Greetings,

Curious where you guys sit regarding when the Health rating begins to impact your decisions to draft someone. There's a stud pitcher I can draft, but his Health projection is only 54. He's 6 points better than the next-best pitcher in the draft, 89 overall...but that Health rating may make me pass...If he gets hurt twice during the first few dev years, those ratings projections are out the window. I tend to treat Health as pass/fail...over 65 I don't worry about it, less than that I try to avoid drafting/acquiring....but this guy is otherwise an SP1.

First, I run 20 mil Training and 20 mil medical. Specifically so I can draft and roster players like that. Doesn't stop 'em from getting injuries, just maximizes any chance that if they get a big one, I can possibly get 'em back to pre-injury.

And that's not even discussing any 60-day DL extended rehabs to boost them. Another topic for someone else.

General rule of thumb, any player below 50 will be almost guaranteed multiple 60-day injuries. Almost. I've seen a guy with 49 Health go an entire career without a 60-day stint.

Conversely, my worst injured player ever has been a top ten SP draftee who started with 80+ Health and had TWO elbow surgeries. If there's a top end I'd be comfortable saying never get injured, I'd say 98.

I have to somewhat disagree with Damag's post. From what I understand from MikeT, WIS Support(?) and a lot of the other old WIS geezers over the past few years, the health rating really only affects the nagging 15 day or less injuries. There's really nothing you can do to prevent the big 60+ day injuries, other than to put 20 on training and medical. I wouldn't let 54 change your decision very much about whether or not you like him. I tend to stay away from guys with health ratings less than 45 or so.

Huh. I never thought of that as a possibility but it kinda makes sense based on my experiences.

And yeah, far as I’m concerned, even less reason to worry about a 54.

Thanks, Gents.

I don't even look at it ever

Posted by damag on 1/3/2022 6:22:00 PM (view original):
First, I run 20 mil Training and 20 mil medical. Specifically so I can draft and roster players like that. Doesn't stop 'em from getting injuries, just maximizes any chance that if they get a big one, I can possibly get 'em back to pre-injury.

And that's not even discussing any 60-day DL extended rehabs to boost them. Another topic for someone else.

General rule of thumb, any player below 50 will be almost guaranteed multiple 60-day injuries. Almost. I've seen a guy with 49 Health go an entire career without a 60-day stint.

Conversely, my worst injured player ever has been a top ten SP draftee who started with 80+ Health and had TWO elbow surgeries. If there's a top end I'd be comfortable saying never get injured, I'd say 98.

Pretty much nailed it. One of the things I currently love about this game is there are lots of different ways to spend your money to have an advantage over other owners. Going 20 training and 20 medical I don't know if I have every worried about a players health. Lets you grab guys like this later where other owners might avoid.

A guy like this with health around the 50's should have you licking your chops as your medical team can turn this player into a monster.

I think Johan Butcher is my favorite example of this. Now, granted, I got lucky with good numbers and gains off of a HS kid but injuring him and giving him to my medical team is what really put him over the top. He is (probably) the best pitcher I will ever own because he spent most of his 20's on medical rehab.

With how terrible injury recovery is in this game, it is easy for me to rationalize CyberPunkin up a guy like Butcher. However, there are others that hated this so much that they complained to Admin about it. To me, I have no issue with it. Until injury recovery is fixed, each of us needs to find ways to improve our players, in the aggregate, in order to deal with the players that get a catastrophic injury where he doesn't fully recover.

I have documented my Moneyball franchise's injury woes in other posts where top young players had one of those 60+ day injuries 12 times over the last 10 seasons (11 total top prospect players, 12 60+ day injuries). It's to a point where I feel like I have a flawed team. If I can get a few 10 day injuries, where the player gets a few ratings back due to the medical team improving his ratings, I don't see an issue with it until injury recovery is fixed.

To answer the original question though, I just follow my process of rating players where the health rating is mostly ignored. Since the majority of the players that play on my mlb squad are players that I drafted and developed, I will speak to my draft process more than my IFA or FA process. As written above, I rate players in the draft based on how good they are. I then might do a slight reorder based on need. Then I will do a reorder based on signability. Only then I MIGHT do a slight reorder based on health rating.

One league I played in awhile ago, one of the best SPs had a 5 Health rating. Injury, boost, injury, boost, etc. Guy was a total high wire act, he was lights out whenever he was actually pitching. But I don't remember if he ever got through an entire season at once.

Posted by damag on 1/4/2022 12:18:00 PM (view original):
One league I played in awhile ago, one of the best SPs had a 5 Health rating. Injury, boost, injury, boost, etc. Guy was a total high wire act, he was lights out whenever he was actually pitching. But I don't remember if he ever got through an entire season at once.

This is the biggest warning I can give for low health high ceiling players is that they can break down in a moments notice. I think twice Butcher took a 20 day injury during the NLCS. I'm not saying that's why I lost the WS both of those seasons, but I'll use it as my excuse as to why I lost both of those WS titles.

Posted by bjschumacher on 1/3/2022 8:44:00 PM (view original):
I have to somewhat disagree with Damag's post. From what I understand from MikeT, WIS Support(?) and a lot of the other old WIS geezers over the past few years, the health rating really only affects the nagging 15 day or less injuries. There's really nothing you can do to prevent the big 60+ day injuries, other than to put 20 on training and medical. I wouldn't let 54 change your decision very much about whether or not you like him. I tend to stay away from guys with health ratings less than 45 or so.

Support may have said this, but they've said lots of things that they never got around to programming in... for pitchers, my experience is that most low health pitchers eventually get hammered with a major injury or two. I'm much less certain about position players.

To answer OP's question: for OF-1B-C, if health is below 40 I factor that in like I would a DUR in the 60s; I know the player is going to miss some games. But I don't worry about major injury; it's a little increased but these players have a fairly low rate of major injury to begin with. I feel like IF, 2B in particular, have a higher rate of major injury; if I have an IF with health less than 40-50 or so I'll try to get them into CF if they have the range for it, or else I'll just make it a fairly major downgrade. And any pitcher with health less than 60 gets downgraded, the lower the health the more severe the downgrade.

Finally, don't let players with low health get fatigued; injuries seem to go up with fatigue.

I had a really good starting pitcher go down with two trips to the 60 for elbow surgery.....health rating was a 60. Won a CY as a rookie and then was got hit with elbow surgery. He was young enough and the timing was such that he recovered that time. He won another CY and really was on the way to a HOF career and boom.....another elbow surgery. Now he is just okay. I would still sign him all over again. Won two WS with him in the rotation.