While hitters usually stay healthier than pitchers in baseball, it’s been the opposite for the Twins this season. The position players have faced way more injuries than the pitchers. They have double the IL stints. Here’s a list of the IL stints for the Twins

Position Players:

Miguel Sano: Heel laceration

Willians Astudillo: Hamstring strain

Mitch Garver: High ankle sprain

Nelson Cruz: Wrist injury

Byron Buxton: Wrist contusion

Ehire Adrianza: Abdominal issue

Marwin Gonzalez: Hamstring strain

Willians Astudillo: Oblique strain

Eddie Rosario: Ankle sprain

C.J. Cron: Thumb inflammation

Lamonte Wade Jr.: Dislocated thumb

Byron Buxton: Concussion

C.J. Cron: Thumb inflammation

Pitchers:

Matt Magill: Shoulder tendinitis

Addison Reed: Thumb soreness

Gabriel Moya: Shoulder tendinitis

Adalberto Mejia: Calf strain

Michael Pineda: Knee tendinitis

Jake Odorizzi: Blister

That’s 13 injuries for hitters compared to just 6 for pitchers. It’s really odd. Plus, only 2 of the pitcher injuries are shoulder/elbow related. That’s some insane injury luck, whereas the hitters have had a lot of injuries, although the majority have been minor and short IL stints.

I wanted to check out the past few years for the Twins, so I looked at DL stints from 2014-2018, so the previous 4 years. It’s 31 DL stints for position players and 39 for pitchers. So pitchers have only actually counted for 55.6% of injuries. This year, it’s 31.6%. That’s far below normal, but I doubt it’s statistically significant based on the sample size, and I forgot how to run p-value tests.

Interestingly, there were also more position player DL stints last year, with a 10:7 ratio. It was even at 9:9 in 2016, and a combined 12:23 in 2015 and 2017. So it’s always been either close to even or lopsided on the pitchers side in this small data set. This isn’t all that meaningful in this small of a sample size, but it’s interesting how much healthier the pitchers have been.