Updated 2023 – The numbers dropped a bit in 2023 from 2022. The Twins used the IL 39 times missing 1,570 games as compared to 2,101 a year earlier. Assuming that a player played in 162 games and we know that in Minnesota does not happen, they would have the equivalent of 9.69 players missing the entire 2023 season. Byron Buxton added a couple visits in 2023 as the Twins career leader in visits to the IL with 13.
Updated 2022 – The numbers keep climbing and they are not the good numbers. Shortly after the 2022 ended, Derek Falvey announced the firing of head athletic trainer Michael Salazar after the Twins finished with the second-most injured list days (2,333) in baseball. The Twins used the IL 48 times, four more times than they used it in 2021 but this year they missed 2,101 games as compared to 1,463 a year earlier. Assuming that a player played in 162 games and we know that in Minnesota does not happen, they would have the equivalent of 12.97 players missing the entire 2022 season. Byron Buxton took over as the Twins career leader in visits to the IL with 11, surpassing Joe Mauer with 10.
Updated 2021 – Not counting players missing time for COVID the Minnesota Twins sent players to the IL 39 times for a total of 1,451 missed games. Another way to look at it is that the equivalent of 8.98 players missed the entire 2021 season. I have only been able to track the Twins IL use since 1982 but this is far and away the most injuries the team has ever had.
Updated 2020 – As part of MLB’s health and safety protocols during the COVID-19 pandemic, each club will have a 30-man roster for the first two weeks of the 2020 season, 28 for the next two weeks, and 26 for the remainder of the season. Teams will submit 60-man pools — that is, the group of players who will be able to play for them this season. According to the league’s Operating Manual, all players on a 40-man roster “that the club anticipates participating” during the season will be part of the player pool, while the rest will be made up of non-40-man roster players under contract. Each team will be permitted a three-player taxi squad for every road trip, giving them immediate options to replace an injured or COVID-19 infected player. There will be no limit on the number of pitchers on the active roster, or on position players pitching. Rather than a 10-day injured list for position players and 15-day injured list for pitchers, there will be a 10-day injured list for all players in the shortened season. The 60-day injured list will be reduced to 45 days. The 7-day injured list will be unaffected. There will also be a COVID-19 injured list with no minimum or maximum number of days per trip.
In a typical season, the 10-day injured list (known as the 10-day disabled list until the end of the 2018 season) allows clubs to remove injured position players from the 26-man active roster (it was 25, prior to 2020) while keeping them on the 40-man roster. Pitchers and players with the two-way designation (position players who are eligible to pitch in any circumstance) have to stay on the injured list for a minimum of 15 days.
Players can be placed on the 10-day injured list for any type of injury, though players with concussion symptoms are first sent to the 7-day injured list. Players on the 10-day injured list must remain out of action for at least 10 days, though a player can also stay on the list for considerably longer than 10 days, if necessary.
Players may be placed on the 10-day injured list “retroactively,” meaning the stint is backdated to the day after the last date on which the player appeared in a game. For instance, if a batter is diagnosed with a bruised hand on June 3 after getting hit by a pitch during a June 1 game, he could be placed on the 10-day injured list on June 3, retroactive to June 2. In that case, he would be eligible to return from the injured list on June 12.
UPDATED 2/7/2019 – The disabled list is going on the permanent DL.
Major League Baseball will rename the disabled list as the “injured list,” the league confirmed February 7 after ESPN broke the news.
The league will make the change out of concern that the term “disabled” for injured players falsely conflates disabilities with injuries and an inability to participate in sports. Deputy commissioner Dan Halem said the change was made at the suggestion of advocacy groups for the disabled, including the Link 20 Network.
Jeff Pfeifer, MLB’s senior director of league economics and operations, notified clubs of the name change in a memo written in December. “In recent years, the commissioner has received several inquiries regarding the name of the ‘Disabled List,'” Pfeifer wrote. “The principal concern is that using the term ‘disabled’ for players who are injured supports the misconception that people with disabilities are injured and therefore are not able to participate or compete in sports. As a result, Major League Baseball has agreed to change the name ‘Disabled List’ to be the ‘Injured List’ at both the major and minor league levels. All standards and requirements for placement, reinstatement, etc., shall remain unchanged. This change, which is only a re-branding of the name itself, is effective immediately.”
The rules of the DL will remain the same. The list has gone through different incarnations since its institution in 1966 and today includes a 10-day version for short-term injuries and a 60-day version for more severe ailments.
How often have you heard MLB GM’s and managers say that if their team stays healthy and avoids the DL that they can be good, maybe really good and make a run at the playoffs? You would be rich if you got a nickel for every time that has been said. But how true is it? Truth be told it is not the number of injuries or days spent on the DL that will hurt you, it is WHO gets hurt. Lose a key player or two and your goose is cooked and it is wait until next year most of the time. Injuries to average players can be covered by an adequate bench or minor league players ready to move up to the next level, injured stars usually can not be replaced.
MLB players are placed on the disabled list or DL when they can not perform due to injury, this allows the team to replace the injured player. Disabled lists are usually referred to by the minimum number of days players must be inactive and each has its own specific uses and rules.
UPDATED 12/14/2016 – There are currently three types of disabled lists, the 10 day DL (effective 2017). The 15 day DL started in 1966 and eventually replaced the 10 day DL back in 1984. Once the player is placed on this list he can not play for a minimum of 15 10 days but can stay on this list for longer periods of time. A player on the 15 10 day DL is off the 25 man roster but remains on the 40 man roster. The second type of DL is the 60 day DL. To be placed on this list the player must be taken off the 25 man and 40 man rosters. This is used for more serious injuries that require a longer period of time to heal. Some players who are in fact retired are put on the 60-day disabled list for insurance purposes. Additional history on the DL can be found on WIKI. In addition there is a nice article called “The 10-Day DL is a Beautiful Thing” on Fangraphs that goes into the new 10 day DL that the new CBA agreed to in late 2016 contains.
The newest type of disabled list is the 7-day disabled list. This disabled list is specially made for players who have suffered concussions. Each team must designate a specialist in mild brain trauma to evaluate players and then send reports to MLB’s medical director for approval before placing a player on this DL. Additional details on these DL possibilities can be found at the B-R Bullpen.
Although not an injury, in 2011, Major League Baseball instituted a Paternity Leave. This allows a team to replace a player who is an expectant father for 1–3 days on the roster to be available for the birth of his child. There is also a Bereavement List where as a player may be placed on this list upon attending to a seriously ill member in the player’s immediate family or to a death in the family. The bereavement list may span from a minimum of three to a maximum of seven games.
But here we are going to address the Minnesota Twins Disabled list history. With the help of the Minnesota Twins organization and Stats Pass I have been able to put together the team’s disabled list information from 1982 to current. The charts you see here are the number of times the team has put a player on a disabled list (7, 15, or 60 day) and the number of games that Twins players have missed while on the disabled/injured list each season.
The fewest times that the Twins used the IL according to the information I can gather is two times in 1985 and the most times they have used the IL was in 2022 when they used it a total of 48 times. The average per year for the Target Field era starting in 2010 is 23.36 IL moves per season.
The charts and the data indicates very clearly that over time the number of times that the DL/IL is used and the number of games lost to the IL has and continues to increase. There is not necessarily any real correlation between the number of injuries and games lost to the DL/IL when looking at the team’s record except in a few cases. It is important to remember too that any injury to a star hitter or your pitching ace certainly can’t be compared to losing a utility man but in this comparison they are being treated as equals.
So what Twins player has played the most games between 1982 and 2022 and not shown up on the DL? That would be shortstop Greg Gagne with 1,140 games, his name never appeared on the Twins DL list in the 10 seasons he played in Minnesota. My kind of player. How about the pitching side? That would be closer Ron Davis who never went on the DL during his Twins tenure spread over five seasons and 286 pitching appearances. I would like to say my kind of player again, but sometimes when he gave up that game winning home run I wished the Twins would have put him on the DL/IL. What is strange about this is that both Gagne and Davis (along with Paul Boris) were acquired from the Yankees when the Twins sent Roy Smalley to New York. They must not have believed in the DL/IL in New York back in the day.
The detailed information to create the charts is listed in the PDF’s below. It also provides the team record by season and where in the standings the Twins finished.
IL versus record thru 2023.pdf
I mentioned above what players have avoided the DL/IL list the longest but what Twins players appear to have made a habit of seeing their names on the disabled list? I am going to let you figure that out on your own by checking out the player disable list PDF below but I will tell you that the most DL/IL visits by a Twins player during the time frame covered here now stands at thirteen. I don’t think the leaders on this list surprise anybody. Back in the day, they used to say that players that visited the DL/IL were just taking their annual two-week vacation.
IL thru 2023 IL Player List.pdf