Two weeks from now, we might find ourselves without a 100-win team in Major League Baseball for the first time since 2016. Coming into play today, the Phillies held the league’s best record, and they’re on pace for about 97 wins. With only 12 games left they still have the wiggle room to get there, but not much. What it takes to eke out an extra three wins beyond expectations at this point in the year might not get tougher every day, but it requires more grace from the heavens, at least. There are many walks of life where that is a bigger demand than resilience.
Coming into play on Monday night, the club had already enjoyed a fair amount of fortune. Trea Turner missed six weeks back at the start of the season. Bryce Harper, Alec Bohm, and Ranger Suárez have missed a couple of weeks here or there. JT Realmuto has gotten banged up the same way most any catcher over 30 does. Taijuan Walker had a mysterious blister that kept him out for a while. Austin Hays hasn’t been able to stay on the field since being acquired. But for the most part, their maladies have been of the bumps-and-bruises variety more than ones that are long term, especially for a team averaging the sort of age when weekend warriors supplement their morning vitamins with aspirin. Collectively, they have the fifth-fewest games missed to injury across the league.
Their season is not indicative of how contenders have had to deal with injuries in general. If we end up without a 100-win team, it won’t necessarily be because more teams are trying to win and are succeeding, creating more parity than in recent years. It’ll be because contenders dealt with more blows to their depth than they have since 2021, the first season we had coming out of the goofy pandemic season.
A contender in this context is defined by teams that are currently in or made the playoffs, or missed them by one game or a tie-breaker. We’ve had that distinct heartbreak in each of these four seasons. It’s hard to emphasize just how absurd the 2021 season was for injury, because only 10 teams made the playoffs compared to 12 in the others. The most distress came from the smallest player pool. The 2022-24 seasons look awfully close right now and will end up staying that way. On average, the actual numbers amount to a few weeks’ worth of games for a given contender. That’s something that can easily get overlooked in a league-wide examination, but for any given club, is one that becomes practical quickly. The other thing to remember here is that the 2024 season is incomplete—we can afford to do this exercise now because the playoff field is basically set. You can see the data regarding contenders here, and look at numbers for the whole league with our Injured List Ledger.
On a rate basis, contenders have had to fill more games in 2024 because of injury than in either of the two previous seasons. Those games represent a higher percentage of WARP projected from the start of the year, too. Certain NL teams impact this more than any other team in the league. The Padres have missed 20% of their WARP and the Dodgers have missed 22%. San Diego has had to absorb significant long-term losses to its pitching staff, notably with Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove, and a more recent IL stint for Ha-seong Kim. The Dodgers have lost most everyone and their mothers. Most recently, this regards Tyler Glasnow, whose setback with an elbow injury will keep him out for the rest of the season (including playoffs), and who left the team yesterday. They’re each paced by only the Braves: With big-time injuries to Spencer Strider, Ronald Acuña Jr., Austin Riley, Ozzie Albies, their stunt doubles, and their aunts, Atlanta has missed out on 26% of the projected WARP. It’s the second-biggest figure in the four-year look, beaten out only by the 2021 Rays.
On the other end of the spectrum of fortune are the Royals and Phillies, missing the fewest games among contenders and clocking in as the only ones to date that have missed out on less than 10% of their projected WARP. For the Royals, the longest-term injuries happened to Josh Taylor and Kyle Wright before the season started. You might have to stretch your mind to remember them, though. The toughest blow to absorb has been the season posted by Vinnie Pasquantino, who started slow after losing last season to a torn labrum, only to fracture his thumb catching an awkward throw after the summer sun had heated up his bat.
The Orioles stand out among other contenders for their depth. This is nothing new if you’ve been paying attention, but it also wasn’t a given that it was going to manifest. It’s rare for guys of Coby Mayo’s pedigree to be options only as September call-ups, and it can only happen when the guys ahead of him work out. Their ability to develop quality, mostly anonymous major-league arms like Albert Suárez have floated their rotation for a couple of years now, and have also needed to. The most surprising team might be the Mets. Their rotation bets have paid off, having gotten the healthiest seasons that each of Luis Severino, Jose Quintana, and Sean Manaea have posted in years to compensate for the lost season of Kodai Senga.
A contender being healthy at the end of their year relative to their preseason projections doesn’t make them a lock for postseason success. In 2021, the Braves missed out on the most WARP among contenders and won everything. In 2022, the Astros missed the second-least and were champions. Last year it was the Rangers, who were middle of the pack. It’s not that things are random so much as the season is multi-faceted. All of these teams made a trade deadline acquisition who had at least one significant moment in the postseason, if not one that had significant impact. It won’t be clear if a club has made a similar move this year until the moment it happens. If only PECOTA could be Nostradamus, just this one time.
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