IL Tracker, August 5

7 rostered players on the IL, with measured timelines by injury type.

7 rostered players are on the injured list. This is not a return-date report, nothing on this site knows when anyone comes back, but it does pair how long each player has already been out against what that injury has actually cost the 272 players who have returned from one this season.

Out the longest

Days already missed, against the measured median for the same injury. The range in brackets is the middle half of those cases, for an elbow it spans three weeks to three months, which is why no single date belongs here.

What each injury has cost this season

Every returned case, by body part. Sample sizes are shown because they are the whole story: a median off nine cases is a hint, and one off forty-three is close to a planning number.

What this means

James Wood is the easy one, and it is worth saying so first because everything else on this list is harder. A value of 374 is the highest number on the board by more than a hundred points, and he is one day into an oblique strain whose typical absence this season has run 30 days across 34 cases. That is the largest sample of any injury here, which means the 30 is the number you should trust most and the one that hurts most. You are being asked to sit on the roster spot for something like a month. Do it anyway. There is no plausible waiver-wire outfielder who closes a gap that size, and the cost of dropping him is that you spend the rest of the season replacing a 374 with a 180 and telling yourself you needed the flexibility.

Soto is the case a smart reader should push back on. Eleven days missed against a 29-day median on a calf strain sounds like he is barely a third of the way through, but the median is not a countdown clock. It is the middle of fifteen outcomes, and calf strains split badly: the mild ones come back near the ten-day minimum, the ones that grab again do not. Eleven days in with no setback reported is quietly the good branch of that distribution. Fifteen cases is also a thin sample, so the 29 carries less weight than Wood's 30 does. Hold, and hold without agonizing.

The two I would actually cut are Bellinger and Schmitt, for opposite reasons. Bellinger at 154 is the lowest value on the list, ten days into a hamstring strain with a 26-day median built on 33 cases. That is the second-best-supported number in the table, and it says he is roughly 40 percent through. Paying two more weeks of a roster spot for the least valuable player here is the trade nobody would make if the name were unfamiliar. The argument against dropping him is real: hamstrings in this group have a tight, well-mapped recovery, so you know what you are waiting for, and 154 is still a startable outfielder in most formats. I would rather have the free bat who plays this week.

Schmitt is the harder cut and the more interesting one, because his value of 160 is not what makes him useful. Five positions is. Five positions is what lets you paper over the very absences the rest of this table is creating, and if you are already carrying Wood and Soto, the utility of a player who can fill any hole goes up, not down. But a meniscus tear is the one injury here where the mechanism cuts against the thing you want him for. The 18-day median over eighteen cases is a return-to-availability number, not a return-to-catching-and-playing-the-infield number, and a knee that needs managing is a knee that stops being a five-position asset even after it is off the IL. Drop him. If he comes back and immediately plays three positions in a week, I was wrong, and I will have paid a mid-value bat for the mistake.

Buxton and Kurtz sit outside the argument. Buxton at 185 is seven days into an 18-day median on eleven cases, close enough to the end that the spot is nearly paid for. Kurtz has no sample at all for a strained thumb, which is the honest answer: nothing in this data tells you how long a thumb takes. Hold him on the 204 value and on the fact that he is one day in, then re-decide at day ten. If he is still not swinging then, the no-sample column stops being neutral and starts being a warning.

How to read this

Days out is counted from the transaction that placed the player on the list. Current status comes from the live injury feed, which is authoritative for who is out but carries no dates at all, the two are joined per player.

The typical column is a median with its sample size and interquartile range, and it describes other players, not this one. It is context for how long an injury of that kind has been costing people, not a forecast for anybody.

Only players above roster-relevant value appear. An injury to someone nobody rosters is not a fantasy event, and listing every one would bury the handful that change a lineup.

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