Once the DL icon is green, there is no more opportunity to get recovery. Also, once you take your player off the DL, he is no longer eligible to be put back on the DL.
Finally, there isnt a trick to it. At least, not anymore. Back before ~2020, if your team had 20 in medical and the player had a 50+ makeup rating, long term injuries had potential to result in the player coming back from injury significantly better than what he was pre-injury. Some time around 2019, that was shut off. Now it only happens on super long term injuries that are so late in the season that they creep into the following season (i.e. shoulder aneurism, torn ACL). If they're still injured the following season, they can receive multiple injury recovery bumps until they are eligible to be removed from the DL.
It still works on short term injuries (25 or less day injury, 60 day DL can result in 2 injury recovery cycles), but 1. it doesn't always work (depends on where the player's development cycle is at the time of injury); 2. It is only short term so the cap is 2 recovery cycles (as stated above, once the DL icon is green, you've hit the cap); 3. If the injury occurs with less than 60 days left in the season, it very likely will not work; 4. The player still needs a 50+ makeup rating and the team still needs a high medical budget for the above to work.
When they shut off injury recovery on long term iinjuries in 2019, it resulted in many situations where an early season long term injury was an absolute catastrophe. A pitcher goes down with a 200 day injury in spring training, not only is he gone for the season, but he is eligible to be activated from the DL during the mlb playoffs so he'll literally sit there all season with no injury recovery cycle. By the time he is activated from the DL, he has lost between 4 and 7 points across multiple ratings categories. Pretty sure this was unintended, but its been broken for seven years. Im really hoping it is fixed by the end of 2026.
8/23/2026 8:36 AM (edited)