IL Tracker, August 10

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 277 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

Juan Soto has missed sixteen days of a calf strain that has typically cost 45 days this season across seventeen cases. That is the single hardest hold on this list, and it is also the easiest call. A value of 257 does not get replaced off waivers in any format deep enough that you are reading injury tables. The mechanism behind the gap is worth naming: calf strains are the one soft-tissue injury where a team's incentive and a player's incentive both point at patience, because the reinjury rate lands you back where you started. Seventeen cases is a thin sample and the median could be dragged by two or three long ones, but a 29-day gap between where he is and where the typical case ends is not the kind of thing a small sample invents. Hold, and stop refreshing.

James Wood is the case I would argue about. He is the most valuable name here at 360, he is six days into an oblique strain, and obliques have run 30 days across 34 cases, the best-sampled injury on the board. So the arithmetic says roughly three more weeks. The case against holding is real: three weeks of a dead roster spot in a category league is a live cost, and if you are streaming pitchers or chasing steals, that spot converts into counting stats every single week. I still hold. You do not recover a 360 from the wire, and the replacement you would run out there is by definition someone nobody else wanted. What would change my mind is not the calendar. It is a setback, because an oblique that gets re-aggravated in a rehab game does not go 30 days, it goes twice that, and at that point the spot is gone for the season.

Cody Bellinger is the closest thing to a clean hold with a visible finish line. Fifteen days into a hamstring strain against a 26-day median over 33 cases, and 33 cases is enough that I trust the number. He is eleven days short of typical. At a value of 144 he is not a franchise piece, but he is also not a player you have to think hard about keeping for a week and a half.

Now the drops. Casey Schmitt at 156 is thirteen days into a meniscus tear with an 18-day median, so on paper he is nearly through it. The problem is that the median is doing all the work and the value is not. Five positions of eligibility is genuinely useful, but knee cartilage is the injury where the return is least likely to resemble the player who left, and nothing in this data tells you what he looks like when he comes back. If you are tight on spots, he goes first. Byron Buxton is the same shape, twelve days into a hip impingement against an 18-day median over eleven cases, and the eleven is the tell: we barely know what this injury costs. At 180, with his particular history, I would rather have the spot.

Nick Kurtz and Joe Ryan should not be part of this conversation yet. Both are under a week out and neither injury has a sample here, so any timeline you attach to them is invented. Six days into a thumb and three days into a glute means you hold by default, because dropping a 197 or a 161 on no information is the worst version of being wrong. Revisit both in a week. If either is still on the IL then, you are making a real decision with real data, and not before.

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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