Dodgers: Dave Roberts Explains Why He Thinks Injuries Are Up This Year
All around baseball, it seems like players are headed to the injured list far too often. Dodgers fans have certainly seen their fair share of that early on. Closing in on the 2-month mark of the season, it’s been all-hands-on-deck to keep Los Angeles going.
But the seeming rise in injuries has many fans wondering what the heck is going on. Injuries are up, but it also seems like serious or even season-ending injuries are up. We’ve already seen quite a few Tommy John surgeries announced, including Dodgers pitcher Dustin May.
And while everyone has their thoughts on what’s happening, we can’t really know. But Dodgers manager Dave Roberts seems to think the grind of a 162-game season came too quickly. In a media session on Saturday, Doc seemed to almost disagree with baseball starting on time in 2021.
Very surprised. It’s very worrisome. It’s just kind of coming off of an abbreviated season as we did, and the players and everyone in Major League Baseball decided to start on time for reasons. You just incur risk and, unfortunately, it’s playing itself out as such. Teams are doing what they can to keep guys healthy. Some are accidental, some are just we don’t know. So it’s very worrisome, and we’re trying to figure out how best to keep our guys on the field.
We don’t want to put words into his mouth, so we’ll let you interpret that as you will. The player’s union had hoped to delay the season for the health and safety of the players. But they could not come to terms with the league, and the season kicked off on April 1st as scheduled, the Dodgers obviously included.
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Injured list designations are up almost 20 percent from the last full MLB season in 2019. For the Dodgers, it feels like it’s up almost 50 percent. At the moment, they have 13 guys from their 40-man roster on the IL. And that does not include those lost for the season or moved to the 60-day.
We knew that 162 games were going to be tough after a short 2020 season, but no one saw this coming.
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Spring training was too short!!!
Correction, it was that horrific Manfred and the league that wanted to delay and shorten the season to 154 games. The Union wanted the full schedule after being reduced to 60 games last year. MLB wanted an expanded playoffs as a condition to bring the universal DH back and the Union turned that down resulting in the MLB playing once again with separate rules for each league.