Angels Looking into Strength and Conditioning Department in Search of Answers for Injury Plagued Season

The team needs to kill this injury bug haunting the clubhouse.

The Los Angeles Angels have a big offseason coming up.

While most of the focus will go toward retaining Shohei Ohtani another important issue is maintaining the health of this clubhouse after an injury-riddled season.

The 2023 season saw players like Anthony Rendon, Logan O'Hoppe, Zach Neto, Ben Joyce, Mike Trout, and Shohei Ohtani all miss decent to large amounts of the season due to injury.

If the team wants to succeed and play in October, they need to be healthy. And that's something the club is looking into this winter... what happened?

Minasian said Tuesday that searching for an answer to the injuries would be a part of his “autopsy” of the entire organization. “We have to try,” Minasian said.

“One of the biggest things, if you look at our season from a trajectory standpoint, is when we were healthy, we were a pretty competitive club. … We’ll take a deep dive into all the medical and ask ourselves why and what can we do to prevent that and go from there.”

(via Jeff Fletcher, The Orange County Register)

The Angels were not healthy in 2023. The team placed 34 players on the injured list during the season, a total of 42 times which is the third-highest in the MLB.

All injuries are different, Taylor Ward being hit by a fastball and breaking facial bones is not something a training staff can help prevent. 

Rather, things like soft tissue injuries can be used to assess the effectiveness of a training staff.

Start with all oblique, calf, hamstring, groin, lat, abdomen and quad strains, and then add neck and back injuries that include the words “strain” or “tightness.” Using that standard, the Angels had 12 of those injuries this season, which was tied for fifth most in the majors. The average was 7.6 per team.



(via Jeff Fletcher, The Orange County Register)

Injuries are part of the game and unavoidable in the general sense, but precautions can be taken to help reduce the quantity and degree of these injuries, and that starts with the training staff.