Yoenis Cespedes and significant dollars lost to the IL

Anyone who’s watched the Mets this century has at one point or another lamented the money the club has had on the injured list. Sometimes, like in 2009, it’s just the sheer number and while others, like in 2019, it’s the high-dollar value. This past season, the Mets had three players who combined to produce just 8 PA yet got paid $52.5 million. It’s tough to compete when one-third of your payroll gives you virtually nothing.

But how does that compare to the rest of MLB? Is there an “acceptable” amount of dollars to be unavailable due to injury? Let’s find out. Below is a list of players who missed two months or more due to injury, while making at least $5 million per year. Both the time frame and the dollar value were chosen to be significant. A team could have a highly-paid guy miss six weeks and not show up on this list. But you can miss six weeks and still have 500 PA. You can say that two months is arbitrary and there will be no argument. But you have to put a line in there somewhere. In addition to being somewhat arbitrary, please note that this list is also somewhat subjective.

For instance Fielder is listed for the Rangers and not the Tigers, even though both clubs paid him not to play in 2019. Fielder was traded from Detroit to Texas and they sent some money to offset the salary. Fielder played three years for the Rangers before having his career end early due to neck surgery. Reed is listed because of his thumb injury, although you could make a case that it was ineffectiveness at Triple-A which ended his Twins career. And there are other cases. If you were to complete a list, you might have different people on/off than what’s listed here.

The list was created using the Opening Day payroll number from Cot’s. It was supplemented with Sportrac to get a dollar figure for guys like Gennett, who opened the year on the IL and then was later traded to another team. The Reds were not responsible for 100% of Gennett’s salary. His number was derived from Sportrac.

By this count, there were 52 players who missed at least two months of the season while pulling down a salary of at least $5 million. That seems surprising to me, as my guess would have been more players to have fit the guidelines. Interestingly, there were three teams – Blue Jays, Rays, White Sox – not to have a player on our list. But not that it was all sunshine and lollipops for these franchises. Toronto paid the Dodgers $16.4 million to take Russell Martin off their hands, Tampa Bay sent $14.5 million to the Giants to do likewise with Evan Longoria and the White Sox spent around $8 million to watch Yonder Alonso stink for them for three months, only to watch him thrive once he was dealt to the Rockies.

As for the Mets, Robinson Cano does not make the list because he missed 6-7 weeks on the IL, missing our two-month guideline. And Brandon Nimmo missed enough time but did not pull down a $5 million salary.

Now that we have the individual players, let’s do another chart, this one showing the effect on a team level. And we’ll add in Opening Day payroll, to see how much of it was lost to significant injury time. These numbers come from Sportrac, since they already had it in one place and Cot’s did not. There are discrepancies between the two numbers but expediency wins out here.

The Mets had the second-most significant dollars lost to the IL and the third-highest percent of their payroll sidelined via injury. The average percent lost by this accounting was 14.15 % but only 10 of the 30 clubs exceeded this number. Of those 10, only one team made the playoffs, thanks to their huge overall payroll and remarkable play by that team’s reserves who were pressed into action.

Judging by 2019 numbers, the odds are stacked against you making the playoffs if you have an above-average dollars lost to the IL. Certainly the Mets hope that Lowrie will contribute this year and possibly Cespedes, too, although no one should be holding their breath on that one. With Wright a sunk cost and Cespedes likely to be that way, too, the Mets will likely be high on this list again next year. One of their keys will be not adding anyone else, with the possible exceptions of Cano and Jeurys Familia.