The Mets have been ravaged by injuries this season, but it seems a few of the team’s most important players are making strides in their recoveries. Outfielder Michael Conforto and utilityman Jeff McNeil began rehab assignments with Triple-A Syracuse this week. Manager Luis Rojas tells reporters (including Deesha Thosar of the New York Daily News) McNeil could rejoin the major league club in the next couple days, while Conforto could return to the big leagues next week. Center fielder Brandon Nimmo isn’t far behind those two, as he could embark on a rehab assignment of his own next week, per Rojas (via Tim Healey of Newsday). Fourth outfielder Albert Almora Jr. is expected back this weekend, having completed his own rehab stint with Syracuse, relays Anthony DiComo of MLB.com (Twitter link).
Conforto and McNeil each went down with hamstring strains on May 16, and both players will apparently return after slightly more than a month on the injured list. Nimmo suffered a left index finger injury in early May that proved more problematic than expected. Originally believed to be dealing with a nerve issue, Nimmo eventually found he’d suffered a ligament tear. Almora has missed just more than a month with a left shoulder contusion.
While the bulk of the Mets recent injury woes has been on the position player side, they’ve also been without key starter Carlos Carrasco all season. The veteran righty went down with a right hamstring strain in mid-March that has proven difficult from which to recover. Carrasco, though, has begun a throwing program off flat ground, per DiComo. There’s still hope he’ll be able to make his team debut at some point next month.
Of course, the Mets most recent injury scare came when NL Cy Young award favorite Jacob deGrom left Wednesday night’s start after three innings because of shoulder soreness. Follow-up testing revealed no issues, and deGrom was able to complete a ten-pitch bullpen session this afternoon, his customary between-starts routine. Rojas said the Mets will take their time in deciding whether deGrom will make his next scheduled start on Monday (via Thosar).
It’s about to get ugly…. And not for the Mets!
figured you’d be the first to comment here
You mean to tell me that getting Nimmo, McNeil and Davis back to make their defense worse is something to ignore? Or is that the ugly you’re talking about?
PS: I love @MetsFan22’s predictions.
Me too, considering he’s always wrong. Mets fans are so delusional it’s hilarious.
I take slight offense to that lol. I am a mets fan but am realistic also. Good to have them back but not saviors. See conforto picking it up because of contract year but nimmo and davis arent moving the needle.
Yep. It even serves as the kiss of death from what we see too.
He said deGrom was a lock for the Hall of Fame already, and poor deGrom has been injured ever since – starting with the first start he had after @MetsFan22 making those statements.
@Lee Mazzilli for HOF
You take offense to my statement or at @MetsFan22’s latest prediction? It can go either way considering my statement and the results that come from his predicitions.
Sorry for not being clear. Metsfan22 prediction. While i would love the mets to take it all the offense is at best average and defense poor. Great pitching is why they are where they are. Degrom also tough hof call. I say 2 more monster years probably needs 3.
See, I said something similar about deGrom. I felt he needed to grab a longevity milestone stat and he was in. I was looking at possibly 3000 strikeouts, which was very likely until his recent injury.
Yankee Fans are CLUELESS like Their 9 DH’s in Their Lineup
Sounds as if someone has an inferiority complex.
Yankee fans need not comment here… LFGM
How are your Marlins doing by the way?
@whynot2
We’re in a no lose season. The good thing is that we know our problems and are positive to see that we don’t need to fix much because we’re in nearly all of the games – with so many decided in the late innings. Oh yeah, and we’re 12-7 against the Mets, Braves and Phillies.
I see you Mets fans are following tradition – June celebrations.
Yes it is June, there is a lot of season left but last time I checked moral victories don’t meant much in the standings.
Who said moral victories count for anything? The Marlins are in a rebuild. We’re measuring progress of the team. So far, we’ve seen our bullpen make the difference between us being in last and being above .500. Those are facts. Do the math. 8 blown saves in the 8th or later – games we had the lead in.
At least you know it’s June…but you Mets fans must always know it’s June because you all have a tenacity to always celebrate in June when your team is doing well into that month. It’s a tradition. Maybe you all should remember that there is a long way to go…and you probably want to check in who you finish your season against. If you’re doing well into the end of September, I smell a repeat of 2007 and 2008 in there somewhere.
@MarlinsFanBase: lmao, always a basket of excuses with you. You relentlessly attack the Mets and mock them in every single article about them, but with the Marlins it’s ‘we’re in nearly all of the games’. The Marlins are in last place in perhaps the worst division in baseball, bro.
Remember prior to the season when you were trashing the Mets and predicting a Marlins division title? How’s that working out for you? ‘In a no lose situation’? Marlins have already lost 39 times!
Whoah, I did not predict the Marlins winning the division. I clearly stated multiple times that I was rooting for a dogfight in the division because that would give the Marlins a shot. And I’ve said all along that we were in a no lose season – compete for playoffs great; not compete, great for trading pieces to add more young pieces. I actually picked the Braves. Get your facts right.
As for the Mets, I stick with my statement. We’ll see what they are now that they’re facing a consistently tougher part of their schedule into like mid-July.
But feel free to do what you Mets fans do….celebrate in June.
Why so defensive?
Because you either have your facts wrong or are flat out lying.
Get your facts right.
Maybe not a division title, but in practically every single Mets article, you predicted the Marlins finishing ahead of the Mets. I just checked back to the Marlins offseason review article and you said the ‘Marlins will be a dangerous team’. They haven’t been. They’re in last. Your excuses about the bullpen hold no weight. You’re basically saying ‘if the Marlins were a better team, they’d have a better record!’.
And I’m not celebrating anything. The Mets have plenty of holes on offense and 2/5 of the rotation have not been good. Get your facts straight.
And do you seriously Like every comment you make? You always instantly have one Like. Weird, dude.
@rct
I do find it funny the excuses he is using is exactly what happened to the mets the last few seasons with the Mets bullpen blowing games and actually at a worse rate than the marlins this year.
It is crazy the mets are playng 15 games in a row with no days off this is a real test here .. so far we won the series against two pretty good teams lets hope we can do the same to our division.
I don’t get where is the excuse. I’ve said that the Marlins bullpen sucks. I even said in the offseason that I wanted us to get a veteran innings eater and a real closer. We did neither.
And sorry, but 8 blown saves in the 8th or later is factual. And I’ve said it clear about our bullpen. Different from you Mets fans when you’re bullpen was stinking up the joint the last few years because when myself and others said your bullpen sucked, a lot of you, led by your favorite Mets fan, kept making excuses for why they were blowing leads instead of just admitting that they sucked.
But to cut this short….go ahead and celebrate in June. Of course I know many of you won’t be around once you falter like you all weren’t around much when you were faltering before.
Enjoy your June division title. What’s the Magic Number? You know you’re already counting it down.
What facts do I have wrong exactly?
Enjoy your moral victories
Uggghhh Marlins fans don’t even understand baseball
and who is our favorite mets fan? … MetsFan22 that has been denounced by pretty much every met fan on this board? Someone needs to get their facts straight.
Of all your starters only one pitcher has a winning record.
Also going into next year, you are losing your top position player you hope to trade in Marte and Duvall which is one of your bigger power bats and a solid defender too (another one i wish the mets would have looked into but we were crowded in corner of 1b dh types). Then there is Rojas with his option that will probably not vest as he has not hit 500 ab in his career. I also wouldnt be surprised to see Aguilar get traded. With the year he is having, he will be in line for a big raise in his final year of arbitration and not sure how this ownership will treat that considering they will need to add back a lot of pieces. So this rebuild will probably take a longer time than you expect as majority of your offense and position players are likely not to be on the team next year. While Chisholm is good i cant see him carrying this team.
Mets might be in a bit of a rebuild as well with conforto, stroman and syndegaard hitting FA but this owner has shown he is willing to spend. So im willing to bet we get a mid to top of rotation guy maybe stroman or syndegaard to come back along with degrom along with carrasco and hopefully this resurgent walker stays for a pretty solid 1-4
@whynot 2
See above where I point those facts out for you. Even @rct kind of confirmed that I never predicted the Marlins winning the division.
Fishfanbase…. Perhaps when you calm down you’ll see I never made any reference to you predicting the fish to winning the division
I mean you do realize that for many years the Mets have struggled through may and June only to turn things around in July and August but typically fall short of making the playoffs only to look back on those struggles in May and June as the reason they failed
The fact is that the Mets have maintained a lead in the division despite missing a large portion of not just their starters but also bench. Also you don’t have a great grasp on the schedule bc we just played the toughest stretch (SD – SD – Chi) that we face until Aug since we don’t face a team over 500 until July and only 9 of 27 games in all of July are against teams over 500 … So 9 of next 41 against teams over 500 …
But like facts don’t matter, right?
@whynot 2
Oops, just noticed. Sorry about that.
It was @rct, who I guess realized afterward that he was wrong about his statement since he actually went back to a previous thread to save face.
@Out_of_Line 2
Sorry, but your Mets have an even longer history of succeeding into June, your fan base squawks about it as though the division race is already over (like this year again), then all of you disappear when you have those September choke jobs.
The greatest illustration of Mets history is Jose Reyes running around the bases in May and June raising his #1 finger in the air, but then disappearing from the cameras in those September choke jobs….followed by Billy Wagner responding to reporters with, “Why are you asking me. Go ask them….” then he points to the empty lockers of Reyes, Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran, and Billy turns back to the reporters, “Oh, they’re all gone…No [beep]ing surprise!”
That’s your Mets history and your fan base’s history.
And as far as your schedule, yes there are below .500 records, but you are conveniently deflecting that your schedule before was against the D-backs, O’s and Rockies. I think we all can agree that none of the teams you’ll be facing for awhile are as bad as them. That is a fact.
Again, enjoy the June celebration. What’s the Mets Magic Number? You all know you’ve already calculated it.
@joeyrocafella
Marlins fans don’t even understand baseball? This coming from someone in the fan base whose broadcast team has to use hyperbole to keep their fans engaged?
Yes, hyperbole. Not my words. Ron Darling’s words. Your guy from your broadcast team.
You really base way too much of your argument on the anecdote of Ron Darling using the word “hyperbole” at some point. You’re just trying to justify this irrational hatred you have of all things Mets.
The Mets have hands down the best broadcast team. They are fun and informative. I don’t get the prolonged period of dead air in some other broadcasts its almost like they forget they are on the air.
So that means it’s about to get ugly, for the mets.
Mets fans are going to kill me for this, but in some strange way I think the Mets are actually better with their current starters. Solid defensively. Getting great ABs. You obviously want Conforto and McNeil back. I know they’re talented, but it’s hard to say their absence was felt as much as we all assumed.
A lot of that had to do with both guys not playing up to their career numbers before getting hurt. Which has been a trend across baseball this year. Both players have significant track records, that i would be confident expecting they will return to form and help this team.
Definitely on the offensive side. And both players are solid defensively, but this current Mets defense is phenomenal. Look, this a fantastic issue to have. I’m not implying Conforto and McNeil won’t help. Of course they will. It’ll just be interesting to see how the current group handles their return.
This is valid, although they can always come in for defense late in games. Lindor and better positioning due to a staffed analytics department have a lot to do with the defensive uptick.
But how long can it last with McKinney and perazza? I think you’re right and villar and pillar should platoon in the infield/outfield but the other two, more than likely, won’t be able to continue to produce all season
Villar I think has been the Mets’ best 3B this year.
So far this season, you are not wrong. Conforto and McNeil have not hit well enough to compensate for their weaker defense (compared to their lineup now). One would think they’ll turn it around as the season goes, but maybe not.
McNeil looked extremely solid playing second on a daily basis.
@VPH It’s a small sample size of games where mediocre players have outperformed their career norms. We’ve got a backup catcher who looked like the second coming of Yogi Berra for a few games stretch this year but has since regressed into being who he is. Yes, your statement is strange and deserving to be egged on by Mets fans 🙂
With a grand total of four hits over the last 17 innings the Mets lineup could use a boost. Will be good to have these guys back, though I agree with VonPurple – the current defensive configuration has been terrific
I suspect the boost will be happening to all teams to the chagrin to the pitchers and the delight of the position players – ala no mo spider tack
I too am curious to see what pitchers decline as a result of the enforcement of the substance rule. It’ll be like the aftermath of steroid testing.
Mets have enough gloves they can deploy late in games. Yes I understand they need them early on and the hope is a true 3B can be obtained. I don’t want to see Nimmo anywhere near CF
Gotta wonder about DeGrom’s spin rates – sounds kind of similar to Glasnow’s whining…
Too early to figure out who has been doing what. It’s going to be interesting.
For me, the question I’ve had about deGrom is how he’s been increasing velocity while he’s been on the wrong side of 30. Father Time beats everyone…unless there are other factors that aren’t kosher. And yes, I have questioned Verlander about this too.
I know people will argue deGrom’s career innings, but that doesn’t explain Father Time. Last time I remember something so noticeable for a pitcher on the wrong side of 30 increasing velocity like this was Roger Clemens., so that’s why I’ve wondered about deGrom and Verlander.. I’m sure there are others that aren’t as noticeable in it…or I’m forgetting in today’s game.
Big Sexy is throwing 97 down in Mexico right now. What does that say about him? No, not really but I wish he was.
None of Manfred’s new old rules matter if they aren’t enforced. In tonight’s Mets game, it was obvious Lucchesi AND Fedde had substances under the bills if their caps. It was even more obvious in last night’s game against the Cubs with their SP going to his cap snd pressing his thumb against the underside 4 times on every pitch.
He got hurt swinging the bat. The guy hasn’t lost any spin or velo like Cole & Bauer.
Complete moron
Forgetting Nolan Ryan. His stats improved every year he aged (for a long while).
Jose Canseco once said that there are guys in the Hall of Fame that used steroids. Since Jose snitches on former teammates, let’s see who his Hall of Fame teammates were.
Nolan Ryan
Reggie Jackson
Rickey Henderson.
Tough call to know which of these Jose was referring to. Maybe all of them when you think about it.
BTW, Nolan Ryan finished his career before Clemens. I was pointing out the last time I saw what we’ve seen in deGrom and Verlander…and trying to think of other current pitchers on the wrong side of 30 who keep increasing velocity.
The whole Canseco thing is kind of moot now, no? They didn’t test for anything during those years..Players probably did lines and smoked crack between innings in the clubhouse. It’s mental gymnastics without proof.
Fwiw, it’s very well accepted today that velocity can be taught. But this wasn’t the train of thought even 10 years ago. In theory, If you continue to work on those workouts year over year, it wouldn’t be shocking to a somewhat continued increased in velo
Especially post TJS. Gives guys a year+ of no games, just building strength. And likely changing the workouts they did pre-injury, to prevent another one
Could be Rickey. He hit 300 as a Met in 99 and played like a young man out of the blue.
Ryan never really declined much in velo his whole career. He even pitched with a torn acl. Some guys just have great mechanics.
deGrom is following the 90s Braves preparations that Smoltz taught him and he’s benefiting.
Just a thought…
The Mets have been very lucky so far. Robinson Cano took himself out of the game; the calls are going their way; the NL East is mysteriously struggling; the Mets replacement players are having good years. It won’t get easier.
Its unlikely that the rest of the NL East struggles this badly all season. The Mets have many games to make up. They need another starter after the first 3. Its good to be lucky, however.
The best thing about the Mets continues to be Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling in the SNY TV booth. If there’s a better MLB TV crew please let me know, and I will check it out. There is something about the voices of Gary, Keith and Ron that are like comfort food to me. And when Keith and Ron tell stories of their playing days it’s priceless. For example, Keith recently talked about players who were chatterboxes when they reached first base. If I was obsessive/compulsive enough I’d watch every Mets broadcast in its entirety and write down every story that Keith and Ron tell about their playing days. It would make a great book!
I agree 100%. I’m in Buffalo and have access to SNY & YES. I’m not necessarily a Mets fan but the SNY crew has turned me into a regular viewer. The only downside is Cohen’s exaggerated: “It’s outta here!” call. After awhile it tends to get annoyinga!
As for the Yankee telecasts, I just turn off the sound.
The Mets are for the most part horrible hitters and the return of Conforto and Nimmo will NOT help
their defense will become vastly weaker.
Lindor is a huge mistake offensively [albatross for 10 years]
They need a real 3rd base and Centerfielder.
But El Cheapo Cohen will cobble together trash and refuse to spend for players like Marte and Segar.
The Mets will crash soon.
Refuse to spend for players like Marte? They’ve one of the highest payrolls in the game and both Conforto and Nimmo are better than the aging Marte. I’ll never get fans live for expensive, declining names. You don’t wanna win you just want a bloated payroll of has been former all stars and pretty batting averages.