INJURY FILTERS AND WHY AVAILABILITY IS THE FIRST QUESTION

Before any analysis of form, consistency or matchup, there is a more basic question that too many analyses skip: is this player actually going to play? A brilliant projection attached to a name that ends up inactive is not a small error — it is a total one. The number does not matter if the athlete never takes the field.

A player listed as out, on injured reserve, or serving a suspension contributes exactly nothing, no matter how gaudy their recent numbers look. For that reason our engine filters out unavailable players up front, so the analysis only ever considers athletes who are expected to be active. Availability is the gate everything else has to pass through.

Between 'in' and 'out' sits a murkier state: questionable, probable, day-to-day, a game-time decision. These players demand extra care, because a projection built on the assumption that they play at full capacity can be badly wrong if they sit, or play limited minutes, or are visibly hampered.

The honest way to handle uncertain availability is to treat it as uncertainty — to flag it clearly rather than paper over it with false precision. A confident projection for a player who might not suit up is worse than no projection at all, because it invites misplaced confidence.

An injury does not only remove one player from the picture; it reshapes everyone around them. When a primary scorer sits, the usage they would have commanded flows to their teammates. When a starting pitcher is scratched, the entire complexion of a game — and the workload of the bullpen behind him — shifts.

This means reading availability is not merely about who is out, but about who benefits. The teammates absorbing extra opportunity are frequently the most interesting players to analyse on any given day, because their projected role has just expanded in a way that raw season averages will be slow to capture. An absence for one player is an opportunity for another.

Injury and lineup information is at its most valuable close to game time, when questionable tags finally resolve and starting lineups and batting orders are officially confirmed. Information gathered hours before that resolution is inherently provisional.

A projection built before the lineup is official therefore carries extra uncertainty by definition, and we flag context accordingly rather than pretending otherwise. The last hour before a game often contains the single most valuable piece of information in the entire analysis — the confirmation that the player you have been studying is, in fact, playing.