Tom Brennan - OH, THE STRAIN, THE STRAIN

Tom Brennan - OH, THE STRAIN, THE STRAIN

Doctor Smith, on the old 1960s sci fi TV series Lost In Space, used to frequently moan, "Oh, the pain, the pain."  

With the Mets, it's more like "Oh, the strain, the strain."

Here we go again with yet another Mets oblique strain.  

PC - Ed Delany

Todd Frazier, meet oblique strain.

Last season, the Swarzak Oblique Strain Saga lasted for quite a few months.  Destroyed his season, by and large.

Todd Frazier timed his better, though, with almost 5 weeks left before real games start.  Right...like a hitter can time something like an oblique Injury.  But better in the spring training period than the season itself.

Writer Lindsay Berra, in an April 2017 article for MLB.com, wrote the following about oblique strains: 

"While the 10-day DL is the most common starting point for oblique injuries, Conte's study showed that hitters typically took 27 days to recover, while pitchers took 35...though more mild strains can certainly be resolved in just a few days. However, those with oblique injuries often see setbacks on the road to recovery.  While players may pass exams on the training table, the speed and power needed to play simply cannot be reproduced in that setting. Rehab is especially difficult with hitters, who have a harder time with partial-effort swings than pitchers do with just playing catch.

"Pitchers can throw lightly, do some long toss, do things that use the same motion as pitching but are less stressful," Reinold said. "But with hitters, hitting causes the injury, we're getting them back to hitting, and trying to swing a bat lightly against live pitching is just a very difficult thing to do. Sometimes the comeback is a little too fast, and we'll find out quickly they're not 100 percent.""

An MLB glossary also noted that "severe strains can require surgery with a recovery time of 3-4 months."

So, maybe it won't be long, but an non-oblique knee injury to Iron Man Jed Lowrie, followed by this injury to former Iron Man Todd Frazier, before the arrival of March makes a Mets fan wonder if the Mets injuries jinx will ever really end for the Mets.  

After all, METS stands for Multiple Extensive Trauma Syndrome.  Or at least it seems to.