November 7, 2012

Collateral Damage

2012 Year-End Injury Summary: AL West

by Corey Dawkins and Stephani Bee

There were no significant surprises in the NL West rankings, but in today’s column, one team will most likely surprise some about their health record.

Division: American League West

WARP lost Divisional Ranking (Overall Ranks—Best to worst):

1. Seattle Mariners (2)
2. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (11)
3. Oakland Athletics (19)
4. Texas Rangers (21)

Seattle Mariners
Total Adjusted WARP Lost (TAWL): 0.72
Number of DL trips (Days):  12 (582)
Number of DL & DTD trips (Days): 39 (673)

One of the more surprising teams this year from an injury standpoint is the Seattle Mariners. Ranking second in all of baseball in TAWL, the Mariners were not a smoke-and-mirrors club; they ranked in the top five in every metric we looked at: overall TAWL, hitters TAWL, pitchers TAWL, DL count, DL days missed, DL and DTD counts, and DL and DTD days missed.

Franklin Gutierrez cost the most in terms of TAWL. The center fielder missed 118 games recovering from a pectoral strain, plantar fasciitis, concussion, and a groin strain. He was projected to provide 1.4 WARP in spring training, but the injuries cost 0.38 WARP and could have played a role even when he was on the field, leading to his year-end WARP of 0.3. Other costly injuries to Mariners hitters include Miguel Olivo (groin strain: 0.19 WARP/26% of TAWL) and Brendan Ryan (bruised elbow: 0.06 WARP/7.7% TAWL). Michael Saunders and his groin strain led to a loss of .05 WARP and 6.9 percent of the team TAWL.

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