This article is part of our Collette Calls series.
We are now down to the final two months of the fantasy baseball season and I hope many of you are still in contention for your league titles. I normally am cheering others on this time of the year, but I'm in contention for multiple titles so I'm very much tuned into daily transactions while hoping to get certain players back in my lineups such as Jazz Chisholm Jr., Cedric Mullins, Corey Seager, Starling Marte and Josh Donaldson. OK, so I'm joking about the last one, whose name was included to see if you were still paying attention.
Players hit the injured list in a variety of ways. Some hit it with an acute injury, such as the broken foot Jarred Kelenic suffered while kicking a cooler. Others, like Gabriel Moreno, succumb to soreness that they can no longer play through and the club decides to give the player some down time to accelerate the healing process. Many often feel that once these players come back off the injured list, they'll resume their pre-injury production, as they're now 100 percent healthy, but is that the case? Given that we have several big-name fantasy players who are out with injuries but set to return in the near future, let's take a look at both how quickly some players have returned this season and how their production was in the first 28 days after their return.
We always have access to the current injury list via our MLB
We are now down to the final two months of the fantasy baseball season and I hope many of you are still in contention for your league titles. I normally am cheering others on this time of the year, but I'm in contention for multiple titles so I'm very much tuned into daily transactions while hoping to get certain players back in my lineups such as Jazz Chisholm Jr., Cedric Mullins, Corey Seager, Starling Marte and Josh Donaldson. OK, so I'm joking about the last one, whose name was included to see if you were still paying attention.
Players hit the injured list in a variety of ways. Some hit it with an acute injury, such as the broken foot Jarred Kelenic suffered while kicking a cooler. Others, like Gabriel Moreno, succumb to soreness that they can no longer play through and the club decides to give the player some down time to accelerate the healing process. Many often feel that once these players come back off the injured list, they'll resume their pre-injury production, as they're now 100 percent healthy, but is that the case? Given that we have several big-name fantasy players who are out with injuries but set to return in the near future, let's take a look at both how quickly some players have returned this season and how their production was in the first 28 days after their return.
We always have access to the current injury list via our MLB Injury Report, but that report only tells us who is out at that moment. Meanwhile, the Injury Report from Roster Resource at Fangraphs has a very useful comprehensive view of who was injured, when they went to the IL, and when they returned. That helpful report is what will fuel the data throughout the rest of this article. I filtered the data to only include injuries incurred in the 2023 calendar year and have a clean 100 injuries in the data set, ranging from one appendectomy to 21 strained hamstrings.
The table below attempts to group injury types showing the frequency of the reported injury as well as the average number of days past the initially reported date the grouping of injuries returned:
Injury | Count | Avg Return Delay (Days) |
|---|---|---|
Strain | 48 | 15 |
Hamstring | 21 | 12 |
Oblique | 11 | 14 |
Back | 10 | 14 |
Fracture | 6 | 14 |
Groin | 6 | 11 |
Hand | 5 | 13 |
Shoulder | 4 | 28 |
Knee | 4 | 24 |
I took the liberty of grouping the variety of strains in the top line but then also called out the most common strains in other lines. The notable data here is the average delay in a player returning from their first eligible date from the injury list is right at 15 days. Any of us who have rostered oft-injured players are likely not surprised with this number given players rarely come back as quickly as initially reported. The player always shrugs off the initial injury news, the team downplays the seriousness of the injury, and then the 10- or 15-day stay becomes a month. Let's start with hamstrings.
Eloy Jimenez hit a respectable .269/.321/.449 with four homers in the three weeks between returning from his hamstring and needing an appendectomy. TJ Friedl has stolen 10 of his 16 bases this season since returning from the injured list, so the timely return did not impact either performance. Meanwhile, Ramon Laureano hit an abysmal .211/.266/.333 with six steals in the 158 plate appearances he had between his hamstring injury and his return to the IL with a broken hand. Alec Bohm was one of those guys who did not suffer from the time off, as he hit .312/.343/.473 in the month after returning from his injury. Conversely, Giancarlo Stanton hit .145/.235/.289 in the month following his lengthy stay on the IL, showing that while extra time may help fully heal, the lengthy time away from live action can also be an issue. His teammate, Harrison Bader, has been back just about one month and has 3 steals along with a .253/.284/.358 triple-slash line. He had 6 steals and a .267/.295/.511 triple-slash before his hamstring injury.
Oblique injuries haven't fared much better, but the data is mostly incomplete, with the most notable name on the list having returned from the IL just two games ago:
Seiya Suzuki opened the season on the IL with an oblique injury and came back just over one week later than initially expected. He went on to hit .267/.353/.406 with nine extra-base hits in that time. Leody Taveras also had a delayed start to the season due to a spring oblique injury but hit .299/.361/.425 with eight extra-base hits in the first month after his return. Jake Burger was hitting .224/.312/.612 with seven homers before going down with an oblique in early May and came back to hit .269/.289/.591 with eight homers in his first month back off the IL. The data around first-month performance returning from this injury is better than it was for hamstrings, which should buoy the hopes of Yordan Alvarez owners the rest of the season and maybe even Jazz Chisholm Jr. owners once a timeline for his return is established.
Back injuries are another story. The initial expected date for back injuries has rarely held up this season, but I am as surprised as anyone to see the Rays have two pitchers on this list who returned exactly when they were expected to do so:
C.J. Cron wasn't exactly crushing the baseball, hitting .228/.277/.426 with 6 homers before his back troubles first pushed him to the IL, but he's hit .317/.349/.600 with 5 homers in the 63 plate appearances since returning from the IL last month. Back troubles still linger for him, however, as he hasn't played since July 21st. Yoan Moncada has nearly spent as much time in Charlotte as I have this season and was just activated after I watched him play live in person on Sunday in a loss to Memphis. Brandon Lowe had back troubles which derailed his 2022 season and after missing nearly all of June on the IL has come back to hit .250/.350/.462 with 7 extra-base hits in 60 July plate appearances. Chas McCormick has had a surprising fantasy season overall, but he was struggling with a .219/.286/.422 triple-slash line in his first month back from his back injury. Michael Harris II was even worse with a .169/.261/.286 triple-slash in his first month back from his early back injury before turning his season around this summer.
Mike Trout owners, take note of the data surrounding fractures this season, as it is not good news:
The average delay in returning from a fracture is 15 days, with only Adam Duvall making a timely return. It's worth noting Duvall was out two full months after his fractured hand and has hit .200/.272/.373 with 4 homers since returning. Trout was eligible to return off the 10-day IL on July 14, but that obviously didn't happen. The only other player to suffer a hamate injury this season on the report is Taylor Trammell, who came back 24 days after he was eligible to do so. That type of timeline would put Trout back on the field August 8, but that would also mean he would be headed out on a rehab assignment by the end of this month. I won't even begin to compare the abilities of Trammell and Trout, but will instead remind of you of what I wrote about hamate bone injuries in July of last season. It would be a great story if Trout's return was closer to Juan Soto's in immediate production than some of the other names on that list given the Angels are making a push to get to the postseason with the recent acquisitions of Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez:
Finally, groin injuries such as the one Cedric Mullins has now and the one which may put Yandy Diaz on the IL by press time are a bit more problematic:
I removed the pitchers from the pool since the focus is on the hitters, but arms such as Michael Lorenzen and Jameson Taillon returned on time from their groin injuries while Adam Wainwright, Ian Hamilton, and Michael Grove took considerably longer. This current stint on the IL for Mullins is his second one since the end of May related to a groin injury, and he hit .246/.318/.368 with two stolen base attempts in the four weeks between injuries. Mullins is a prime example of a player changing behaviors and struggling to return to fantasy form off such an injury. Diaz has been relatively healthy this season, but lower-half injuries have derailed him before and this injury comes just as Diaz was rediscovering some of the loft which had abandoned him over the past six to seven weeks. The decision on what to do with Diaz will not be made until before Friday's game at Houston.
I know many of us are counting on the return of key players to our lineups down the stretch, but we must exercise patience and level our expectations of what those players will provide coming off the injured list. Some are able to pick up where the left off while those dealing with back and groin injuries have had rather mixed results, most of which have been underwhelming.
