Oakland Athletics and Injuries

The Oakland Athletics have been plagued with injuries for the past several years. I have had an intuitive sense that this is the case. It seems as though they have more players suffering injury than in the past. I have not been able to find historical data yet, but I was able to peruse the MLB.com injury (not disabled ) list for May 3. The A's lead all of baseball for players on this list. They have 11 on the list and the average for all teams is 4.2, with a standard deviation of 2.38. This puts Oakland at almost 3 standard deviations from the mean. I am trying to learn how to use my spreadsheet, so this is why I derived these figures.

Why are the Athletics so oft injured? Several reasons come to mind. They have signed some older players for cheap because they are returning from injury, too much head first sliding and poor conditioning. The older players I can see as they may be worth a shot. Coco Crisp is out with a broken finger from sliding. I think players would do better to slide the old fashioned way and minimize the threat to their hands, although Rickey Henderson knew how to slide this way and was not hurt too often. Sometimes, I see these fools trying a headfirst slide into home with the catcher blocking the plate. They are an injury waiting to happen. Conditioning is the main culprit. In the old days, players got and stayed in condition by throwing and running. Today, the emphasis is on other activities, like weight lifting and riding the stationary bike. I suspect they are still using as yet unknown steroids. A high school coach told our team not to lift weights because it makes one too tight. Maybe some weight lifting is OK, but I think the Athletics need to get back to the old school and keep their team healthy.