Percentage of Team Payroll Lost to Time on DL (Update 2/20/10)

by Jeff Zimmerman (TucsonRoyal) on Feb 19, 2010 4:17 PM EST in Injuries & the Disabled List Comment 16 comments

Update: I have added some more information at the article's end looking at totals for trips less than and more than 30 days.

After using Josh Hermsmeyer's injury database from RotoBlog.com to look at individual players, I will now look at the total Salary lost to teams. Here is the list of 30 teams ordered by percentage lost, highest loss to lowest loss from 2002 to 2009.

Rank	Team	Total Salary	Salary Lost	Total Days	Number of Trips	Percentage of Total Payroll
1	LAD	$802,269,413	$214,186,872	6717	61	27%
2	WAS	$395,077,500	$87,927,311	7395	73	22%
3	TEX	$592,355,667	$130,295,946	8521	77	22%
4	NYM	$912,960,802	$198,784,051	7922	72	22%
5	ARI	$567,058,065	$112,040,169	6347	72	20%
6	ATL	$752,293,394	$146,002,505	6574	67	19%
7	OAK	$456,603,575	$88,576,685	5211	50	19%
8	SD	$450,328,690	$84,326,605	5964	68	19%
9	KCR	$415,440,333	$77,368,885	7206	81	19%
10	DET	$650,323,576	$120,741,210	6621	53	19%
11	BAL	$559,966,955	$100,803,387	7716	68	18%
12	CLE	$481,570,082	$82,899,809	5499	61	17%
13	ANA	$781,804,489	$131,803,169	1864	24	17%
14	TBA	$279,920,832	$45,948,441	4898	62	16%
15	STL	$701,113,759	$113,433,432	6370	57	16%
16	CIN	$490,024,584	$71,801,485	6894	70	15%
17	MIL	$448,053,000	$65,448,742	4862	53	15%
18	COL	$476,445,377	$67,833,222	5768	71	14%
19	SF	$673,267,093	$91,626,965	4202	53	14%
20	TOR	$555,509,833	$75,545,147	5243	57	14%
21	CHC	$780,401,763	$106,017,190	5444	58	14%
22	PHI	$705,761,638	$86,937,200	4540	62	12%
23	HOU	$655,044,680	$79,356,784	3888	44	12%
24	BOS	$976,978,257	$117,482,570	5556	71	12%
25	NYY	$1,464,447,266	$175,817,451	6107	57	12%
26	MIN	$462,768,538	$50,398,150	4917	49	11%
27	PIT	$350,135,323	$37,785,164	4759	49	11%
28	FLO	$298,132,793	$25,716,545	6007	56	9%
29	SEA	$747,503,317	$59,606,332	5245	52	8%
30	CHW	$677,133,665	$38,169,033	2135	38	6%

Graph of comparing totals after jump

Few notes:

The Dodgers being in first is no surprise.
I figured the Yankees would have been higher. Their total amount lost is less than the Dodgers and the Mets.
Teams should figure out what the White Sox are doing to prevent injuries. They are amazingly good.

Tom Tango started a thread on this topic over at The Book Blog. Since Tom was voted BtB's Best Researcher and Writer, I figured I would go ahead and answer a few of his questions. He was mainly interested in the amount of salary that was lost after a player was on the DL for greater than 30 days. The amount before 30 would not be covered by insurance, but the amount over 30 days would be covered.

Description	Dollars	Percentage
Total Amount	$18,560,694,259	100.0%
Salary lost from trips 30 days or less	$434,260,356	2.3%
Salary lost from trips > 30 days	$2,373,561,406	12.8%
Total Salary Lost	$2,807,821,761	15.1%
Salary covered by insurance (> 31days on DL)	$1,460,573,173	7.9%
Salary not covered by insurance (30 or less days on DL)	$1,347,248,588	7.3%

Description	Days
Days lost from trips 30 days or less	23687
Days lost from trips > 30 days	143548
Total Days Lost	167235
Days covered by insurance (> 31days on DL)	92218
Days not covered by insurance (30 or less days on DL)	75017

Description	Trips to DL
DL trips 30 days or less	1202
DL trips > 30 days	1711
Total DL Trips	2913

Few notes on the above charts:

The dollar amounts covered by insurance and not covered are about the same ($1.5 billion vs 1.3 billion)
Many more days on DL occur after 30 days than before (92K vs 75K). Also more trips to DL last more than 30 days than less than 30 days (1711 vs 1202)

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I asked this in the other thread but are you taking into account insurance at all? I doubt I can find the article but I’m pretty sure a good majority of Hampton’s salary during those years was covered by insurance. I don’t know how that all works (I imagine it’s different for each case) but I imagine it would have a big effect on your numbers.

by jfish26101 on Feb 19, 2010 5:39 PM EST reply actions