Minnesota Twins 2011 Injury History

I attended the Twins game yesterday that featured a line-up that was nearly unrecognizable.  With four starters on the DL and Mauer sitting the day game after a night game, the crew that Gardenhire put on the field was a AAA team at best.  Here is the starting lineup:

Revere CF .272
Casilla 2B .251
Cuddyer RF .292
Valencia 3B .216
Hughes 1B.246
Repko LF .194
Nishioka SS .200
Butera C .175
Pavano P .000

Simply brutal, and one of the main reasons why the Twins were easily bested and swept by the surging Brewers. 

The horrible lineup got me thinking about this season and how many players have been lost by injury.  I conducted a quick analysis to show how it all lays out and offer it for your consideration (click to enlarge):

For the sake of the analysis, I did not look at pitchers.  If I did, this chart would look much worse. 

A couple of things of note:

• For the season, they've averaged 3 "starters" on the DL per week.  That does not include any non-playing time because Gardy chooses to sit a guy.  Likewise, it only includes time on the DL, not any other time lost due to injury where the player was still on the active roster but was held out of games.  If I included these into the numbers, the average number of starters out per week would be closer to 4.
• When at their healthiest at the start of the season, the Twins posted their worst record.
• Conversely, until last week, the Twins were playing their best baseball with their most amount of starters out. 
• The total time lost for offensive starter is a staggering 35 weeks.

I cannot remember a team so decimated by injury, and it shows in their record.  It doesn't help matters when Gardenhire continues to do things like sit Mauer the day game after a night game.  If there was ever a game that needed his bat in the starting lineup, it was yesterday.  By posting the lineup he submitted, Gardenhire all but signaled to the Brewers that we were ready to lose, so get the plane fired up and we'll take our chances with the Dodgers Monday at home.

Are we playing to win, or playing to not get injured?  If the latter, especially given what's transpired this year, why bother?