Injuries in Baseball Mogul 2025

When I first researched injuries for Baseball Mogul, I collected a LOT of data:

1. Different types of injuries. Baseball Mogul has 129, ranging from a broken toenail to a skull fracture.
2. Different causes of injuries. (Sliding, Diving, Pitching, Hit-By-Pitch, Running, Batting, Collision, Stress Injuries)
3. Typical recovery time for each injury.
4. Permanent effects of serious injuries.
   etc.

This was a lot of work, as most of it was collected by hand in a big spreadsheet. I didn’t create a comprehensive database of all injuries throughout baseball history. But I did get a good idea of which injuries affected different types of players (pitchers, infielders, base stealers, etc.)

One thing that surprised me: most injuries didn’t officially “occur” in the middle of a game. In other words, when a player missed 30 games because of a broken toe, there was nothing in the play-by-play record showing them leaving the game. In some cases, the broken toe was a “stress injury” that accumulated over time until the player needed time off. But even when there’s a specific injury event (like a collision or hit-by-pitch) the player often stayed in the game.[1] It wasn’t until they got into the locker room (to see the trainer or team doctor, get X-rays etc.) that they got put on the DL.

The original version of Baseball Mogul was a pure “GM” simulation. You traded and signed players, set your lineup and rotation, simulated games, and viewed the results. There was no in-game Play-By-Play Mode. In this context, it made perfect sense to implement injuries at the end of each day. Only when you to set up your lineup for the next game do you see that your shortstop was dealing with a “hairline wrist break”.

[1] This has changed somewhat over the years. The new concussion protocols are leading to more players leaving in the middle of a game. But if you look at injuries from the 1960s – 1980s, it seems that most games missed are due to “nagging” injuries that don’t have a single causal event. 

In-Game Injuries

When I added Play-By-Play Mode, it was tempting to change the game to inflict injuries in the middle of games instead of after the game. If you remember other baseball games from 20+ years ago, you might remember a ton of annoying popups that would hold up gameplay. Something like “Your lineup is invalid – you must fix this error to proceed”. I hated these popups and did my best to eliminate them completely from Baseball Mogul. One of the ways I did this was by keeping injuries out of Play-By-Play Mode. There are hardcore baseball replayers on YouTube (Kurt Bergland etc.) who choose to completely ignore the injury rules in whatever game they are playing. They don’t want anything to break up the flow of the game and I have sympathy for this viewpoint.
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Nevertheless, people kept asking for in-game injuries and I kept postponing this feature. One reason was that I felt I had made the correct design decision to minimize the number of “annoying popups” that got in the way of game play. But the biggest reason was that I didn’t want to break the existing system. I had fine-tuned it over the years to generate the correct number of injuries for each player. For example, a player who missed 26 games per season in real-life would miss that many games (on average) in Baseball Mogul[1]. Linking injuries to on-field events instead of the statistical record messes up this math: shortstops suffer more collisions than DHs; base stealers and aggressive runners require more injury checks; etc.

Baseball Mogul 2025

​Anyway … Baseball Mogul 2025 is the version where I finally added in-game injuries. I spent some time doing the math so that players exposed to more in-game injuries (e.g. because they get hit by a lot of pitches) see the correct reduction in the number of off-field injuries. League-wide, I’ve calibrated things so that roughly 50% of injuries occur in-game and 50% occur off the field. You can also adjust the frequency of each type of injury in League Settings on the League Menu.

You can adjust the frequency of each type of injury in League Settings (on the League Menu).

How Does It Work?

When an injury occurs during simulation, the computer manager will find the best replacement and the new player will be indicated in the Play-By-Play record.

When an injury occurs to a player on your team during Play-By-Play, you will be asked to replace that player. In a long extra-inning game where you have used all of your bench and bullpen players, it is theoretically possible for this to create a situation where you can’t continue. If this happens, click “Edit Player”. This will give you the option to erase that player’s injury.