Reese Kaplan -- First Place With 14-16 Players on the IL?

When the baseball season begins, a great many things can happen that impact your ability to win ballgames.  Last year we saw whole clubs shut down due to the proliferation of exposure of multiple players to the COVID-19 virus.  This situation happened often enough that measures had to be put into place to try to keep similar circumstances from surfacing once again.  No one wanted to see a huge proliferation of the virus spreading to a large number of people.

Well, that brings us to 2021’s regular season and it would appear that things have returned somewhat to whatever passes for normal.  Instead of a pandemic raging and crippling teams from performing, we have the routine arm strains, muscle aches and other injuries that affect clubs from doing their very best while some of their resources are unavailable to them.

For the Mets, it’s been an especially rugged period of time during which 14 of the projected 25 starting players have hit the IL, many of whom are still there.  That’s more than half the players of an expanded roster, yet despite it all, the Mets still find themselves atop the NL east standings by a razor thin margin. Then came the painful victory in Atlanta on Monday night when Taijuan Walker left to get an MRI on his side and Kevin Pillar took a pitch to the face resulting in a bloody departure from the game.  Let’s take a look at how many players have been injured and what impact they may have had on the Mets success.

The poster child leading off the list is not an injury per se, but a self-inflicted repeat offense by second baseman Robinson Cano using Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs).  No one is advocating what he did nor will anyone excuse his extremely lackluster production during his 2019 rookie season with the club, but last season the man folks love to hate who is a career .303 hitter actually tallied a .316 average for the season.  It would surely seem self-evident that the output was chemically enhanced, but that’s still a lot of offense for the club to be missing right now.  

Then there is the matter of starting pitching.  How can you pencil in a rotation that is missing Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Carlos Carrasco?  Those injuries accounted for 60% of the games started from the projected five, though it was understood from the beginning that Thor would be a mid-season arrival due to injury rehab after surgery.  The hamstring issue with Carlos Carrasco recently had him switched to the 60-day IL (which opens up a roster spot).  The only one which is somewhat less concerning is deGrom whose tightness in the side resulted in a brief stay on the 10-day IL mostly out of precaution because the Mets surely cannot afford to lose any more quality starting pitchers.  Right now the rotation is being held together by Marcus Stroman, Taijuan Walker and David Peterson.  Whether or not Walker needs time off is anyone's guess. The other days right now are works in progress with openers and people who weren't thought to be a part of the rotation.

The outfield has been hit pretty hard as well.  Brandon Nimmo was down with an injury, put into rehab and then benched again as a result of a finger flare up.  Albert Almora is down and out.  Michael Conforto hit the IL due to hamstring problems on the right leg.  That means Dom Smith and the AAAA players of the week get the starting nods.  Kevin Pillar is very much a work in progress after what was revealed to be a fractured nose from that hit-by-pitch on Monday night. No one knows how much recovery time he will need.

Jeff McNeil has been valuable in a great many positions but in his case it’s the left hamstring causing him time on the IL.  Again, while folks are sorry to see him out of the lineup, a few missed days (or weeks) is highly preferable to an extended absence by having him try to play through the injuries. 

Then you have the other pitchers who have had to spend time rehabbing from a variety of injuries.  Seth Lugo also recently was pushed onto the 60-day IL which means not to expect him to return until June at the earliest.  Drew Smith is back.  Dellin Betances is rapidly turning into the pitching equivalent of Jason Bay, never performing as expected and missing a huge amount of innings due to injury.  

A few others who have gone down for the count include Luis Guillorme who was slowly working his way into Mets fans’ good graces with his surprisingly respectable hitting to accompany his stellar defense, and newcomer Jose Martinez whose freak injury during Spring Training pretty much wiped out his 2021 season.

Any way you slice it, that’s a lot of talent unavailable to the Mets and it makes their achievements thus far that much more impressive.  As much as folks are lukewarm about Luis Rojas, the manager does deserve some credit for keeping things afloat given he has fewer healthy players than injured ones.