NEW YORK — Yankees fans have spent years watching their team’s training room fill up and asking the same question. Is it bad luck, or is something deeper at work? A sweeping new look at the data lands on an uncomfortable answer. The Yankees keep ending up at the top of baseball’s injury lists, and the biggest reasons trace back to choices the organization makes on purpose.
This is not mainly a story about medical staff or misfortune. According to a recent report in the Athletic, it is a story about money, roster philosophy, and a willingness to take risks that smaller-market teams cannot afford.
The Yankees lead a list nobody wants to top
The numbers are stark. No matter how the injury data is sorted, the same three organizations sit at or near the top: the Yankees, the Mets and the Orioles. That pattern holds across major leaguers and minor leaguers, hitters and pitchers, and across short and long timeframes dating back more than a decade.
From 2024 through 2026, the Yankees lost a combined 23,381 days to the injured list across their entire organization, the most in baseball, per The Baseball Cube’s injury database. The Mets followed at 20,869 and the Orioles at 19,594. The trend is sticky too. A team’s injury total from one year explains roughly 40 percent of its total the next year, meaning hurt organizations tend to stay hurt.
That consistency suggests the numbers are not random. There is real signal in the data, even if the raw totals can mislead depending on how each team uses its injured list.
Deep pockets invite more risk
Here is where the explanation starts to take shape. Big-market teams like the Yankees and Mets, both among the top three in payroll, simply operate differently than clubs counting every dollar. They can absorb injured players that other teams cannot.
An NL executive explained the divide in blunt terms. The point was that wealth changes how a team treats a hurt player on the roster.
“Teams with deeper pockets are much more apt to stuff a player who is day-to-day on the IL,” the executive said. “Versus small- and mid-market clubs who have to consider the cost. Having a lot of big leaguers on the IL gets expensive.”
The spending backs that up. The Yankees shelled out an MLB-high $75 million on players sitting on their major-league injured list last season, according to Spotrac. The Mets ranked fourth at $60 million. For the Yankees, parking an expensive injured player is an annoyance, not a crisis, so they do it more often.
Older rosters and stashed depth
Age plays a role too, and the Yankees skew older. Since 2024, the average age of Yankees hitters has been 28.9, with the Mets at 29.0. Older players carry more injury risk, which partly explains why both New York teams climb these lists.
The Yankees also use their injured list as a depth strategy. A wealthy club can sign a minor-league pitcher rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, swallow 250-plus injured list days, and bet on getting a strong half-season once he is healthy. That approach inflates the injury totals by design. An American League executive framed it as the smart play for a contender.
“Goal is to ensure you have enough depth to stabilize in the absence of high-performing players,” the AL executive said. “Something the Dodgers do best in baseball.”
There is a flip side worth noting. Some smaller-market clubs look healthier only because they ruthlessly release injured players to keep their numbers down. One AL executive called that practice misleading and wrong, since those teams are simply cutting the broken players rather than healing them.
The bat speed and velocity question
This is the part of the report that should give Yankees fans pause. The team’s own player-development philosophy may be contributing to the problem. In the modern minor leagues, nothing is prized more than how hard a player can swing and how hard he can throw.
Data from player-development analyst Lance Brozdowski indicates the Yankees swing harder than most organizations in the minors, reflected in their top-tier exit velocities. The Blue Jays grade out similarly. Both teams also carry a lot of injured hitters. Among minor-league position players under 26, the Blue Jays led in injured list days with 4,935 from 2024 to 2026, and the Yankees ranked second at 4,107.
The pitching side tells a similar story. The Yankees, Mets and Orioles have the most injured minor-league pitchers and all rank among the top 10 in Triple-A Stuff+. The Yankees led all organizations with 13,711 injured list days for minor-league pitchers under 26. An AL executive connected the dots between chasing power and breaking down.
“Bat speed and velocity pursuits have downstream effects,” the AL executive said. “Bigger, stronger, faster leads to more force generation. The greater the force you apply, the more pressure you create. Pressure eventually breaks things.”
Why the medical staff is not the villain
Fans often blame the trainers, but the report pushes back hard on that instinct. Multiple people interviewed said athletic trainers and medical staff unfairly absorb blame when they are usually reacting to injuries that already exist. Finger-pointing, several noted, is the sign of an organization with internal strife.
Much of the risk is baked in long before a player ever signs. More than half of all Tommy John surgeries now happen before players turn 20, meaning many injuries have roots in youth and amateur usage. One scouting director called modern draft prospects ticking time bombs and admitted his organization is less shy about drafting players with injury history. Executives agreed that the players a front office chooses matter more than almost anything else.
“I just think certain orgs value certain traits,” an AL executive said to the Athletic. “If those traits are inherently more injury-prone, they will lead in days missed.”
In the end, the report suggests the Yankees‘ injury totals are the product of everything at once. They are a wealthy team willing to retain hurt players, they run a data-driven development system that pushes athletes to physical limits, and they face the same wave of pitching injuries sweeping the sport. Whether that is a flaw or simply the cost of contending is the open question. As one scouting director put it, the standings matter more than the injured list, and few fans would trade the Yankees’ position for a healthier also-ran.
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