Fantasy Baseball 2025: The Injury Bug — Key Injuries to Monitor

(It’s fantasy baseball draft season! The FTN Fantasy team and a host of helpful guests present our Ultimate 2025 Fantasy Baseball Guide. Check it out and prepare for the 2025 MLB season.)

Like anything in life, there is bias and subjectivity in our fantasy baseball analysis and understanding. However, it’s helpful to have data to work from because we’re working with a stat-heavy sport in baseball. The word “projections” should be synonymous with fantasy baseball because many use them in draft and in-season analysis to build teams and starting lineups.

One aspect that derails a player’s fantasy production involves injuries. Injury optimism can burn us, especially when a player’s average draft position and market value don’t align with the realistic timeline and skill returns.

Below, we’ll examine the league-wide injury data and trends in 2024 and the player-level situations heading into 2025. With injuries and recovery, we want to use a mix of historical data, trends and offseason news to inform whether we target or fade these players.

2024 Season-Long Injury Data

Before looking at the player-level takes, let’s examine the season-long injury data in 2024. The highest injury occurrences by percentage involve elbow/ulnar (12.7%), shoulder or rotator cuff (17%), back/lumbar/spine (8.5%) and Tommy John surgery (7.4%). The other three injury categories occurring over 7% of the time would be finger/wrist/hand injuries (7.3%), oblique/abdominal/rib (7%) and hamstring injuries (7%).