Sports Frog

According to Dr. Rick Wilton of Baseball Injury Report, baseball is suffering through an epidemic of injuries over the past two seasons (and I thought it was just on my fantasy team). There was apparently a big jump in 2007, and baseball is on pace for a bigger jump in injuries in 2008:

Major League Baseball is on pace to set a another record for the number of players who spend time on the disabled list.

The previous record was set last year with 404 players. As of April 30, there are 180 players who have spent time on the disabled list this season. That is 6.6% increase over the same time last season. From 2002-2006, an average of 141 players landed on the DL from spring training through April 30 each year. This year's pace is 21.7% greater than the average during that period. This alarming statistic could increase even further in the coming days with retroactive disabled list moves.

Last year's record 404 players was a 12.2 % increase over the five-year average between 2002-2006. The current pace is for 416 players to spend time on the disabled list in 2008.

Now this could all be pure and coincidental-like, see? But maybe, just maybe, there's something going on here. One of the primary benefits of performance-enhancing drugs is to quicken the recovery time from use and/or injury. As we've learned more and more about the actual use of these drugs in baseball, it seems that a significant number of ballplayers were juicing not to become huge Neanderthals, but rather to quicken recovery time (witness the high number of pitchers caught).

As the spotlight on steroids shined more brightly than ever last season, ultimately culminating with the Mitchell Report and a more rigorous testing program, maybe players are actually getting off the stuff and allowing their bodies to heal naturally. That could explain - at least partially - an increased number of injuries and time spent on the disabled list. Of course, this is all speculative without looking beyond a five-year sample size. And given that performance enhancers have been in baseball for so many years, to the extent that the last time players might not have been juicing medical technology and player usage patterns were probably incomparable to today's realities, there may be too many outside factors to really compare with any accuracy.

However, if the testing program is even a part of the cause of increased injuries (as perverse as that sounds), Major League Baseball should be commended for coming up with a program that is actually effective in reducing drug use in baseball.