Adding context to the Mets injuries in 2025

If you asked most fans how they’ll remember the 2025 season for the Mets, the most likely answer is how they went from being 21 games over .500 and having the best record in the majors in mid-June to not making the playoffs. The next answer is likely how the team was snake bit with injuries. In all, the Mets made 32 moves during the season where they placed a player on the IL. That sounds like a lot. But we can’t know if that’s true or not without looking at all of the teams in baseball. So, let’s do that.

The following table was created with information from. the Roster Resource section on FanGraphs. The “Transferred” column indicates how many times a player was moved to the 60-day IL. The “Placed-Activated” column essentially tells us how many season-ending injuries each club had. Here are the numbers:

The table is sorted by the “Placed” column, which counts how many times a player was put on the IL. You can sort the table by any column you wish. The Mets ranked tied for eighth with the most IL moves. They were tied for third with players being moved to the 60-day IL. Finally, they tied for 5^th in season-ending injuries.

My initial takeaway is that the Mets didn’t rank as the worst in any of these categories. But while they can’t say they had an unprecedented run with injuries, they were consistently in the top 10, ranking as high as third. Contrast the Mets with the NL East champion Phillies. When it came to times utilizing the IL, the Phillies ranked last in the majors, making about half of the moves that the Mets made. That’s startling to me. And when it comes to moves to the 60-day IL, the Mets made four times as many of these moves compared to the Phillies. And the Mets had over three times as many season-ending injuries as the Phillies.

It pays to stay healthy.

Of course, these are all raw numbers, making no account for the quality of players winding up on the IL. The Mets were fortunate in this respect, as none of their top three players spent time on the IL in 2025, even if Francisco Lindor should have done that. Here are the guys from the top 20 in payroll from the Mets who spent time on the IL:

4 – Starling Marte
6 – Sean Manaea
8 – Frankie Montas
9 – Jeff McNeil
10 – Kodai Senga
12 – A.J. Minter
13 – Jesse Winker
16 – Griffin Canning
17 – Paul Blackburn
18 – Tyrone Taylor
19 – Jose Siri
20 – Tylor Megill

That’s 12 players of the 17 from fourth to 20 in salary this year. And five of those had season-ending injuries.

Another thing this doesn’t take into account is positional grouping. The Mets started the year with Blackburn, Manaea and Montas all on the IL. Blackburn gets activated on 6/2 but Senga goes on the IL on 6/13 and Megill follows on 6/17. They get Montas back on 6/24 but Canning hits the IL on 6/27 and Blackburn goes back on 7/3. They never had fewer than two starters on the IL and at one point had five SP shelved. And that’s not counting Christian Scott, who was lost for the year and didn’t pitch a single inning.

And this has followed me into football season. The Vikings haven’t had fewer than eight players out in the first five weeks of the season. And here in Week 5, they have 15 players out. That includes their starting QB, starting RB, three starting OL, and two defensive starters – an edge rusher (who made the Pro Bowl last year) and a linebacker. And just for giggles, they’re also missing a reserve offensive lineman, too. They’re playing their third-string center this week, someone who’s never played a single snap at that position in the NFL.

Unfortunately, injuries are part of sports. You just have to hope that these things even out in the long run. The Vikings were pretty healthy last year, so perhaps this year is just cosmic payback of a sorts. And assuming that MLB injuries are sort of consistent from year to year here in the 2020s (which is just a theory) – the Mets were fairly healthy in 2024, too. They made just 21 moves where they placed someone on the IL. If that was their total in 2025 – it would have ranked 22^nd.