Injuries Have Taken a Big Bite Out of the Reds This Season
by Slyde on Aug 11, 2009 1:30 PM EDT
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PrintI don't like to use injuries as an excuse. Every team faces some injuries every season and the fact is this team is bad. They'd be bad even if everybody had been healthy. Maybe they wouldn't be as bad, but they are not winning anything with their current roster construction. I imagine if the majority of the roster had stayed healthy, they'd probably be pushing .500 at best.
That's not to say that the injuries haven't been brutal. I'm not sure exactly how this compares to past seasons numerically, but the Reds have been battered by injuries all year long. By my estimate, they have lost 538 days on the big league roster for players listed as day-to-day or on the disabled list. This isn't a completely accurate representation though since Wilkin Castillo and Danny Richar were brought up just a few days before getting injured. It's hard to count their missing days as doing much harm to the roster. Still, 17 players from the Opening Day roster have missed a combined 441 days to injury. It's hard for any team to recover from such a string of injuries, not to mention one that wasn't particularly good to begin with.
Probably the worst outcome of these injuries though is that it has prevented the brass from truly evaluating the team to identify the holes on the roster. I fully expect to hear excuses in the off-season that Willy Taveras or Alex Gonzalez was never truly healthy, but with no mention of the fact that neither player has been particularly healthy over the last 3 seasons.
If anything, that is what these injuries have done to the season - created a crap excuse. Well that, and taken Edinson Volquez out of the 2010 equation. Stupid injuries.
Special thanks to Fantasy Pitch Fx's Injury Tool for making the data available and reasonably easy to compile. After the jump I have a complete list of days lost to injury for the Reds in 2009.
| Player | DTD | DL | Current |
| Ryan Hanigan | 6 | 0 | |
| Joey Votto | 10 | 24 | |
| Brandon Phillips | 7 | 0 | |
| Alex Gonzalez | 11 | 35 | |
| Edwin Encarnacion | 0 | 66 | |
| Laynce Nix | 3 | 0 | |
| Willy Taveras | 12 | 0 | |
| Jay Bruce | 0 | 30 | + |
| Ramon Hernandez | 0 | 23 | + |
| Chris Dickerson | 5 | 15 | + |
| Scott Rolen | 6 | 0 | + |
| Danny Richar | 0 | 39 | + |
| Wilkin Castillo | 0 | 52 | + |
| Micah Owings | 0 | 16 | + |
| Bronson Arroyo | 3 | 0 | |
| Johnny Cueto | 1 | 0 | + |
| Edinson Volquez | 0 | 85 | + |
| Mike Lincoln | 0 | 59 | |
| Jared Burton | 0 | 15 | |
| Nick Masset | 0 | 15 | |
| TOTAL | 64 | 474 | 9 |
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Ummmmmm.....
Wouldn’t this be more appropriate as a comment?
Baseball must be a great game to survive the fools who run it.— Bill Terry
by nycredsfan on Aug 11, 2009 1:57 PM EDT via mobile reply actions
Speaking of Ramon...
For as much crap as we all give Dusty for both his decision making processes, in-game management, and idiotic comments in the media, I think what we’ve seen in the wake of putting Ramon on the DL gives him some semblence of credibility.
The Reds placed Ramon on the DL on July 20th, and without their “First Half MVP,” they promptly went out and posted a 1-14 record over their next 15 games. Jay Bruce got hurt on the 13th, and the Reds were a .500 team until Ramon exited the lineup as well.
I’m not saying he’s worth $8.5 million, and I’m definitely not saying that Dusty’s really a genius, but I am saying that it’s readily obvious that Ramon meant more to this team than just the numbers he put up. Since he’s been out, we’ve sucked, frankly.
Set the gearshift to the high gear of your soul.
by Kevin Mitchell is Batman on Aug 11, 2009 1:59 PM EDT reply actions
Correlation does not equal causation
Baseball must be a great game to survive the fools who run it.— Bill Terry
by nycredsfan on Aug 11, 2009 2:02 PM EDT via mobile up reply actions 2 recs
Rec'd
Because you sounded like my Methods of Social Research professor last semester. Well done, sir.
"Taco fillings!"
by Lucky Pierre on Aug 11, 2009 9:15 PM EDT up reply actions
I was wondering if Hanigan's recent dip in form might be a case of playing too much
That’s another way we miss Hernandez. Because while the starts should have been more equally distributed, either one was a quality catcher that also brought you something at the plate. With Hernandez out, our backup is Craiggers. Something to consider.
by Brendanukkah on Aug 11, 2009 2:18 PM EDT up reply actions
Just a thought...
It may just be me, but I think the Reds pitched better with Ramon behind the plate. No offense to Hanigan, but you would always see Ramon trotting out to the mound periodically to check on his pitcher… Haven’t seen Hanigan do that much… I guess that’s Major League experience and I agree, Ramon did mean a lot more to this team than his numbers…
FWIW
the results of the pitching staff have been slightly better with Hanigan behind the dish. Don’t put too much weight in these numbers, but I thought it was worth noting that the results appear to favor Hanigan.
Catcher Inn OPSA R/9 Hanigan 512.2 .759 4.70 Herandez 419.0 .772 4.88 Tatum 64.0 .867 4.64
"It seems like we're not hitting because we're not getting hits." - Dusty being Dusty
by Slyde on Aug 11, 2009 4:41 PM EDT up reply actions 1 recs
I have a TI-83, too.
So the R-Squared value may be closer to .7 than .99, but I feel its certainly more than a coincidence.
Set the gearshift to the high gear of your soul.
by Kevin Mitchell is Batman on Aug 11, 2009 2:05 PM EDT reply actions
Are we worse without him? Probably.
Is he the main reason for the swing in record? I truly, sincerely doubt it.
Hanigan’s not been playing well offensively as of late, but one player going down, regardless of who they are, is not going to be the difference between an expected winning percentage of 0.500 and an expected winning percentage of < 0.300.
I'd be curious to see the number of "day-to-days" per team
not curious enough to do it myself, mind you, but curious enough to ask.
Anyone know if there's some data out there
pertaining to Strength & Conditioning personnel for different clubs and the times they’ve been there? I recall reading something about a month back about the Reds being dead last in time lost to injury, and perhaps there’s some answers in that direction.
The problem here is that for the most part the Red hire pussies.
Everytime one of these billion dollar athletes get a scratch he has to see Dr. Pok-em and then gets to loll around on the DL collecting full salary and worker’s comp. too. Most of these guys are lifers, just like the generational bums that live off of welfare and Medicaid. Why in some instances like the Hairston family you’ve 3 generations, the Boones 4 generations of living on the dole,
So in conclusion I believe that Reds players and the player’s Union is in collusion with Brack Obama and his socialist healthcare agenda,
If there ain’t a bone sticking out somewhere suck it and play,,,pussies.
Nick Johnson plays for the Marlins and gets out of bed and plays 1B with a crutch and then goes back for physical therapy…
WE need some men on this team..right Dude?
One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.
George Carlin
Well...
They seem to take off every day there aren’t cheerleaders so WTF I’m all for it!
I was on a flush draw?!?!?
The DTD days are what are so hard to stomach.
64 days lost to DTD.. 10+ for Votto, Gonzalez, and Taveras.. no DL time for Taveras.. playing short-handed. Fuckin’ up, Walt.
Taveras hasn't spent more than 5 days at one time in the DTD pool though
As much as we’d like to see him put on the DL, I understand why the Reds haven’t done it when he’s not even out a week.
"It seems like we're not hitting because we're not getting hits." - Dusty being Dusty
I know
my point is that I’m not sure this is exactly a screw up by the Reds. At least not much above and beyond the previous mistake of signing Taveras in the first place.
"It seems like we're not hitting because we're not getting hits." - Dusty being Dusty
Who was it, was it Gonzo or Votto earlier in the season?
How many guys were DTD’d before DL’d? Figure Rolen is one of those guys that should have just been dl’d
Is DTD an official designation?
I ask because Taveras sat out three games (5/30 – 6/1) after tweaking his hamstring. He then missed a few more early June games when he was in the middle of that awful slump.
Something clearly went wrong with his season around then. Taveras isn’t as bad as his current slash numbers show. I think he was used too heavily early on given his fragility and then rushed back after the hammy tweak.
As I understand it
Teams have to designate a player as DTD if they want to be able to retroactively put him on the DL for an injury.
"It seems like we're not hitting because we're not getting hits." - Dusty being Dusty
I think he had hammy problems from Day one
He never, until recently, ran like he has in the past. I still think they over spent on him but not a lot can be done about that now
Don't pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.
you know who else is DTD?
that was an awful joke… Ned sucks…
by GrooveLeg on Aug 11, 2009 3:56 PM EDT reply actions 1 recs
The only reasonable explanation I can see...
is that the Reds have to suck to make up for the fact that we have such a vastly superior blog content/community. We can’t have it all, right?
"Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!"
I can't either
that ‘forbidden’ message happens from time to time. It’ll probably be up again before the night is over
Baseball must be a great game to survive the fools who run it.— Bill Terry
Rolen to the 15-day DL to make room for Dickie
Well, that went well.
"We, as for me all seasons you are affected peculiarly in the edge of my seat and are happy concerning the fact that the Adam Dunn fan has been mixed up exactly." - Reynard-san
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