Injuries happen - 2022

[Frobby]

From 2010-2019 I had a running thread called Injuries Happen, which documented all the injuries for the AL East teams each year.    Over the decade, an “average” AL East team lost 735 games a year to injury, broken down like this: 356 games for position players, 157 games for starting pitchers, 222 games for relief pitchers.  You can see all the details in that thread.   

So with that context, here are the 2022 Orioles.   Their position players were incredibly healthy.   They lost only 65 games to injury: 30 for Ramon Urias, 10 for Ryan Mountcastle, 25 for the much-lamented Jonathan Arauz.   Note: Adley Rutschman’s injury at the beginning of the season isn’t counted because he wasn’t on the 40-man roster at the time.  But even if that was included, the Orioles’ total would only be 105, still vastly below the average of 356.   

Starting pitchers were another story entirely.   Starters lost 443 games, as follows: John Means 156, Chris Ellis 146, Dean Kremer 55, Tyler Wells 54, Kyle Bradish 32.   Obviously nobody is really bemoaning the loss of Ellis, but the numbers also don’t include Grayson Rodriguez, who probably would have been called up in June, but for his lat injury.  

By contrast, the bullpen was very healthy, losing only 115 games to injury, about half the average amount.   Of the 115, 97 were from Travis Lakins Sr., who probably wouldn’t have been on the 25-man roster that much anyway.   The other relievers affected were Joey Kriebehl who was shut down for 13 games in June, and Felix Bautista who is missing the final 5 games.   So, that’s an extremely healthy bullpen.   

Add it all up, and that’s 623 games lost to injury, about 112 games less than the AL East average from 2010-2019.   

Now, you could argue that injuries to starting pitchers are more impactful than other injuries, but I don’t know if I buy that, except that losing a starter is usually more impactful than losing a reliever.   Personally, I’d say overall our luck with injuries was no worse than average this year, and probably better, with the good fortune of our position players slightly outweighing the misfortunes of our pitching staff.   

We go into 2023 pretty much knowng John Means will miss 80ish games.   Ellis and Lakins may not fit into our plans for 2023 in any event.   Hopefully the rest of our starters (Rodriguez included) can stay healthier next year, because we almost surely will experience more injuries than in 2022 on the position players front, and probably among the relievers, too.