There was a lot of “Seriously?” around the league in response to former New York Mets general manager Billy Eppler’s year-long suspension for using the injured list improperly.
Many say that front office executives keep the injured list manipulated for the team’s benefit throughout the season in the worst-kept secret. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic wrote that it just so happened that MLB wanted to hold Eppler accountable for his misdeeds from 2022–2023.
In response to former pitcher Tommy Hunter’s claim that “he didn’t do anything different than any other GM I’ve been around,” another temporary Mets general manager disputed the notion that all MLB GMs lie about the players on the injured list (as reported by The New York Post).
Zack Scott wrote on X on February 11th, 2020, after working for the Mets from December 2020 to November 2021, during which he served as General Manager for 11 months. I didn’t play for him in ’21, but he did. I wasn’t looking to add to the already excessive number of guys on the IL.
A.J. Pierzynski, a former MLB catcher, expressed shock over Eppler’s suspension by questioning, “Why is he the one that got in trouble?”
It confirmed what Hunter had said. Hunter played for 16 years, the last three of which he spent with the Mets, before retiring in October 2023.
“It’s crazy Billy got singled out,” Hunter told The Post on Feb. 9. “It’s kind of mind-blowing. I had multiple back [issues] and no one from MLB talked to me. I don’t know what their strategy was. It’s no secret what goes on [with the phantom IL], so to go after one person seems unfair.
“I feel bad for Billy. … He didn’t do anything different than any other GM I’ve been around.”
Scott disagreed, having entered the major as an intern in 2004.
“No, not every baseball team does this,” Scott wrote on February 10. “In my career, I can’t think of a single instance where we staged an injury at the Major League level. Even though you put a player on the injured list to use that roster spot, sometimes players can play through an injury. The remainder is advantageous to them. That isn’t the same.”
The day the investigation was made public was also Eppler’s resignation last fall.
Eppler oversaw “the deliberate fabrication of injuries; and the associated submission of documentation for the purposes of securing multiple improper injured list placements during the 2022 and 2023 seasons,” according to a statement released by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred.