Fantasy Pitch F/X

Obviously I haven’t posted in a long time. It’s because I’ve focused on getting data into the database.

I’m happy to let everyone know that the International League is now up to date for 2009. All other years and leagues are now in the process of being entered. I will keep everyone updated as to when I finished with each league and year.

Enjoy.

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I’ve written before that true injury prediction is the holy grail of all sports medicine professionals as well as those who follow the players and teams.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a writer or a fan, it effects you one way or the other.  For someone involved in fantasy baseball (or any other sport for the matter),  knowing when a starting pitcher will be hurt can make the difference between a championship or 6th place.  That’s why I’ve been working on the injury prediction front for a while.  You haven’t seen much from me lately because I’ve been focused on entering data (day to day, minor league, training camp) and some programming to try and make this data easier to use and visualize.

So when I saw someone else write about predicting time lost due to pitching injuries, I of course made a note of it to read.  After reading it, I came away disappointed.  It creates more noise in the process of injury prediction and it’s not for a lack of trying.  Being an Athletic Trainer, I’m required by laws and governing bodies to keep up to date on many issues in sports medicine today.  As a result, I read a couple hundred articles from scientific journals each year and unfortunately this study falls short of my criteria and I see many potential issues in this study.  My criticism below isn’t personal at all but more of a discussion as to why it’s so incredibly difficult to predict injuries.  I don’t doubt that his heart is in the right place but there are many points to consider.  Read on in no particular order:

1. BMI is not the best way to track analyze someone’s health.  A person who is 6′3″ and weighs 200 pounds has a BMI of 25 (which is what he uses as the cutoff for healthy/unhealthy) regardless of whether or not the person has a fat percentage of 7% (healthy athlete) or 32% (obese).
2. If we assume that BMI is a proper way to evaluate health in athletes, can we really trust that the heights and weights on the rosters are accurate?  Using the Red Sox as an example since I follow them the most, can we safely assume that Brad Penny, David Ortiz, and Aaron Bates are all 6′4″ and 230 pounds while someone like Masterson weighs in at 260.  Even if the weights are correct can we assume that Pedroia is 5′9″.
3. This study doesn’t explicitly remove players who have suffered multiple injuries.  If a player suffers two DL stints of 25 days each to the same body part (think hamstring, shoulder) in a very short time (say 55 days from beginning to end of the 2 DL stints), it changes the average days lost to a lower number rather than counting it as 50 days when in fact it is the same injury.
4. Categorizing someone as healthy versus hurt based only on DL transactions is ignoring a lot of data and also ignoring a lot of injuries.  What about those pitchers who get their start skipped and don’t go on the DL or have their start pushed back a couple of times?  Based on a 35 start season, every start counts roughly as 3% of his season.  If he has 2 starts skipped over the 6th month season, that’s 6% that’s lost but not counted in the DL transactions.
5. The 120 IP mark does not take into account those pitchers who came up to the bigs for 3-4 starts, went back down to the minors and was hurt in the minor leagues.  If it does take those pitchers into account, it does not explicitly say so.
6. It also appears that the 120 IP mark doesn’t factor in injuries for that season.  If a player is used to throwing 180 IP, gets hurt that season but still ends up throwing 125 IP and then goes on the DL in year +1, he counts just the same as a guy who throws 125 IP for 3 years and gets hurt in year + 1.
7. Finally my personal opinion as a practicing Athletic Trainer, is that a 3 day difference with high BMI/ low BMI across the board  is not significant enough to really decide that we’ve found the mark.  3 days is having a start pushed back and/or just skipping the start.

Read more…

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