A crazy number of major leaguers have been bitten by the injury bug in the first week of the 2021 season. I know this because nearly half of my fantasy team have already been day-to-day, on the injured list (IL), or are already done for the year. This includes two of the pitchers I drafted fairly high, James Paxton of the Mariners (who is looking at Tommy John surgery which will end his season) and Trevor Rosenthal of the A’s (who is having thoracic outlet surgery that will put him out at least a couple of months if not longer).
While my lineup has been affected pretty hard, fortunately I don’t take it all that seriously. Fantasy baseball – and football in the fall – mostly gives me a reason to keep up with who the players are. I like baseball a lot, but if I don’t have a reason to follow other teams’ lineups, I probably wouldn’t have much of an idea who they were.
For example, I don’t play fantasy hockey and watched the Red Wings play Nashville the past few nights (due to COVID protocols, the NHL is playing mini-series instead of one-off games, as is traditional). After two nights, I still don’t know who most of the Predators are. Come to think of it, there are a lot of Red Wings I’m not too familiar with, too.
What’s the reason for all of these baseball injuries? I suppose it could be over-training, or under-training, or just bad luck. But my guess is it’s how players are handled these days, and it has a lot to do with the amount of money teams have invested in them. When a guy was making $40K per season back in the 1970s and he strained a muscle or tweaked an ankle, he probably would just play through it, partially because he didn’t want to lose his job to the next guy in line and partially because rehabilitation techniques weren’t as sophisticated. Spit on it, rub some dirt on it, and keep playing was the attitude when I played ball in high school. (Full disclosure: I was terrible.)
These days, if a player has a minor injury, he gets held out for a game or two, and if it doesn’t improve right away it’s off to the ten-day injured list. When you’re paying someone hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, you’re going to protect your investment. Understandable, but frustrating to fans – and fantasy players.