clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

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

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

Salarycomps_medium

Few notes:

  1. The Dodgers being in first is no surprise.
  2. I figured the Yankees would have been higher.  Their total amount lost is less than the Dodgers and the Mets.
  3. 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:

  1. The dollar amounts covered by insurance and not covered are about the same ($1.5 billion vs 1.3 billion)
  2. 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)