faq

FAQ Contents

Subscriptions and Data Access

Who already uses the AthleteGameLost.com injury data?

Is any of your data verified by the teams themselves?

Yes. Many teams review and verify our data on a weekly basis. They are highlighted with an asterix in injury updates.

How does my organization get access to the injury data?

Do you sell injury data with game-by-game details for each player?

Yes we do, but it is only available to Pro Access members.

The complete data we collect is regular-season, game-by-game statuses for each player, for each team. For the different sports we track whether the

• Player played (including up to 10 different stats on their in game performance depending on the sport)
• Was injured (including basic details on type/nature of injury (knee MCL strain, concussion, finger fracture, etc.))
• Was a healthy scratch, coach’s decision, or DNP (‘did not play’ or was the backup goalie and didn’t play)
• Did not dress for the game (including inactive, in minors, suspended, personal leave, disciplinary leave, other)

What payment options do you accept?

We only accept credit card payment (Visa, Mastercard, American Express) at this time.

How often is the injury data updated?

The injury data is updated weekly for all sports during the regular season. Each sport has a fixed day of the week when updates take place.

Account Management

How do I change my billing credit card?

How do I check if my account will automatically renew or not?

I lost/forgot my password. What do I do?!?

How do I change my name, email address, profile information in my profile?

general questions

What is “Athlete Game Lost”?

Athlete Game Lost is a term that refers to the cumulative loss of players (primarily due to injury) for a sports team. It is analogous to the terms “games missed due to injury” or “games lost to injury” used in many professional sports.

Troubleshooting

Why can’t I see articles on the site? I need a subscription?

Yes, you will require a subscription to view articles on the site.

I bought a subscription. Why can’t I view paid-access articles?

If you don’t want to completely clear your browser cache, on a PC you can try pressing CTRL + F5 to clear a single web page from your browser cache. If you continue to experience difficulty please contact us.

Also, please ensure the content you are trying to view falls within the subscription type you are currently registered for.

National Hockey League (NHL)

What do “Injured Man-Games Lost”, “Did Not Dress”, “Did Not Play”, “Suspended” and “In Minors” represent? How is it calculated?

This NHL injury data is manually compiled and tracked by me (as of 2010-2011 season).

• Injured Man-Games Lost (MGL) = player missed game due to injury, injury recovery, or illness
• Did Not Play (DNP) = player was a healthy scratch for the game, or was the backup goalie, and did not play
• Did Not Dress (DND) = player was unavailable for personal reasons (family event, immigration issue, personal event)
• Suspended (SUS) = player missed game since he was suspended by the team and/or the league, with or without pay
• Minors (MIN) = player had been assigned to the team’s minor league affiliate and did not play

What are Points Shares (PS)? What is the Lost-ps metric?

Point Shares are an estimate of the number of team points in the standings contributed by each player. I use the Point Shares values posted at hockey-reference.com.

The Lost-ps metric attempts to determine the point shares lost due to a player’s injury. It is the difference between the expected point shares generated by the player and the actual point shares they have generated.

Lost-ps = Point Shares Expected – Point Shares Actual

Lost-ps = (PlayerPointShares/PlayerGamesPlayed) x (PlayerGamesPlayed + PlayerGamesInjured) – PlayerPointShares

What is IIT? How is it calculated for the NHL?

Injury Impact To Team (IIT) is a single-value metric that attempts to quantify the impact of a player not playing for their team due to injury. It weights injured NHL players and their time missed based on how much playing time they would have had if they were healthy (or on relative Corsi (CFrel%) for the IIT-cfrel metric). Coaches (good ones) play ‘better’ players more, and not vice versa.

IIT-skater and IIT-goalie utilize a skater’s average time on ice (ATOI) or minutes played for goalies, the number of games missed due to injury, the number of games played by their team, and the number of games that the player has played in (necessary in calculations due to players who aren’t on the team’s roster or IR at all times i.e. AHL call-ups, free agent signings).

A higher IIT number equals a greater impact of injured players to the team. A high IIT value for a player reflects a high average of playing time, a high number of games missed due to injury, or both combined. The exact number is not as important as the basic range, relative to other players. This is the case with most metrics in the analytics of sport performance.

For players who haven’t yet played in a current season, I use their previous season ATOI to calculate IIT-skater. ATOI for players is assumed to be fairly stable across seasons, unless they’ve changed teams.

For IIT-cfrel, I do not use previous season CFrel% for players who haven’t yet played in the current season. It is a more volatile metric. So, no IIT-CFrel calculation for those players.

Using the number of games a player has played in for IIT purposely devalues players who miss more than half the season, since their teams are better able to adapt to their loss as the season progresses beyond a 41 game absence.

IIT-skater = (PlayerGamesPlayed x ATOI x PlayerGamesInjured) / TeamGamesPlayed

IIT-goalie = (PlayerGamesPlayed x MinutesPlayed x PlayerGamesInjured) / TeamGamesPlayed

IIT-cfrel = (PlayerGamesPlayed x CFrel% x PlayerGamesInjured) / TeamGamesPlayed

At the team level, the IIT metrics represents the sum of all the IIT-skater, -goalie, or -cfrel values for injured players on the team.

What is CMIP? How is it calculated?

CMIP (Cumulative Minutes of Injured Players) sums the amount of time a player would have played if they weren’t injured. It represents the amount of playing time, in minutes, that a team has lost due to a player being injured. At the team level, CMIP represents the sum of all the time missed by injured players on the team.

To do this, their average time on ice in the games they’ve played so far in the season is simply multiplied by the number of games they’ve missed due to injury. This metric was pioneered by Rob Vollman of HockeyAbstract.com.

CMIP = PlayerATOI x PlayerGamesInjured

National Football League (NFL)

What is Lost-av? Lost-wav? How is it calculated for the NFL?

My NFL player-quality metrics now base the quality of a player on their AV (Approximate Value) and WAV (Weighted Career Approximate Value) scores as calculated at Pro-Football-Reference.com. AV scores are only available for previous season performances and don’t reflect current season performance. As such, during the regular season, injuries to rookies are adversely affected since they do not have a previous season AV score, and thus any rookie’s AV scores is effectively zero. They will have zero Lost-av or Lost-wav. The absence of an unknown cannot be measured effectively.

Lost-av weights the impact of injuries on the previous season quality of players.

Lost-wav weights the impact of injuries on the career quality of players.

Only at season end do the AV values for all players in the season get calculated. Once they are available to Lost-av values for all players are recalculated, using the season’s new AV numbers available, substituting out the previous season AV values that had been used.

A higher Lost-av or Lost-wav number equals a greater impact of missing players to the team. A high Lost-av or Lost-wav value for a player reflects a high number of games missed due to injury, a high WAV or previous season AV value, or a combination of both. The exact number is not as important as the basic range, versus other players. This is the case with most statistics in the analytics of sport performance.

Lost AV is calculated as the AV(historic per game from the previous season) x PlayerGamesInjured for each player. At the team level, it is summed from the individual values for each player on each team.

NFL Lost-av = AV(historic per game from previous season) x PlayerGamesInjured

likewise for Lost-wav

NFL Lost-wav = WAV(historic per game from entire career) x PlayerGamesInjured

What injury and calculations do you make for the NFL? What are they?

• DNP/SUS/PRA – The sum of games missed by players for reasons other than injury, including Did Not Plays, Suspended, Personal, or assignment to the practice squad.
• Total Injured – Sum of Out, Injured List (I.L), Sidelined, and PUP counts for a player/team. It excludes games missed by suspended players.
• Lost-av – Injury impact to team metric based on a player’s Career Approximate Value (AV metric) from the previous season, and number of games missed.
• Lost-wav – Injury impact to team metric based on a player’s Weighted Approximate Value (WAV) from the previous season, and number of games missed.

Major League Baseball (MLB)

What do the Total Games Injured (TGI) numbers represent? How are they calculated?

Total Games Injured (TGI) – The MLB injury data is not calculated by me. This number is the official, team-reported Disabled List games missed (7-DL, 15-DL, and 60-DL) for each team’s roster as of their last game. This disabled-list transaction data is taken directly from MLB.com.

An injured player missing 1 game is counted as 1 game missed for the team.  It’s a cumulative count of injured players who don’t play in a game.

What is Lost-war for MLB? How is it calculated?

My player quality metrics now base the quality of a player on their WAR (Wins Above Replacement) scores as calculated by Baseball-reference.com.

Lost WAR is calculated as the WAR(expected)- WAR(actual) for each player. At the team level, it is summed from the individual values for each player on each team.

Injured position players who have played less than 7 games in a season, and injured pitchers who have played less than 4 games in a season, have their Lost-war value calculated as the proportion of their previous season’s WAR that has been lost so far based on their team’s games played.

Assuming MLB Lost-war = WAR(expected) – WAR(actual)

then WAR(expected) for position players = ((WAR/PlayerGamesPlayed)*(PlayerGamesPlayed + PlayerGamesInjured))

and WAR(expected) for pitchers = ((WAR/PlayerGamesPlayed)*(PlayerGamesPlayed + PlayerGamesInjured/4))

and MLB Lost-war is then the difference between WAR(Expected) and WAR.

What is IIT-war? How is it calculated for MLB?

Injury Impact To Team (IIT) is a single-value metric that attempts to quantify the impact of a player not playing for their team due to injury.

IIT-war is based on several assumptions.

• Players used in the analysis are all players who have appeared on any team’s official 40-man roster throughout the current season, whether they have been injured for any amount of time or not.
• Current season Wins Above Replacement ratings (WAR as calculated by Baseball-Reference.com) are used. If a player has no current season WAR ratings (i.e. they haven’t played in the current season) their previous season WAR values are used (if available).
• For players who haven’t played a current season game, their WAR value from the previous season is averaged over a 162-game period, and multiplied by the current season number of games missed due to injury, regardless of how many games they played in previous season (there are issues here, I know).
• A player spending time on the 7-, 15-, or 60-DL is considered ‘Injured’ and unavailable to the team. At this point, a player not on the DL is considered ‘Available’ to the team, regardless of their playing status.
• Players not Available (see criteria in point above) for a minimum of 7 games of their team’s 162 game schedule (typically 1 week of the season) have their WAR value divided by 162 rather than the base formula given below. This reduces some wacky results where players playing only 1-5 games for their team, and accumulating a WAR value, completely skew their team’s IIT-war values (both negative WAR values and positive WAR values).

(as of March 10, 2016)          IIT-war = (WAR  / (TeamGamesPlayed – PlayerGamesInjured)) x PlayerGamesInjured

A higher IIT number equals a greater impact of injured players to the team. A high IITvalue for a player reflects a high WAR rating, a high number of games missed due to injury, or a combination of both.

The exact number is not as important as the basic range, versus other players. This is the case with most statistics in the analytics of sport performance.

National Basketball Association (NBA)

What do the Injured, Inactive, Did Not Play, Did Not Dress, Suspended, and In Minors numbers represent for the NBA? How are they calculated?

The NBA injury data is now manually compiled and tracked by me (as of 2015-2016 season). My 2012/13 to 2014/15 season data will soon be updated with this new analysis methodology.

These numbers are the reported players statuses for each team as of their last game. It’s a cumulative count of players who don’t step on the court during a game, and the reason.

• Injured (INJ) = player missed game due to injury, injury recovery, or illness.
• Did Not Play or Inactive (DNP/INA/MIN) = player was inactive, or a coach’s decision or unavailable for the game, or suspended, or assigned to the D-League, and did not play.
• Did Not Dress (DND) = player was unavailable for personal reasons (family event, immigration issue, personal event).
• Suspended (SUS) = player missed game since he was suspended by the team and/or the league, with or without pay.

What injury calculations do you make for the NBA? What are they?

• Lost-vorp – Lost Value Over Replacement Player. Quantified impact to team of games missed by a player due to injury due to their lost VORP.
• Lost-ws – Lost Win Shares. Quantified impact to team of games missed by a player due to injury due to their lost Win Shares for the team.
• IIT-vorp – Quantified impact to team of games missed by a player due to injury weighted by the number of games they’ve missed, their Value Over Replacement Player (VORP), the number of games played by their team, and the number of games they’ve played.

What is Lost-vorp? What is Lost-ws? How is it calculated for the NBA?

My player quality metrics base the quality of a player on their VORP (Value Over Replacement Player) scores or WS (Win Shares) scores as calculated by Basketball-reference.com. VORP is derived from the Box Plus/Minus (BPM) metric. Win Shares estimate the wins contribution of each player on a team.

Previous to my 2015/16 season data for NBA, my metrics were calculated using the average playing time of players in a game.

Lost VORP is calculated as the VORP(expected)- VORP(actual) for each player. Lost-ws is calculated in a similar fashion. At the team level, they are both summed from the individual values for each player on each team.

Assuming NBA Lost-vorp = VORP(expected) – VORP(actual)

so if VORP(actual) = (BPM + 2) x (PlayerTotalMinutes/(TeamGamesPlayed x 48)) x (TeamGamesPlayed/82) which boils down to

VORP(actual) = ((BPM + 2) x PlayerTotalMinues)/3936

then VORP(expected) = ((BPM + 2) x PlayerTotalMinues x (PlayerGamesPlayed + PlayerGamesInjured))/3936

and NBA Lost-vorp is then the difference between those two.

Lost-ws is calculated in much the same way. Lost-ws = WS(expected) – WS(actual)

Lost-ws = ((PlayerWinShares/PlayerGamesPlayed) x (PlayerGamesPlayed +PlayerGamesInjured)) – PlayerWinShares

What is IIT-vorp? How is it calculated for the NBA?

Injury Impact To Team (IIT) is a single-value metric that attempts to quantify the impact of a player not playing for their team. It weights injured players and their time missed based on the VORP performance metric, as well as the number of games missed due to injury, and the number of games played by their team.A higher IIT number reflects a greater impact of missing players to the team. 

A high IIT value for a player reflects a higher VORP, a high number of games missed due to injury, or both combined. The exact number is not as important as the basic range, versus other players. This is the case with most statistics in the analytics of sport performance.

For NBA IIT-vorp = (PlayerGamesPlayed x PlayerGamesMissed x PerformanceMetric) / TeamGamesPlayed