The Fifth Element: Injuries

[dbminn]

In the words of Captain Obvious, the 2016 edition of the Minnesota Twins have been awful. Thousands of words have been dedicated to the top reasons for their demise:

1. An incompetent front office. From a lack of off-season trades to poor roster management, the FO has failed to commit to either "win now" or "bring up the kids". (TD members have provided a thousand other examples of FO foibles that don't need to be mentioned here)
2. The prospects and second-year players have yet to develop into solid major leaguers. Rosario, Buxton, Duffey, Murphy and, I would argue, even Sano have had a bumpy ride this year.
3. Okay performance, at best, by the team's veterans. Nunez has been a pleasant surprise and Dozier has recently turned red hot. But Plouffe and Mauer haven't set the world on fire and Jepsen has been a total disaster.
4. A terrible bullpen. By whatever measure, the relievers have melted down.

These flaws have conspired to bring the Twins from a winning record in 2015 to the bottom of the barrel in 2016. But there is a fifth element that, IMO, has been overlooked: the sheer magnitude of time lost to injuries.

 

Starting Pitching

 

The Twins entered spring training with hopes that the starters would be league average, with veterans at the top of the rotation, Duffey in support and Berrios soon to arrive. Instead, Duffey started in the minors and has struggled with the Twins. Berrios has had only four starts. And, of course, Nolasco is now a reignited dumpster fire. Still, injuries have played an important role:

• Phil Hughes was put on the disabled list on June 10th and will be lost for the season. I argue he pitched injured from April until he was placed on the DL.
• Ervin Santana was on the DL from April 20th to May 6th.
• Kyle Gibson was on the DL from April 23rd to June 10th. He has been ineffective both before and after the DL, at least until his most recent start.

The three veteran starters have spent about 180 days either on the DL or pitching injured. Most teams would suffer from losing the top of their rotation for any length of time. For the Twins, it has been a disaster.

 

Relief Pitching

 

Again, Jepsen has been awful. He was expected to pitch either the 7th and 8th inning. May was slated to be the second RP and Perkins was to close the game. Unfortunately, Perkins will miss almost the entire year and May has been on the DL since June 10th.

 

Two-thirds of the back end of the bullpen has missed time in 2016 due to injury. Not inconsequential.

 

Position Players

 

The impact of injuries to position players is not as drastic. Still, Plouffe and Escobar were each lost for 15 days and Sano spent a month on the DL. (Santana and Mastroianni have also visited the list)

 

In 2015, the Twins had the fourth lowest amount of time lost to the DL (about 500 days). One could argue that the only impactful injury was the loss of Perkins during the second half.  In 2016, my rough math shows that the Twins have already lost about 350 days from front-line players.

 

Injuries are not the main reason the 2016 Twins are awful, but IMO they have had a serious impact. Looking forward, we can only hope that the pitching stays healthy. A better rotation will move the team to mediocre from unbearable and provide a more positive situation as the youngsters develop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Halsey Hall]

When a scrub gets injured, it could be a good thing. 

[HitInAPinch]

So, Twins management is responsible for the players injuries.  Got it   

[LaBombo]

 

So, Twins management is responsible for the players injuries.  Got it   

I don't see where anybody is saying that, but what the hell, I'll say it.

 

Players have both the innate and developed skills of staying healthy. It's hard to quantify and even harder to predict, but it's there.

 

The Twins' management is responsible for selecting the players on the field, and the ones they picked either are or are not good at avoiding missed time due to injury.

 

Luck or the lack of it obviously plays a huge part, but at the end of the day, the Twins front office and their trainers and medical staff are responsible in some measure for the health of their players.

 

How much blame they deserve and how or even whether they'll held accountable is pretty far down on my list of concerns about the front office at the moment.  I'll just say that the avoidance and handling of player injuries is one of many areas where I'd like to see improvement when new leadership takes over, and leave it at that.