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Forgive me for beating a dead horse, but the Minnesota Twins were among the most injured teams in MLB during the 2022 regular season. In total, Twins players missed a staggering 2,332 days due to injury, the second-most in baseball and the fifth-most since Baseball Prospectus began tracking injury data following the 2018 season.
As a result, the team parted ways with head athletic trainer Michael Salazar, who had served in the position since 2020. The Athletic’s Dan Hayes cited the number of soft tissue injuries suffered by the Twins as well as questionable rehabilitation practices, particularly that starting pitcher Tyler Mahle had not been participating in a shoulder strengthening regimen despite landing on the IL three times with shoulder fatigue, played a large role in the team’s decision to move on.
This past Thursday the team announced that they had hired former Oakland A’s head athletic trainer Nick Paparesta to fill the hole left by Salazar. Paparesta spent the last 12 years with Oakland and was named to the 2018 Major League Athletic Training Staff of the Year. (For what it’s worth, Salazar was also named to the team in 2016.)
According to Baseball Prospectus, the A’s have been among the league’s healthiest teams over the last five seasons, though it should also be noted that the Twins weren’t far behind. Below is how the two team’s have stacked up as of late:
While both teams overall have been well-managed, there is a noticeable trend over the past three seasons with the A’s ranking among MLB’s healthiest squads and the Twins falling down a well. Minnesota is hoping that the arrival of Paparesta will help right the ship, but the question is: How much can one athletic trainer impact a team’s injury rates?
The unsatisfactory answer is that it’s difficult to know. Injuries and re-injuries are complex, multifactorial, and often random events, making it difficult, at times, to determine direct cause and effect. Nutrition, genetics, anatomical makeup, sleep hygiene, chronic workload, acute workload, and past injury history are all critical variables in determining an athlete’s injury risk and not all of them can be treated or modified, particularly by a single athletic trainer.
As such, it’s critical that the entire performance team—often comprised of the athletic trainers, strength and conditioning coaches, and sports scientists—be in lockstep with each other and communicate with the athletes efficiently and effectively. The best rehabilitation and strength training techniques aren’t of much value if the athletes don’t buy into their individual management routines.
From purely a treatment perspective, it’s unlikely that Paparesta will employ anything unique from what Salazar was performing. Most athletic trainers at the MLB level have similar skills and levels of knowledge. However, what may change are details around the margins, such as refined exercise prescription, soft tissue management frequency, sleep practices, interactions with the athletes, etc.
It's impossible to know how the hiring of Paparesta will play in the clubhouse from the outside. By all accounts, Salazar was well-liked by the athletes and coaching staff and it's tough to stick around a team for over a decade in Paparesta's case if you aren't respected.
While it's difficult to project how the transition from Salazar to Paparesta will impact the team's health, it isn't particularly difficult to make the following claim: Michael Salazar was not the lone reason why the Twins were depleted by injuries last season and Nick Paparesta won’t be the the lone reason why the team may be healthier next summer. It’s possible that Salazar did everything “right” and simply ran into bad luck. It’s also possible that Paparesta simply possesses intrinsic qualities that are difficult to describe and quantify, but simply lead to better outcomes. (There’s a lot of “soft science” in rehabilitation, such as psychology and personal skills in addition to the “hard science” of concrete data.)
Regardless, there’s no way that the Twins can be more injury-plagued in 2023, right?
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