Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns and manager Carlos Mendoza each provided several injury updates when speaking with reporters (including Newsday’s Laura Albanese, The Athletic’s Tim Britton, and the New York Post’s Mike Puma) on Friday. The most unwelcome bit of news concerned Jose Siri, whose recovery from a left tibia fracture will be delayed since tests showed the tibia hadn’t healed as well as expected over two months since the initial injury.
Siri last played on April 12, when he fouled a ball off his left leg during his first plate appearance in the Mets’ 3-1 loss to the Athletics. The initial recovery timeline was set at 8-10 weeks, though in the wake of this latest setback, Siri will now be shut down from baseball activities for a few more weeks until he undergoes a fresh round of imaging tests.
Even if those tests reveal better results, Siri will need to ramp his rehab back up and play in multiple minor league games, so it may be optimistic to expect Siri back on New York’s big league roster before July is over. It’s a frustrating setback for Siri, who seemed to be making progress by taking part in live batting practice sessions and doing some running drills in recent weeks. Instead, it now looks like he’ll miss over half of the season on the injured list, leaving the Mets without a key member of their outfield.
Acquired from the Rays in a trade last November, Siri was meant to add some power and (most pressingly) defensive stability to the Amazins’ center field mix. His absence has made Tyrone Taylor more or less the everyday center fielder, and while Taylor has held his own with the glove, he is hitting only .234/.300/.332 over 205 plate appearances. The left-handed hitting Jeff McNeil has been spelling Taylor in center field when McNeil isn’t at second base, and Jose Azocar, Brandon Nimmo, and Luisangel Acuna have made a few cameos in center when the situation has warranted.
It was already expected that the Mets would be looking for some outfield help at the trade deadline, and the possibility that Siri might not even be back by July 31 only underlines the outfield as a target area. Perhaps if the Mets are okay with the Taylor/McNeil platoon in center field, the club might just look to add a bat in general to help out in the infield or in the DH position. Designated hitter Jesse Winker is recovering from a Grade 2 oblique strain that has kept him out since early May, and Stearns said that Winker will still need multiple weeks before a minor league rehab assignment is considered.
Kodai Senga’s hamstring strain created a big hole in New York’s rotation this week, though Mendoza said tests revealed that Senga had only a Grade 1 strain, or the least severe variety. The current plan is for Senga to be shut down for two weeks and then the club will explore plans for a throwing progression and a minor league rehab assignment. Given the timing, it seems possible Senga might be able to pitch again before the All-Star break, but in all likelihood the Mets will play it safe with their ace and hold him out through the break to give him a few more days of rest.
The Mets’ rotation has been plagued by injuries ever since Spring Training, yet the staff has greatly exceeded expectations by still leading all of baseball with a 2.78 rotation ERA. Senga’s 1.47 ERA over 73 2/3 innings has been a big part of that success, as the right-hander has returned in top form after missing virtually all of the 2024 season.
Paul Blackburn will move from a long relief/swingman role into the rotation to fill in for Senga, while Britton suggests that Frankie Montas might move into the bullpen in Blackburn’s role (rather than into a starting job) when Montas is activated from the 60-day injured list. After missing the entire season due to a lat strain, Montas has made five minor league rehab starts, and June 22 will mark the end of the allotted 30 days for Montas’ rehab assignment.
While in-game results are usually less important than fitness and mechanics during these rehab outings, Montas’ 13.17 ERA over 13 2/3 innings with high-A Brooklyn and Triple-A Syracuse is hard to ignore, as the veteran righty is clearly still not on track. Stearns said that Montas will make one more start in the minors, and that Montas “is still searching a little bit” after such a long layoff.
“Physically, we are trending in the right direction and now it’s just getting him back into the rhythm,” Stearns said. “This is very similar to a Spring Training ramp up where you try not to focus on results too much early and then as you get a little bit later in the ramp up you want to start seeing outs. That is where Frankie is right now.”
In even longer-term injury news, Brooks Raley could be starting a rehab assignment within the next week. Raley underwent a Tommy John surgery in May 2024, and with the knowledge that he’d miss most of the 2025 season, the Mets inked the veteran reliever to a one-year free agent deal that guarantees Raley $1.85MM ($1.5MM in 2025 salary, and a $300K buyout on a $4.75MM club option for 2026).
Several other performance bonuses are available both this season and next depending on how many appearances Raley can make, though the first order of business is simply getting the southpaw back in action. Britton notes that Raley will likely need the full 30-day rehab window in order to get back into game shape, so if all goes well, Raley could be an option for the Mets’ bullpen before the end of July.
Pete needs to do throwing drills. It cost us Senga this time, not just an error.
Blackburn looked horrible other day. Hanging breaking balls galore. Max looked bad as well.
Pete plays too far off the bag watch the replay second basemen is standing right behind him and easily could’ve made the play.
Pete can’t throw, Blackburn looked awful, yesterdays game was a disaster. Can’t lose a game you’re leaving 5-1 late. Mendoza left Kranick and Blackburn in too long, like usual.
Aren’t you guys in first?!
Yes and Alonso is a MVP candidate. Crazy to complain about him.
It wasn’t exactly late when they blew the lead. It was the 6th inning. Every team is going to lose a game like that during a season.
He’s not paid to throw, though.
Sure his throwing is iffy. But it didn’t cost us Senga according to Senga who came up lame on the run to first not the leap. Also Senga is soft and fragile. C’mon man you are a 20-something pro athlete and you can’t handle a short run and leap without being out for weeks.
Fortunately Mets have the pitching depth. Tong will be better than Sprout. Hope we see him sooner than later. Also Stearns wtf? lol Montas is horrendous. Over $30-something million for that waste? What exactly did Stearns believe in there? Their “lab” (rolls eyes).
Montas should thank his lucky stars Cohen signed off on him coming aboard.
Virtually every SP the Mets have signed during Stearns tenure with the Mets has been outstanding. Maybe this take on Montas won’t age well. Maybe.
Cohen really has no clue about baseball itself imo. He wants the money ball GM but forced the Soto move undermining Stearns (no way that was a Stearns call) for the splash and Marquee. Anyone w/ sense knows it will become an albatross in a few years. He’s an ethically questionable stock criminal who is a fanboy. The Mets are a toy for him. And that’s awesome for us Mets fans because we get shiny toys. It is way better than the Wilpons or anything we could have imagined. However he isn’t a guy who knows baseball on a high level. Nor does he have to be. That is what the GM is for, except that his GM is a little too pretentious with his thoughts on adding a ton of mediocre pitchers. Yes NYM have the best ERA through 2 + months. The depth approach is great for a marathon of a season. But come October, unless they have aces, They won’t pass the NLCS hurdle..
We saw what happened from 2021 to 2023 when Stearns played GM. It was grotesque in the main.
As for 15 years of Soto, yeah, no way that’s a move a smart GM makes for that money, and say what you like about him, Stearns is an above average GM whose time with the Mets is helping write the next edition of Moneyball.
*Stearns…
er, Cohen played GM..
Mets need Manaea to get through his rehab healthy, he’s looked good so far but will need time to build up. He didn’t have any spring training reps. My guess is he’s still 2-3 weeks away.
I was surprised to NOT see Manaea’s name mentioned in the story. His arrival could offset the loss of Senga, more than Montas.
Blackburn got blown up by the Rays, but had pitched reasonably well the times before that. Not long term in-the-regular rotation work, though.
Taylor’s defense is as good if not better than Siri. Really nothing lost there.
Where’s the update on Vientos? He needs a bunch of Minor League games to get his swing and confidence back.
Hope Winker comes back but is a straight DH. At least I have more confidence in him than I had in the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man Vogelbach.
He gave up 3 runs in 4 innings in the outing before that. It was a blow out so his pitching didn’t matter. He isn’t good and the Mets should be using other options.
I said Manaea not Montas
I want to see McLean and Tong sooner than later. Everyone was raving about Sprout and his velocity. Tong will be the best of the three.
Don’t forget Thornton. Dude has been absolutely lights out. Tong McLean and Thornton need a promotion ASAP.
Right, Thornton and Tong need a promotion to AAA
@matteste187 Zach Thornton has had one ordinary season in college ball, was mediocre in the minors last year and has 64 IP this year with just 43 IP in AA, and you want to shove him into AAA when in ’24 he was putting up a 4.39 ERA and 1.536 WHIP in A ball?
That’s genuinely funny.
Manaea will be extremely ordinary without the historic good luck of that .191 BABIP his last 10 regular season starts in ’24.
Maddux during his 4 consecutive Cy Young seasons never got that lucky.
Why does MLB continue to focus on things like pitch counts when that clearly has not solved the problem. If anything, pitcher injuries have gone way up since they introduced pitch counts. Now I get correlation vs. causation, so Im not saying that pitch counts have caused these injuries, I’m just pointing out that they have to search elsewhere for what’s causing this rash of surgeries and layoffs. Max effort and all the spin,along with throwing curves and sliders at a young age, is really part of the problem.
If you’d asked me 30 years ago that we would not have a better handle by noon what causes these elbow injuries and how to avoid them, I would have been surprises. But, that’s where we are.. Are they acute injuries, like ACL tears where they happen with one twist? Are they the result of chronic abuse of the UCL since little league? It seems as though every prescription to avoid them has failed. Limiting pitch counts and innings. Modifying pitching motions. Increasing rest between starts. We’ve gone from four-man rotations (~40 starts per season) to five-man rotations starting in the late 60s with the fifth starter dropped when there are off days (~36 starts for the top four) to straight five-man rotations with starters occasionally getting a fifth day of rest because of off-days (`32 -33 starts) to whatever it is we are doing now–five or six-man rotations. If I had to speculate, I’d say its some combination of wear and tear, velocity and spin rates, and genetics, but teams and pitchers are loathe to back off because doing so would allow hitters possessed with more information than ever would tee off. No more saving your best stuff for crucial at bats. But, that’s just speculation. And, what can you do about it? Computer analysis of HD video and other analytics are only going to get better and seems to help hitters more than pitchers, at least when it comes to pitcher health. Make pitchers back off and have ERAs in the 5s? Raise the mound to compensate? With hundreds of millions of dollars in salaries going to pitchers on the IL each year, you’d think we’d have found some answers by now.
Statcast and other propriety tech have allowed teams to real-time track pitcher fatigue. We really don’t have early season “dead arm” issues anymore because they address them during bullpen sessions. As you’ve noted, the injuries today are more acute as a result of max velo and spin.
@ rememberthecoop Your diatribe is out of place here. Manaea and Montas are recovering from oblique and lat strains, respectively. not arm injuries.
That said, it is also behind the times and a little uninformed. MLB is no longer “focused” on pitch counts, per se, as the cause of injury. They’re focused on other factors. But those factors have made pitch counts a necessity and a fact of life. Everyone knows that throwing harder more often is a big part of the cause. but throwing harder more often also leads to more cumulative strain, and limiting the volume of those throws is needed to avoid an even worse injury epidemic.
At the end of the day, this is about greed and ambition. The athletes feel a need to perform better, For both the money and their pride/competitiveness. And the teams feel a need to squeeze as much out of their players as they can. The success rate of UCLsurgery has been so high that injuries and surgeries are taken with a grain of salt, and Tommy John is almost a rite of passage these days. A second TJ was almost a kiss of death not too long ago. Now its accepted, and some players have even started to have (and come back from) a 3rd UCL.
In short, max effort and velo are the name of the game now. Pitch counts and injuries just come with the territory.
Addendum: Dr. Frank Job identified the cause of the injury rate and the solution years ago. This site posted a podcast link to an interview with him at the time. but no one listened and no one wanted to apply what he said. And things have only gotten more progressed since then.
And Senga doesn’t have arm injury as well. Coop gonna Coop. The Coop Scoop is a little off on this article.
Good comment, although I wouldn’t say it has to do with greed and ambition, comrade, but rather is about excellence and winning.
Does money motivate? Sure, but why in the main is this any different from working in a shipyard or in concrete construction risking chronic injury and chronic pain because the money per hour is better than stocking at Walmart—enough to raise a family properly?
The TJS is paid for by the team, players have health care, contractually, they get paid while injured, and the rehab is more annoying and dispiriting than it is painful.
Me? I’d change the game to larger parks, softer baseballs, maybe limit the weight of bats and confine players to using ash, only, but that’s because it would be more interesting than it is now. A side effect might be fewer injuries. That’s a plus, but it’s not why I’d make those changes.
Absolutely. the pitch count thing is maddening. Especially as a guy who plays fantasy and has a QS category. Oh well guy hit that magic nice psychologically satisfying number of 100, time to take him out for someone who wasn’t good enough to be a starter lol.. The amount of times I have had a pitcher, who is in control of a game, come out after 5.2 IP just because of that number is absurd.
Spin rate and max velocity def an issue. It is now a right of passage for an early 20-something pitcher to have TJ surgery. It’s expected.
@rememberthecoop There is no solution to the problem of getting hitters out when to do so you have to pitch with maximum effort nearly all the time.
They pushed Alcantara more than pretty much anyone else, look what happened to him. It’s obvious if you have pitchers try to throw 120 pitchers or go 7 innings you’ll end up with a rotation of minor leaguers by seasons end.
This is a ‘problem’ (if it is one) without a solution under the current rules.
As for thinking this is a recent issue, the country is littered with the ruined arms of pitchers who tried going 270 innings a year. You just didn’t and don’t hear about them, because they just went back to Nebraska or Florida or California and worked car lots or went to accounting school or trade colleges to figure out the next phase of their lives.
Did anyone ask Siri when he’s coming back?
I didn’t get that. Could you try again?
Well played by both of you.
No Blackburn in the rotation, bring up a young SP to see what we have in Sproat/!cLean or Tong
I agree.
“to see what we have” is just emotional fanspeak that does not apply here. This team is contending. No one wants to “see what we have” when we can, instead, see the team win games now. There is no need “to see what we have”. The guys you want to call up have not yet demonstrated readiness with their minor league performances. After a terrible start, Sproat has pitched OK, but not great over his last four starts. His strikeouts rate has plummeted and his walks are up since last year. Let him figure out triple-A before calling him up.
McLean has generally pitched well in AAA. But its only 6 games. Not nearly enough time to ascertain whether he will sustain it or the league will figure him out. And Tong has been dominant – in double-A. And even with that, his walk rate has been high. Recent history suggests that most Met pitchers struggle in making the move from that level to triple-A, yet you want to jump him to the majors. Just to “see what we have”.
There’s a remedy for that: drive to Binghamton and Syracuse.
Trade him to the Braves so we can get our offensive stats up.
Absolutely silly to rush any young starter to the majors when they already have so many starting pitchers. In a couple of weeks, they’ll have Holmes, Peterson, Megill, Canning, Blackburn, and Montas, with Manaea and Senga on their way back. That’s eight starters. They also have Waddell and even Blade Tidwell in Syracuse if they really needed an emergency starter. Or even Butto, who has starting experience. Zero reason to mess with the development of Sproat, McLean, or Tong.
And the Mets have the trade capital to upgrade at SP.
Spot on rct. Not to mention they have 5 of those starters coming back next year, plus Christian Scott coming back from TJS. So calling up a prospect now ostensibly means spending two of his options between now and next spring, and running the risk that they run out of options before they stick as major leaguers.