For the New York Yankees, the 2023 season was painful in ways both figurative and literal.
The literal aspect of the Bronx bane was the pain itself -- in the form of an avalanche of injuries. One by one players fell, and so did the Yankees in the American League standings. After a preseason filled with the usual high hopes, baseball's most successful franchise limped home in fourth place, barely clearing the .500 mark it has exceeded for more than three decades.
If this outcome did not feel so familiar, perhaps ever-forgiving New Yorkers would have dismissed the campaign as bad luck and turned the page. But the angst carried over into the offseason, because bad luck didn't seem like a sufficient explanation. The whole season felt like a rerun of something Yankees fans have seen a few too many times.
Is there a way to document this? Have injuries or, to be more precise, the impact from injuries affected the Yankees more than other teams? What teams have been the best at sidestepping the IL in recent seasons, and which have struggled? Who is most at risk for the season to come?
To answer these questions, we created the Injury Index (see the "How we calculated the Injury Index" box below for our methodology). The aim is to look at how frequently teams have used the injured list over the past few seasons and estimate the production they have lost from players spending too much time in the trainer's room and not enough time on the field. We also applied our research to each team's current roster, to see who might be most at risk for the 2024 season.
Tier 1: Heavy IL use
Note: Teams on this tier have an Injury Index at least half a standard deviation above average.
1. New York Yankees (Injury Index: 111.5)
2. Tampa Bay Rays (110.2)
3. Los Angeles Dodgers (110.0)
4. Atlanta Braves (106.7)
5. Minnesota Twins (106.6)
6. Houston Astros (105.5)
To a certain extent, injuries are baked into each team's planning for a season. Every team will have them. No general manager maps out a season thinking they will have the same 26-man active roster from April to October.
The average team lost an estimated 5.5 wins above replacement (WAR) last season, and it's the marginal numbers -- above that number -- that start to become a differentiator. The Yankees lost an estimated 14.7 WAR because of IL placements last season, or 9.2 WAR above average. The second-worst figure was the Twins' 5.2 mark.
The Yankees' one-season Injury Index (128) was one of the highest of the past half decade. Those losses were spread out to an unusual extent between position players (122 index, second highest in the majors behind the Angels) and pitchers (124, highest in baseball).
Here's another figure: 12.5. That was the shortfall the Yankees' 82 wins represented as compared to their consensus over/under figure before the 2023 season (94.5). Only three teams had a larger disparity: the White Sox, Cardinals and Mets. While we can't attribute all of that to injuries, you certainly can't set aside that factor, either.
But, again, this is a pattern, which is how the Yankees ended up topping the Injury Index, a list you really don't want to top. New York's season-by-season ranking in Injury Index, beginning in 2019: second, fourth, fifth, 18th and first. That 18th-place finish in 2022 was the only year in the calculation when the Yankees didn't post a higher-than-average Injury Index. Perhaps not coincidentally, the 2022 Yankees won 99 games and advanced to the ALCS.
The only teams to rate above average four times during the five years in the formula are the Rays (who have been above average all five seasons), Yankees and Braves. Good teams, yes, but there are a lot of possible explanations for why some of the elite teams from recent years top the leaderboard, or are at the bottom of it, depending on how you want to view things.
The first and most obvious is that they have good players whose lost WAR adds up fast when they hit the IL. Also, perhaps they are willing to take on more risk with older, established players, recognizing that whatever contributions they get are likely to be impactful.
There could be more factors in play. Perhaps teams in contention are pushing players harder. Maybe they are proactive in injury prevention and are more willing to place players on the list, knowing the overall strength of the roster gives them a buffer. Maybe the way they use the players, in particular the pitchers, correlates both to high-impact performance and high risk for injury. What we can say for sure is that these teams have lost more production in terms of WAR than other teams, and the Yankees currently have the most detrimental combination of injury quantity and the quality of players getting hurt.
Tier 2: Average/above-average IL use
7. Los Angeles Angels (103.7)
8. San Diego Padres (102.1)
9. New York Mets (101.6)
10. Boston Red Sox (100.0)
11. St. Louis Cardinals (99.6)
12. Chicago Cubs (99.6)
The Angels' figure is largely driven by the frequent absences of Mike Trout, though he's far from the only frequently injured Halo. The Angels' Injury Index can't be pointed out without alluding to another measure: Over the past five seasons, L.A. has finished an average of 11.1 wins below its preseason over/under consensus. No other team is even close to that.
The only reason the Angels don't rank further up the Injury Index is that they've actually been better than average in terms of IL placements on the pitching side. But because of Trout, Anthony Rendon and others, only the Twins have a higher Injury Index on the hitting side (113).
Tier 3: Below-average IL use
13. Cincinnati Reds (99.3)
14. Detroit Tigers (99.1)
15. Philadelphia Phillies (98.9)
16. San Francisco Giants (98.8)
17. Miami Marlins (98.4)
18. Chicago White Sox (98.3)
19. Toronto Blue Jays (98.3)
20. Seattle Mariners (97.8)
21. Milwaukee Brewers (97.5)
22. Colorado Rockies (97.0)
23. Baltimore Orioles (96.6)
The Phillies are the team that stands out in this group. That's because of their combination of a star-heavy roster construction with a little less organizational depth than some of the other powers. Yet the Phils have been highly successful the past couple of years because they've managed to keep their top performers in good working order.
To wit: Last season, just two teams had at least seven position players qualify for the batting title and at least three pitchers qualify for the ERA title. Those teams were the Phillies and Braves. While you never want to abandon depth, that kind of consistency is something all teams should seek.
Tier 4: Light IL use
24. Cleveland Guardians (95.8)
25. Pittsburgh Pirates (95.5)
26. Kansas City Royals (94.9)
27. Texas Rangers (93.9)
28. Arizona Diamondbacks (93.5)
29. Washington Nationals (93.0)
30. Oakland Athletics (92.4)
Not surprisingly, this list is dominated by young teams, including many in the throes of a rebuild. You can also tactfully suggest that the WAR component in the Injury Index isn't going to be that high for some of these teams. In other words, the A's don't have the lowest Injury Index because they are better at preventing injuries. It's because their injuries just haven't been that impactful.
In case you didn't notice, the eye-popping aspect of this group is that the Rangers and Diamondbacks -- our two most recent World Series combatants -- are members.
This doesn't make the Injury Index a leading indicator of championship aspirations. Still, looking at it with hindsight, the Diamondbacks' MLB-low 2023 index (87) has to be seen as a key factor in Arizona getting into the postseason in the first place. As it was, Arizona just squeaked into the field, and a major injury to a key player, such as Corbin Carroll or Zac Gallen, might have ended the playoff run before it began.
Meanwhile, the Rangers' index is tamped down by low scores in the first four seasons of the calculation, all of them rebuilding campaigns for Texas. Last year's figure creeped up as Bruce Bochy worked around in-season injuries of various durations to stars like Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, Corey Seager and Nathan Eovaldi. He did so to great effect: The Rangers are the defending champs. Also credit GM Chris Young for responding to tough injury luck by acquiring high-quality replacements (Scherzer) or making timely call-ups (Evan Carter).
Not for nothing, the ongoing presence of those injury-plagued players on the 2024 Rangers will color the team's outlook in this department going forward.
2024 risk assessment
While we can't predict injuries, we do know that one predictor of future injury is past injury. Thus, we can examine each team's current 40-man roster and calculate a Risk Index assessment based on days spent on the IL for each player in recent seasons.
As with the primary Injury Index, this measure weights recent seasons more heavily. Only the past five years are included in the calculation, which determines a "likely" percentage of days lost, based on this recent history. To assign a possible WAR impact to the Risk Index, projections from Steamer were used.
Consider Trout. Over the past five seasons, the number of days he has spent on the IL, according to the Spotrac data, is 0, 0, 139, 33 and 88. The weighted average of that sequence comes out to 66 which, if you consider the typical season duration to be 180 days, is 36.6%. That percentage is the injury risk estimate we are identifying for Trout in 2024. We've made the same calculation for every player currently on a 40-man roster and applied it as a kind of penalty to an "ideal" WAR, one the player might achieve if he were able to occupy an everyday role for a full, healthy season.
Caveat No. 1: We don't have good data on minor league injuries so those aren't included here.
Caveat No. 2: It's a tough call whether players who have landed on the 60-day IL already -- and are considered unlikely to return this season -- should be included. In this case, they are. One could argue that at this early juncture, teams have built rosters around their absence. In the end, we decided that the absence of players like Brandon Woodruff (Brewers), Drey Jameson (Diamondbacks) and the pitching half of Shohei Ohtani (Dodgers) represent real production loss for their teams.
Highest risk indexes
1. Dodgers (137.7 | hitter rank: 14 | pitcher rank: 1)
2. Rays (115.3 | hitters: 8 | pitchers: 3)
3. Marlins (110.9 | hitters: 23 | pitchers: 2)
4. Brewers (107.2 | hitters: 21 | pitchers: 4)
5. Twins (106.6 | hitters: 2 | pitchers: 14)
6. Yankees (106.6 | hitters: 3 | pitchers: 9)
7. Rangers (106.3 | hitters: 19 | pitchers: 5)
8. Braves (104.9 | hitters: 7 | pitchers: 10)
9. Tigers (104.6 | hitters: 10 | pitchers: 7)
10. Pirates (102.5 | hitters: 4 | pitchers: 16)
This list is pretty easy to pin down. The Dodgers won't have Ohtani's pitching, but Clayton Kershaw, Walker Buehler, Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin all carry a lot of recent injury baggage. That quintet of ailing wings is by itself a championship-worthy roster. That's why the Dodgers' risk index is through the ceiling. If past history is any indication, we can expect L.A. to have already mapped out a course around this reality.
Elsewhere, the Rays have churned through pitchers at an alarming rate and are looking at a 2024 campaign without much, if anything, from Shane McClanahan. The Brewers won't have Woodruff. Byron Buxton's injury woes and a lot of recent injury trouble for Carlos Correa underscore the high risk score of the Twins. For the Marlins, it comes down to the sad absence of Sandy Alcantara.
The Yankees, once again, are high up on the list. Perhaps they'll have better injury luck, or perhaps Brian Cashman and his staff will have enough organizational depth to account for this ongoing irritation. Maybe having a super-slim Giancarlo Stanton show up to spring training in his reduced form will be the omen Yankees fans need.
Lowest risk indexes
20. Cardinals (94.5 | hitter rank: 20 | pitcher rank: 18)
21. Red Sox (94.5 | hitters: 9 | pitchers: 27)
22. Mariners (93.7 | hitters: 5 | pitchers: 30)
23. Cubs (93.5 | hitters: 17 | pitchers: 20)
24. Padres (93.3 | hitters: 12 | pitchers: 26)
25. Blue Jays (92.6 | hitters: 11 | pitchers: 29)
26. White Sox (92.1 | hitters: 16 | pitchers: 25)
27. Nationals (90.3 | hitters: 25 | pitchers: 21)
28. Rockies (89.0 | hitters: 27 | pitchers: 24)
29. Guardians (88.4 | hitters: 29 | pitchers: 23)
30. Athletics (86.9 | hitters: 30 | pitchers: 28)
This group will be interesting to revisit after the season because it can't be explained by youth and/or rebuilding. The Cardinals, Red Sox, Mariners, Cubs, Padres, Guardians and Blue Jays are all teams pushing for playoff spots and appear to have compiled rosters with relatively low injury risk.
The Red Sox's standing in this area has an interesting component: Chris Sale's injury risk (a 60.9% impact on his ideal WAR projection) now belongs to the Braves. Atlanta, as you may have noticed, is firmly in the high-risk injury group.
Others:: 11. Angels (102.3); 12. Orioles (101.4); 13. Mets (100.8); 14. Royals (99.4); 15. Astros (99.4); 16. Phillies (98.1); 17. Diamondbacks (97.0); 18. Reds (95.2); 19. Giants (95.1)
Takeaways
Let's run through a few observations/theories from the data to keep in mind:
• Better teams tend to have more injury impact. This isn't hard to figure out. Basically, good teams have better players, right? When a really good player is injured, the impact of that is significant.
• Teams with higher payrolls are able to leverage their financial clout by taking on more injury risk. The Yankees appear to be one such club, as they've acquired previously injury-prone pitchers in recent years like Carlos Rodon and Jameson Taillon. The Dodgers have occasionally signed injured pitchers to two-year contracts hoping to get some return in the second year, pitchers such as Jimmy Nelson, Danny Duffy and Tommy Kahnle.
• No great revelation here, but something to keep in mind: Older players get hurt more than younger players. Thus teams with very young rosters tend to score lower on the Injury Index and vice versa.
• Scoring high on the Injury Index is in no way a death knell for a team's playoff chances. Excessive injuries can certainly kneecap a season, as arguably happened to the 2023 Yankees. But the best teams feature enough quality depth to cope with injury problems. When you look at the index through the prism of exceeding or falling short of expectation, it becomes as much a measure of depth building as an injury management assessment.
Injury analysis is always a dicey game because there are so many unknowns when using publicly available information. That's why we focus on IL placements, which are a concrete fact, even though that is only part of the story. Some players play while injured -- the 2023 Yankees are again a good example, as Anthony Rizzo continued to play despite a concussion -- and that undermines production. Sometimes players on the IL may not actually be all that injured, but teams are merely being proactive about heading off bigger trouble down the line. Many other factors are at work.
Questions remain, but the patterns are still interesting. Some teams have consistently been more present on the IL than others. Some have worked through this almost as if they expected it. Others have seen the impact of the injuries undercut promising seasons.
The Yankees clearly represent the third kind of team right now. If 2024 proves to be a bounce-back season in the Bronx, chances are either their Injury Index will be lower or their depth will hold up much better than it did in 2023.