We usually encounter some sense of shock when a Major League Baseball player dies during his active career.

Or, at least, we certainly do in the more modern history of the game, when players stopped dying from influenza, typhoid fever and tuberculosis.

And when the player dies during the MLB season. A guy who was in the clubhouse last night … and now is dead.

Such was the case with Jose Fernandez, ace pitcher for the Miami Marlins, who was at the ballpark on Saturday night but died early this morning in a boat crash.

I learned of it first on the ESPN.com home page, and it was like my mind couldn’t process it, at first. The site had put up a box, with Fernandez’s photo in it, with the information: “1992 – 2016”.

It went something like this. What is this? Jose Fernandez? Is … dead? People use “years” like that when people die, but that’s crazy; he pitched just the other day!”

Which then led to me pondering the comparative rarity of players dying during their careers, during their MLB careers and during the regular season.

Jose Fernandez, unfortunately, falls into a not-large category of baseball players who died during a regular season while on the roster of a big-league team.

This site (which is a sort of rabbit hole of interesting stuff a baseball fan could disappear down) lists 107 players who died during what is termed their “active career”, but the count is a bit misleading because many of the deaths came after a player’s career or after his MLB career, and a significant number also came during the offseason.

So, the last big-leaguer to die during the regular season?

I thought it might be quite some time ago, but it was comparatively recent — pitcher Nick Adenhart, 22, of the Los Angeles Angels, who died in an automobile accident in 2009.

(I should have remembered that one because I wrote about it for the New York Times, one story the morning after the crash and a second, one day later, when the Angels returned to competition.)

The previous death of an active big-league was that of St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Josh Hancock, 29, in 2007. Hancock also died in a traffic accident.

It could be argued that Fernandez is one of the more prominent players to due during a season. It was suggested by some that his career was on a Hall of Fame trajectory.

The list linked, above, indicates four players who later went to the Hall of Fame, died while still active in the game — Roberto Clement, 38, in a plane crash in 1972; outfielder Ross Youngs, 30, of Bright’s disease in 1917; pitcher Addie Joss, 31, from meningitis in 1911; and Ed Delahanty, 35, who was swept over Niagara Falls (and don’t you have to read about that one?) in 1903.

One former big-league died in World War I, and two onetime big-leagues died in World War II, though one of them, is not on the list, perhaps because his MLB experience was limited to two innings in one game — but he had a hell of a career with the Marines.

We just don’t expect ballplayers to die. Not while they are playing.

As Dustin Moseley, an Angels pitcher, said the day after teammate Adenhart died in 2009, it “takes you out of that bubble you live in as a baseball person”.