The Down Low on the D.L.

Carlos Quentin out for 20 games! Reed Johnson lost for 17! Matt Garza down for 15!

What's going on this year? Are there more injuries than last year, or does it just seem that way?

The short answer: Yes! There definitely are more injuries so far this season than there were at this point last season.

Through the first 73 games of last season, there were 516 games lost to injury. Through the first 73 games of this season, there have been... 826! Wow! That's a 60 percent increase!

Looking at it another way, there have been 80 injuries of 1 day or more so far this season. Through this point last year, there were only 52. Measured that way, injuries are up 54 percent this year.

One difference you can see is that this year really started out with a bang, with Livingston's Jake Arrieta and Hillsborough's Brandon Boesch going out for a combined 32 days on the second day of the season. In 2011, on the other hand, it took a combination of injuries to 12 players -- and three weeks into the season -- to reach 32 injury days.

While there have been many more injuries this year, the injuries aren't longer. Last year, there were two players out for 40 or more days by this time; this year, there's only one. That dubious honor goes to St. Louis's Nick Hundley, who went down on May 15 for 41 days after getting hit by a pitch by Hillsborough's John Axford. It's no surprise Axford threw at Hundley -- he'd gone 3-for-3 with two home runs and a triple!

The second-longest injury this year goes to Newark's Brandon McCarthy, who exited on May 18 after completing the 8th inning of a game against Arkansas. Remarkably, McCarthy had needed just 67 pitches to get through 8 innings, but went on the shelf for 30 days after getting that final out in the 8th.

Third-longest goes to Arkansas's Pablo Sandoval (29 days), followed by Hillsborough's Aroldis Chapman and Ernesto Frieri tied at 28 days.

In all, 11 players have injuries of at least 20 days or more so far this season, compared to just seven at this time last year.

So which team has been the unluckiest this season? By far, that's the Newark Sugar Bears. The Crunch With Punch have lost a combined 111 days due to injuries, led by the above-mentioned McCarthy. The Sugar Bears have had nine players injured for at least one game -- including Jim Thome, who missed 11 games in April and 9 in June! The Sugar Bears are followed by the St. Louis Farrakhans (82 days) and Hopatcong Floating Fish (78).

This year's luckiest team have been the Blue Ridge Bombers, who remarkably haven't lost a single day due to injury so far this season! The next luckiest team is Rowdy Roddy Pippers, with just 6 days lost so far this season, then Hillsborough Hired Hitmen at 19.

What's behind all these injuries, and why are there so many more than last year? Here's a few theories.

• Luck: Luck plays a huge role in Diamond Mind Baseball. We could play the season 100 times and have 100 different outcomes. While the DMB engine is said to be the most realistic baseball simulation available, there's still a random element involved. (Otherwise, every season would play out exactly the same, and who would want that?) Injuries are a big factor in that randomness. Imagine if we were playing old-fashioned Strat-O-Matic with dice, and every time you rolled snake eyes there was a chance that a player got hurt on the play. Well, the Sugar Bears have had a lot of unlucky rolls, and the Bombers haven't. We'll see if that evens out over the second half of the season.
• Injury Rating: But it's not all luck. Each player has an Injury Rating, from Iron (the best) to Very prone (the worst). Iron players don't get hurt as often, and when they do, it's not for as long. The most injured team, Newark, has seven Prone and three Very prone players; conversely, the least injured team, Blue Ridge, has just five Prone and no Very prone players.
• Real-life: This isn't just a bad year for DMB. The 2011 MLB season saw 503 trips to the Disabled List; 2010 saw just 446. More players got hurt in real life last year, so it would stand to reason that we would see more injuries in our replay.

So, what can you do to keep your players healthy? Obviously, if I knew, my team wouldn't be leading the league in injuries! But the obvious answer would be to avoid players with Prone or Very prone injury ratings. If you've already got a roster full of them, you can try resting them occasionally, or giving them a "half day off" by starting them at DH.

But sometimes a player can be hurt even if he's not playing, as happened to Newark pitcher Scott Downs on April 10 -- he didn't even pitch in the game, but he got hurt in a bench-clearing brawl!