Injuries always cause trouble to contending teams in Major League Baseball, but the teams that take the next step to the championship level are the ones that can overcome those injuries. The current injury list is 173 people long, with big names like Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Matt Kemp on the list. The big names on the list, though, are not always the ones that have the biggest effect on the teams. The Yankees have done well this season without both of their stars and the Dodgers have actually been more exciting with Yasel Puig than they were with Kemp in the lineup. With that being said, I believe there are four teams that need to be able to overcome players on the DL if they are going to make the next step to contend for a championship.
The Washington Nationals are underachieving, big time. After a 98 win season in 2012, the Nats were expected to be just as good, if not better this season, but as of right now they are six wins behind where they were at the same point last season. It is hard to understand what has caused the Nationals to slip as much as they have this season, but recent injuries to key players sure have not helped them recover.
Danny Espinosa was not having a great season, and that’s putting it nicely, but losing a starting middle infielder who was playing excellent defense is not an easy thing to recover from. The loss of Espinosa is not the biggest hurdle the Nats have to recover from, a much tougher loss to overcome are the two young arms in the starting rotation. Ross Detwiler, and of course, Stephen Strasburg are going to be hard to overcome. Detwiler was off to a tremendous start, despite a 2-4 record, with a 2.78 ERA. Even without run support in his starts, he was giving his team a chance to win every time he was on the mound. Strasburg has had a very similar this season, going only 3-5 with a 2.45 ERA, and also not enough run support. Still, the biggest loss to the team is Bryce Harper, the reigning NL Rookie of the Year. Harper was playing at an MVP level before a left knee bruise put him on the DL, and without him in the lineup the Nationals lose a spark plug that could be the key to victory every time.
The Nats will not have to wait long to get two of these guys back. Espinosa is set to appear in a rehab game this week and Strasburg is very close to doing the same. Harper is at least a week away from being back, but if the Nats can continue to maintain until he comes back, they will have a shot to come back in the division.
The Cleveland Indians were in the perfect position, first place, when the injury bug struck them this season. The first blow was losing their closer, Chris Perez, to a sore shoulder. His time away from the team could become even longer after he and his wife were recently busted for possession of marijuana. Losing a closer is always a tough blow for a team, but it has been really tough because the stellar setup man Vinnie Pestano has not been as stellar since taking over the closer’s role.
The closer position has hurt the Indians, but the loss of one of their best position players, Asdrubal Cabrera, has been even more troublesome. Cabrera is not having a great season by his standards, but, much like Espinosa, he is a big defensive player for the Indians and unlike Espinosa, he was hitting well enough to help the team on offense. But the biggest blow has to be starter Zach McAllister. For a team that was not pitching great at all, McAllister has been a great compliment to Justin Masterson and was leading the team in ERA at 3.43 at the time of his injury. It is no surprise that the recent struggles of the team in the month of June have coincided with the injury of Cabrera and McAllister.
Unless a suspension comes for his drug issues, and barring setbacks, Perez will be back sometime next week. McAllister and Cabrera will be away from the team a little longer, both estimated at around four weeks. These two missing time could hurt in the long run. They are currently one game under .500, and if they continue to slide, they could be looking up at the Detroit Tigers from much further than the 4.5 games they currently sit back.
A team that is currently in a battle for first place in their divisions is also struggling with the injury bug, and this team had a pretty comfortable lead in the division before the injuries hit. The Texas Rangers’ fans weren’t all that worried when Ian Kinsler went down because that meant Jurickson Profar was on his way up. Then, when Mitch Moreland and Alexi Ogando went down and the Rangers started to slide a bit, they had to start to worry.
Kinsler has been on the DL since the middle of May, and may be on his way back. That creates another problem, what do the Rangers do with Profar? Moreland is another problem altogether as his injury is more recent. Moreland was starting to come into his own this season, on pace to hit career highs in just about every major statistical category. While this hamstring strain shouldn’t keep him out past the 15 day minimum the DL requires, this time off has taken his hot bat out of the lineup at a critical time when the Oakland Athletics are knocking on the door for first place. The Ogando injury is the worst of the three, though. The most interesting thing about Ogando’s injury is the fact that, even while injured, he has still pitched stellar. In his last two starts he gave up only three runs in 11.2 innings, earning a win and a no decision against the A’s and the Boston Red Sox. After the start against the A’s he missed three weeks with biceps tendinitis, but it is easy to wonder if there may be something more wrong with him after being placed back on the DL after his start against the Sox. This time it is right shoulder inflammation, and unfortunately for Rangers fans, there is currently no timetable for his return.
Kinsler will be back soon, Moreland will more than likely return after the 15 days are up, but there is no certainty when Ogando will be back at all. If the Rangers can hold on, they will still be in the running for the division lead, but the way the A’s are chasing them, it will be a long summer of back-and-forth in the AL West. The biggest deciding factor just might be who can stay healthy.
The team with the most to worry about on the injury front is another first place team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, but this team has two teams right on their tail. The injury to starting pitcher Brandon McCarthy and the set back to fellow starter Daniel Hudson hurt this team, but much like the Indians, the two injuries that could set them back the most are a starting middle infielder and their closer.
The injury to J.J. Putz is hard for the D-Backs, but they almost seemed to see this coming in the offseason. The D-Backs sent a lot of key pieces away this offseason, and in what looks like a genius move, they traded Chris Young to Oakland for Cliff Pennington and Yordy Cabrera. The genius of this trade is that they flipped Cabrera for Heath Bell in a trade with the Miami Marlins, and boom, now that Putz is down, Bell steps right into the closer role. So why is this injury so important to the D-Backs? It is important because it shows just how smart the D-Backs front office was in the offseason to trade away players who may not have fit their philosophy for players who would fill roles and create depth.
In a similar situation you have the injury to Aaron Hill, the D-Backs starting second baseman. Hill broke his hand early in the season, and when you have a guy who plays his position as well as he does, and adds to that with the bat, you have to be worried when he goes down. Much like with Putz, the D-Backs seemed to be looking into the future in this case. In another trade, they went out and got Didi Gregorius and gave up a top pitching prospect with attitude issues. Boom, they bring up Gregorius and he plays fantastic at shortstop, and Pennington moves over to second. All Pennington does in place of Hill is play excellent defense and record two walk off hits.
So, if the D-Backs seem to be able to deal with these injuries so well, then why am I highlighting these injuries? Well, Hill and Putz are important to the team, and they are a first place team that could’ve been in trouble like the rest of the teams mentioned. Instead they’ve held on and now Hill could be back in the coming weeks after his recent batting practice went very well. Putz could also be back by the end of June, as his rehab is going well. The real reason to highlight the D-Backs is the fact that they are overcoming these injuries so well, and it is the key factor to why they are in first place. Hill has been out since the second week of the season, Willie Bloomquist was out at shortstop before the season and only recently came back and as mentioned before, it is always tough to overcome losing your closer.
The D-Backs may be the wave of the future when creating a team. It is a philosophy similar to the A’s and Tampa Bay Rays, and now that the D-Backs are so successful with it while the Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles Angels and the Toronto Blue Jays are all failing after spending a lot of money, this could change the way the game is played. After all, every team deals with injuries, and it is the team that can recover from those injuries the best that win the most.