freddie Freeman will probably not start the season on the DL, but it sounds like his wrist is still not close to being 100%.

Freeman will therefore spend most of this next week continuing to complete the exercises that he has been limited to over the past month. As he moves toward being cleared to face live pitching, he will be permitted to participate in all fielding and conditioning drills.

“We’re going to take it slow,” Freeman said. “For me, it’s day to day. There’s some good days and some bad days. “There have not been any setbacks. A setback would be something that is seriously wrong and there is not anything that is seriously wrong. It’s just when you’re coming off an injury like the wrist injury I had last year, you just want to make sure everything is OK.”

He has been lumped into a tier of first-basemen with Adrian Gonzalez and Eric Hosmer. I will move him below those two now.

• Billy Hamilton is not 100% recovered from shoulder surgery.

Hamilton had an arthroscopic procedure in late September to repair a torn labrum and spent most of the offseason in Cincinnati rehabilitating. He does not expect to be held back during drills at Spring Training, but he isn’t quite 100 percent healthy.

“Not 100 percent yet, but I’m working at it,” Hamilton said. “I can still do everything. But there are some problems here and there, but not enough to stop doing anything. I have no limitations.

“I should be ready for when the games start.”

• R.A. Dickey had offseason knee surgery but says he is recovered.

The offseason took on a different tone this year for Blue Jays knuckleballer R.A. Dickey, as he spent the first two months recovering from surgery on his right knee.

Dickey revealed the news Sunday afternoon, which was the first day pitchers and catchers were required to report for Spring Training. He needed the procedure to repair a torn ligament in his knee and faced a recovery time of four to six weeks.

The veteran right-hander said the knee had become a lingering issue last year and that he wanted to get the area cleaned up during the offseason. That delayed his workouts, but Dickey said everything feels great and he doesn’t anticipate any problems this spring.

I was low on Dickey to start with because of possible medical issues like this one.

• Tanner Scheppers is out until at least the All-Star game with a torn cartilage in his knee.

• Tommy Hunter could be out until mid-May

https://twitter.com/MLBastian/status/701129632204992512

• In leagues where C.J. Wilson is in play, look at other subpar pitchers as he is already dealing with shoulder tendinitis.

• And this Matt Cain news just came out while I was finishing up this article. Looks like more information to come.

There is an issue with Matt Cain. He is not throwing today as planned, and the team expects to provide an update later today. #sfgiants

— Henry Schulman BLUE CHECK MARK (@hankschulman) February 25, 2016

Players possibly on the DL in 2016

The Red players have had updates since the last report. Click on the “Date” for a link to go to the latest article on the player.