Mike's Mets - Mailing It In

 

By Mike Steffanos

As it stands right now, here is the Mets Injury List. Everyone is on the 10-Day list, except where noted:

• Dellin Betances (60-Day)
• Carlos Carrasco (60-Day)
• Seth Lugo (60-Day)
• Noah Syndergaard (60-Day)
• José Martínez (60-Day)
• Jacob deGrom
• Taijuan Walker
• J.D. Davis
• Luis Guillorme
• Jeff McNeil
• Albert Almora Jr.
• Michael Conforto
• Brandon Nimmo
• Kevin Pillar

Of the group on the 60-Day List, Dellin Betances and José Martínez seem to be the furthest away from a return. Realistically, neither of them seems like they'd be much help if they did. Betances is a shadow of his former self without elite velocity. Martínez, even if he managed to bounce back offensively, would have fit into the Mets better if the Universal DH was still around.

As for all of the other names, it's gotten to the point where I'll believe they're coming back when I see them in the lineup. It seemed like Nimmo was close to a return before he had to be shut down again. It's great that Davis, Lugo, and Syndergaard are all in Minor League rehab assignments. I find it heartening to read about their first steps in attempting to return to the Mets, but the Nimmo setback, in particular, has caused me to temper my optimism.

I tend to lean towards caution when I talk about something that I lack expertise in. I'm neither a doctor nor a qualified trainer. Some of the injuries are things that you can't really control. Lugo, Betances, Syndergaard, Martínez, deGrom, Walker, Davis, Almora, Nimmo, and Pillar all fit into that category one way or another. But Gary Cohen has been speaking to all of the soft tissue injuries the Mets have experienced. Those things happen in baseball over a long season. It's complicated further by the weird 60-game schedule from last year.

The Mets seem to be playing it very cautiously with deGrom and Walker's injuries, which absolutely makes sense given the stress of pitching a full 162-game season after last year's sprint. The injuries to Carlos Carrasco, Luis Gullorme, Jeff McNeil, and Michael Conforto are all pulls and strains. I'm not accusing the Mets trainers of being lax at all, but I have to believe the club is looking hard at such issues as stretching and hydration and reevaluating their protocols for those items.

Still, as extensive as the Injury List is currently, most of those guys are on that list for reasons other than the soft tissue-related problems. Lugo had elbow surgery, Betances has a shoulder issue, Martínez had knee surgery, Davis had a sprained hand, Nimmo had a bruised finger, Almora ran into a wall (literally), and Pillar got hit in the face with a baseball. There's been more than a little bad luck involved here. I'm not getting any sense that there is a lack of competence in how the Mets are trying to keep their players healthy, at least not at this point.

So why did the Post's Joel Sherman, one of the best writers on baseball in the country, decide to gift us with this crap a few days ago? Sherman decided that the number of injuries and reinjuries is "troubling," though he really didn't explain why that was so. It came off to me as another lazy piece calling out the Mets for some vague area of incompetence without really bothering to come out and accuse them of anything specific.

After serving up some weak slop in the meat of the article, Sherman then chose to take a dig at the Mets and their fans that really had no point for the piece:

And it is not as if the Mets still have Jarred Kelenic sitting in the minors ready to debut for them.

If you missed the "subtlety" of that line, it included a link to a previous Sherman piece about Kelenic that really felt like another lazy poke at the Mets and their fans. The thinking behind it was, I guess, that the Mets had to somehow do something to "save this trade from all-time infamy" while completely overlooking the simple fact that the deal had been made by a bunch of folks who no longer run the team. That fact was inconvenient to the story Sherman was trying to tell.

Honestly, the article seemed like some tired old hit piece on the Mets, one like we've read about a thousand times over the last couple of decades, which I guess is a way to steal a click from haunted Mets fans and gloating Yankee fans. I like Sherman a lot, and I even enjoy it when he writes something critical of the Mets if there is any real point behind it. But I felt like he wasted my time with both of those lazy, pointless articles. If that's the best that Sherman can offer folks who follow the Mets and enjoy reading articles of substance, then he should just stick to writing about the Yankees. Good riddance, bro.

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