For the New York Yankees, the 2023 season was painful in ways both figurative and literal.
The literal aspect of the Bronx bane was the pain itself -- in the form of an avalanche of injuries. One by one players fell, and so did the Yankees in the American League standings. After a preseason filled with the usual high hopes, baseball's most successful franchise limped home in fourth place, barely clearing the .500 mark it has exceeded for more than three decades.
If this outcome did not feel so familiar, perhaps ever-forgiving New Yorkers would have dismissed the campaign as bad luck and turned the page. But the angst carried over into the offseason, because bad luck didn't seem like a sufficient explanation. The whole season felt like a rerun of something Yankees fans have seen a few too many times.
Is there a way to document this? Have injuries or, to be more precise, the impact from injuries affected the Yankees more than other teams? What teams have been the best at sidestepping the IL in recent seasons, and which have struggled? Who is most at risk for the season to come?
To answer these questions, we created the Injury Index (see the "How we calculated the Injury Index" box below for our methodology). The aim is to look at how frequently teams have used the injured list over the past few seasons and estimate the production they have lost from players spending too much time in the trainer's room and not enough time on the field. We also applied our research to each team's current roster, to see who might be most at risk for the 2024 season.