Why is MLB investigating the Mets? Explaining the Phantom IL and Steve Cohens involvement -

What’s the difference between being hurt and having an injury, and at what point does manipulating that blurred line become a punishable offense?

On Thursday, former Mets general manager Billy Eppler resigned amid a New York Post report that he was under league investigation for “improper uses of the injured list.” People briefed on the matter confirmed to The Athletic that there is an ongoing investigation.

So, what does “improper” use of the injured list mean, what is the Phantom IL, and how might an offense become worthy of resignation and league involvement? As with most things medical, there’s quite a bit of gray area to contend with.

Why do teams and players disagree over injured list stints?

In professional sports, injury situations are not always black and white. From diagnosis to expected timetable, to whether there’s a meaningful problem to begin with, much can be up for interpretation and debate.

“I mean, everybody’s dealing with something,” Boston Red Sox shortstop Trevor Story said last month after returning from a lengthy elbow issue that eventually led to surgery. “That’s part of the job that we have, and you find ways to play and be effective.”

A broken leg or fully torn ligament doesn’t leave much wiggle room, but a calf strain, sore shoulder, or aching back might come with varying degrees of severity. An injury that’s debilitating to a pitcher might be playable for a position player, and inflammation that shuts down one hitter could be little more than an annoyance to another.

According to several longtime executives, this is where most injured list questions begin: with a disagreement between player and team about whether an injury requires a stint on the IL.

Does the team want these IL stints or the player? Who benefits?

It depends on the situation. The answer can be team, player, or sometimes both. At times, a player wants to keep playing while the team wants him to take a two-week break. Other times, the club thinks a player is healthy enough to perform, while the player wants to shut it down to avoid making a situation worse.

A reliever on a hot streak might want to pitch through a little shoulder inflammation, while a starter who’s struggling might welcome the chance to take some time off and work on his mechanics (or his team might strongly suggest that he do so). Rehab assignments can be extended longer than is strictly necessary to buy a front office time before making a roster move. Sometimes teams want or need a free roster spot and don’t want to lose a player; hence fringe big leaguers who can’t be optioned to Triple A are often incentivized to accept an IL assignment rather than be released and lose money and/or service time. And because players often compete through nagging pain and discomfort, a 15-day diagnosis doesn’t take much creativity.

“It’s not hard to find an injury,” one executive said Friday.

To that extent, IL manipulation — agents and executives might disagree on the use of that term — is commonplace, but not seen as a huge problem within the game.

So what’s the Phantom IL?

It’s one thing to disagree about whether a sore hamstring is worth two weeks on the injured list. It’s another thing to tell a player to “pick a body part” for an invented injury and involuntary trip to the IL.

But the latter also happens.

Called the phantom injured list because it involves essentially a ghost of an injury, the practice used to be especially common and rampant in the minor leagues before recent rule changes added an inactive development list to allow roster flexibility without the need for fake muscle strains.

But there is no development list in the major leagues, just a 26-man limit and various rules about who can and cannot be sent to the minor leagues, each of which creates some incentive to use the IL to a team’s advantage. In the mid-2010s, this practice became more common, before rule changes helped to stanch what was then a growing problem. Players can complain to the union if they feel their careers are being unfairly maligned by unnecessary IL stints, and phantom IL stints in general are seen as far less common than several years ago.

“I think pulling off the phantom IL is more complicated than people think,” one longtime baseball executive said.

Does this mean the league is going to crack down on this now?

The phrase “phantom IL” has become so ubiquitous within the game that players often use or misuse it in casual conversation — sometimes even on the record — to refer to injuries that might exist, but which the player believes unworthy of an IL stint.

Now that the minors have the development list, the phantom IL issue has generally receded from view in recent years — largely due to the fact that the major-league side mostly takes care of itself, as major-league reliever Trevor May noted Friday on the Foul Territory podcast, because teams don’t generally like having valuable assets sidelined.

.@Athletics pitcher @IamTrevorMay discusses the "phantom IL" and how the minor leagues basically "made it legal"

▶️ https://t.co/ESdUkyy9n1 pic.twitter.com/2qXUy3ZoV3

— Foul Territory (@FoulTerritoryTV) October 6, 2023

“They don’t put people on the phantom very often in the big leagues because you’re paying them a lot of money,” May said.

Despite the investigation, there’s little indication that the league is gearing up for additional enforcement, or that the examination of Eppler is a sign of an injured-list crackdown on the horizon. Even so, many within baseball are waiting to see what comes of this unusual situation, and what it could mean going forward.

As May said on Foul Territory, “I played for Billy for a year, I don’t remember anything out of the ordinary … it is going to be interesting to see what exactly are we talking about here.”

How does owner Steve Cohen factor into MLB’s investigation?

It’s possible that over the course of the investigation that the owner’s actions come under scrutiny, but Cohen is not the focus of the probe, according to a person briefed on conversations between the Mets and MLB.

Injured list placements are relatively mundane actions undertaken by major league front offices, so an owner being directly involved in that process would be highly unusual.

(The Athletic’s Andy McCullough contributed to this report)

(Top photo of Billy Eppler: AP Photo / Matt York)

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