M * E * T * S or M * A * S * H

Although official records on the disabled list go back only about 15 years, that's far enough to show how the number of disabling injuries has increased dramatically in recent years.

Not only are players getting hurt more often (despite supposedly being better conditioned with superior offseason training regimens), but because of the money invested in them, teams are quick to throw them on the disabled list rather than have them play through their injuries.

In the first 80 years of baseball, players were loathe to go on the DL for fear of losing their jobs. Who knows how many pitchers plugged on in pain with torn elbow ligaments, before the advent of Tommy John surgery?

Strained quads? Back then they called them "Charley horses" and they'd get 'em rubbed down for a couple of days and be right back out there.
In any case, in 1996 there were a total of 398 DL stints in baseball, an average of 14.2 per team. Over the next decade that number gradually increased until 2007, when it suddenly spiked from 413 to 480 or 16 per team. Last year, the number jumped to 532, or an average of 17.7 per team, with the Nationals surpassing the 2004 Texas Rangers' record of 29 stints on the list.

But the news on the Mets just gets worse and worse and, for them, this season can't end soon enough.

It seems no matter what it is, the Mets come up losers, mired in misery. Would you believe, after all the carnage at Citi Field, the Mets can't even claim the title of the most injured team in history?

Depending on how you choose to look at it, that dubious distinction goes either to the Washington Nationals of last season, who had 30 players go on the disabled list, or the 2004 Arizona Diamondbacks, whose players lost 2,167 days to the DL.

So far this year, the Mets have had 22 players land on the disabled list, which ties them with the Texas Rangers (who, by contrast, have somehow managed to remain squarely in the American League wild-card hunt.) In addition, Mets players, entering the weekend, lost 1,095 days to the disabled list, second to the San Diego Padres' 1,151 days.

But no matter how you look at it, a distinction must be made in the case of the '09 Mets. There has been no team that on Sept. 1 had three of its Opening Day starting pitchers, its first baseman, shortstop and center fielder all on the disabled list and done for the year.

There has been no team that had eight former All-Stars (David Wright, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, Billy Wagner, Johan Santana, Gary Sheffield, J.J. Putz and Jose Reyes) who all spent time on the DL in the same season.

M * E * T * S  or  M * A * S * H- Blake Kearny

Blake Kearny is a retired baseball scout from Los Angeles, California. He currently runs a baseball school for children in Los Angeles