The Upcoming Shortstop Class Looks Increasingly Bleak
The top free agent storyline of each of the past two offseasons was the respective star-studded shortstop classes. In 2021-22, it was Carlos Correa, Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, Trevor Story and Javier Báez. Last winter, Correa was back on the market again, joined by Trea Turner, Xander Bogaerts and Dansby Swanson.
Next winter’s group was never going to rival that previous collection. The class in general is very light on star position player talent beyond Shohei Ohtani. It’s particularly barren up the middle of the diamond. It’s hard to imagine a more complete 180° turn than how things appear to be trending with the shortstop class, though. Virtually everyone involved is off to a very slow start.
The early-season performances from the impending free agents at the position:
Amed Rosario (28)*
While Rosario is not the superstar some evaluators had anticipated during his time in the Mets’ farm system, he’d been a solid regular for two seasons since landing in Cleveland in the Francisco Lindor blockbuster. Rosario’s solid batting averages helped offset his very low walk tallies. He hit 25+ doubles with double-digit homers in both 2021-22, playing on a near everyday basis. His cumulative .282/.316/.406 batting line was almost exactly league average. Public metrics were mixed on Rosario’s defense but the Guardians have been content to keep him at shortstop despite plenty of upper minors infield talent. Only 27 and without a ton of market competition, he entered the year in position for a strong three or four-year contract.
That could still be the case but Rosario is doing himself no favors with his early performance. He’s sitting on a .217/.262/.300 showing through his first 130 plate appearances. He has just one homer and is striking out at a 29.2% clip that’d easily be the worst full-season mark of his career if it holds. After making contact on 81.3% of his swings last season, he’s putting the bat on the ball only 71.5% of the time this year. He’s also committed six errors in 255 1/3 innings after being charged with just 12 in more than 1200 frames last year. Rosario is still the top impending free agent shortstop by default but he’s struggling in all areas right now.
Javier Báez (31), can opt out of final four years and $98MM on his contract
Báez is hitting .256/.318/.376 through his first 130 plate appearances. That’s an improvement over the lackluster .238/.278/.393 line he managed during his first season in Detroit. His 16.2% strikeout rate is the lowest of his career, pushing his overall offense near league average in spite of just three home runs in 32 games. Báez’s 2023 campaign has been fine but hardly overwhelming. It’s nowhere near what it’d take for him to beat the $98MM remaining on his existing contract. He’d need a torrid summer to put himself in position to test free agency.
Enrique Hernández (32)
Hernández has been pushed into primary shortstop duty by the Red Sox’ various injuries. The early reviews from public defensive metrics aren’t favorable, with Statcast putting him at seven outs below average in 199 innings. Hernández is off to an equally slow start at the plate. He’s hitting .236/.295/.362 over 139 plate appearances on the heels of a .222/.291/.338 showing last year. He’s been a valuable super-utility option and everyday center fielder at times in his career, including a 20-homer campaign in 2021. The past year-plus hasn’t been especially impressive, though, and Hernández has yet to demonstrate he’s capable of handling shortstop regularly from a defensive standpoint.
Brandon Crawford (37)
The career-long Giant had a tough April on both sides of the ball. He’s hitting .169/.244/.352 with a personal-high 28.2% strikeout rate in 21 games. His defensive marks through 173 2/3 innings are unanimously below-average. A right calf strain sent him to the injured list last week. Even if Crawford is willing to explore all opportunities next winter after 13 seasons in San Francisco, he’ll need much better production once he returns from the IL to find any interest as a starting shortstop.
Elvis Andrus (35)
Much of what applies to Crawford is also true for Andrus. He’s a 15-year MLB veteran with a couple All-Star appearances to his name but his offense has fallen off in recent seasons. Andrus was a well below-average hitter from 2018-21. He rebounded with a solid .249/.303/.404 showing last season but still didn’t generate much free agent attention. After settling for a $3MM deal with the White Sox, he’s hitting only .208/.291/.264 in 142 plate appearances this year. Andrus hit 17 homers last season but has just one through the first six weeks.
Nick Ahmed (34)
Another glove-first veteran, Ahmed is also off to a rough start at the plate. He carries a .227/.239/.318 line over 67 plate appearances. He’s hit only one home run and walked just once. Ahmed has always been a bottom-of-the-lineup defensive specialist, but his career .235/.289/.380 slash is much more tenable than the production he’s managed thus far in 2023. He lost almost all of last season to shoulder surgery.
Gio Urshela (32)
Urshela is hitting plenty of singles to start his time in Orange County. His .303 batting average is impressive but is paired with just a .325 on-base percentage and .345 slugging mark. He’s walking at a career-low 3.3% clip and has only three extra-base hits (two doubles and a homer) in 123 plate appearances.
More concerning for teams looking to the shortstop market is Urshela’s lack of experience at the position. He’s been a third baseman for the majority of his career. Since landing with the Angels, he’s assumed a multi-positional infield role that has given him eight-plus starts at shortstop and both corner infield spots. Even if he starts hitting for more power, he’s better deployed as a versatile infielder who can moonlight at shortstop than an everyday solution there.
Isiah Kiner-Falefa (28)
Kiner-Falefa lost his starting shortstop role with the Yankees towards the end of last season. He’s been kicked into a multi-positional capacity this year and hasn’t logged a single inning at the position in 2023. While Kiner-Falefa presumably could still handle shortstop if asked, he’s contributed nothing offensively in the early going. Through 72 plate appearances, he owns a .191/.225/.206 line.
Adalberto Mondesí (28)
Mondesí is young and has flashed tantalizing tools throughout his major league career. He’s also reached base at a meager .280 clip over 358 MLB games and battled various injuries. An April 2022 ACL tear cut that season short after just 15 games. The Red Sox nevertheless acquired him from the Royals over the offseason, but he’s yet to play a game with Boston. Mondesí opened the season on the 60-day injured list and won’t make his Sox debut until at least the end of this month. There’s a chance for him to play his way into some free agent interest. He’ll need an extended stretch of health and performance.
Players With Club Options
Both Tim Anderson and Paul DeJong can hit free agency if the White Sox and Cardinals decline respective 2024 club options. That seems likely in DeJong’s case but is reflective of the .196/.280/.351 line he managed between 2020-22. If he plays well enough to warrant significant free agent interest — he has been excellent in 11 games this season, to his credit — the Cardinals would exercise their $12.5MM option and keep him off the market anyhow.
The White Sox hold a $14MM option on Anderson’s services. That looks as if it’ll be a no-brainer for Chicago to keep him around (or exercise and make him available in trade). The only way Anderson gets to free agency is if his 2023 season is decimated by injury or an uncharacteristic performance drop-off, in which case he’d be a question mark as well.
Outlook
This was never going to be a great group. It’s comprised largely of glove-first veterans in their mid-30s. Players like Andrus, Ahmed, Crawford and José Iglesias — who’ll also hit free agency and has bounced around on minor league deals thus far in 2023 — don’t tend to be priority targets. That opened the door for the likes of Rosario, Báez and a potentially healthy Mondesí — younger players who have shown some offensive upside — to separate themselves from the pack in a way they wouldn’t have the last couple winters. No one has seized the mantle to this point. While there are still more than four months for someone to emerge, the early returns on the shortstop class aren’t promising.
*age for the 2024 season
D-Backs Outright Seth Beer
Diamondbacks first baseman/DH Seth Beer has been sent outright to Triple-A Reno, according to the transaction log at MLB.com. That indicates he went unclaimed on waivers after being designated for assignment last week.
Beer has played parts of two seasons with the Snakes. The former first round pick was one of four prospects Arizona acquired from the Astros in the 2019 Zack Greinke blockbuster. He’d hit very well in the low minors after an incredible career at Clemson but came with questions about his lack of a defensive home. Beer continued performing at the plate through 2021, eventually reaching the majors towards the tail end of that season.
The left-handed hitter got into five games during his debut. He played a bit more last year, appearing in 38 contests and tallying 126 trips to the plate. He only hit .189/.278/.243 in his first real crack against MLB pitching. Beer spent the bulk of the season with Reno, putting up a solid but unspectacular .242/.361/.435 slash that was below his previous minor league production.
Arizona optioned Beer back to Reno to start the 2023 campaign. He’s been off to a rough start in his third crack at Triple-A, posting a .200/.266/.314 line over 79 plate appearances. Beer has homered just twice while striking out at a personal-worst 29.1% clip. Paired with the concern he could be limited to designated hitter, that slow start pushed Beer off the roster when the D-Backs promoted pitching prospect Brandon Pfaadt last Wednesday.
No other team was willing to devote him an immediate 40-man roster spot in light of his early-season slump. This is the first outright of his career and he doesn’t have three years of major league service. As a result, Beer does not have the ability to test free agency. He’ll remain in the Arizona system and try to hit his way back onto the big league radar.
A’s Change Target Site For Stadium In Las Vegas
The A’s plans for a stadium proposal in Las Vegas have changed. According to reports from both Mick Akers of the Review-Journal and Howard Stutz of the Nevada Independent, the A’s have entered into a new land agreement for the construction of a stadium at the current site of the Tropicana hotel on the Vegas Strip.
Initially, the organization had been focused on a site just west of the Strip. They even announced a land deal last month, but the Nevada Independent reported yesterday the franchise was looking into alternatives due to concerns about the extent of the public funding for their previous plan. They’ve quickly settled on a new location and are moving on from the land they’d planned to build on a few weeks ago.
The A’s had been set to propose a plan that called for $500MM in public funding via county-issued bonds to be paid by tax dollars related to the stadium project. Both the Nevada Independent and Review-Journal report that the team’s public funding ask for the new site will be $395MM. The hope is that by reducing their ask on public funding by $105MM, their proposal will be more palatable whenever it’s formally put in front of the Nevada legislature.
Whether that’ll prove to be the case remains to be seen. The A’s are seeking approval from county and state officials for the construction of a park that’d be ready by the start of the 2027 season. If they receive government approval and sign a binding stadium agreement, they could then petition MLB for relocation out of Oakland.
The A’s lease at Oakland’s RingCentral Coliseum runs through the end of next season. The organization has until January 15 to formally sign a contract for the construction of a new facility if they’re to retain their status as revenue sharing recipients in the collective bargaining agreement.
Latest On Jacob deGrom
The Rangers placed Jacob deGrom on the injured list on April 29 with inflammation in his throwing elbow. The two-time Cy Young winner had left his previous start early with some forearm discomfort, the second time this season he’d been forced to depart an outing for health reasons.
While deGrom is technically able to return to action this weekend, he won’t be reinstated when first eligible. Manager Bruce Bochy estimated this evening the four-time All-Star could be two to three weeks away (relayed by Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News). According to Grant, deGrom will meet with team physicians next Monday to determine whether he can start to ramp up the intensity.
The Rangers are understandably going to be cautious with deGrom’s arm health. He’s battled forearm and shoulder issues over the past couple years, resulting in an extended chunk of missed action between 2021-22. deGrom returned at peak form in last year’s second half and the Rangers made him the highest-paid pitcher of the offseason, inking him to a five-year, $185MM guarantee.
Through his first six starts in a Texas uniform, the star hurler has tossed 30 1/3 innings of 2.67 ERA ball. Among pitchers with 30+ frames, only Spencer Strider has a superior strikeout rate to deGrom’s 39.1% clip. It’s exactly the kind of rate production for which general manager Chris Young and his front office had hoped, though the longstanding question has been how many innings they can expect deGrom to shoulder.
With deGrom out, Dane Dunning has stepped into the final rotation spot. Dunning was a solid back-of-the-rotation arm for Texas between 2021-22 and threw five scoreless innings against the Angels last week. He’s a capable fill-in, though his move to the rotation puts added pressure on a bullpen that has been shaky of late. Dunning was arguably Texas’ best reliever for the first month, tossing 20 1/3 frames of 1.77 ERA ball.
Braves, Chad Pinder Agree To Minor League Deal
The Braves are in agreement with free agent utilityman Chad Pinder, reports Robert Murray of FanSided (Twitter link). It’ll be a minor league contract, tweets Justin Toscano of the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
It’s the third minor league deal of the season for the longtime A’s utilityman. He signed with the Reds over the winter but struggled in Spring Training, hitting just .103/.167/.154. After being informed he wouldn’t make the Opening Day roster, he opted out and quickly signed with the Nationals. Pinder spent a little over a month in the Washington system playing for Triple-A Rochester. He hit .218/.308/.309 over 62 plate appearances before being released last week.
While it hasn’t been the best start to the year, Pinder brings plenty of upper level experience. He played for Oakland between 2016-22, compiling a .242/.294/.417 line over 553 games. He’s struggled to reach base — particularly against right-handed pitching — but offers some power when holding the platoon advantage. Pinder is a career .264/.322/.456 hitter against lefties.
On the other side of the ball, the 31-year-old is capable of covering virtually anywhere on the diamond. Pinder has over 250 innings of big league experience at each of second base, third base and shortstop and in both corner outfield positions. The majority of his time has been spent at the keystone and in the outfield corners. He’ll add a versatile right-handed bat to the upper minors.
The Encouraging Developments Of Brandon Marsh
Just as the trade deadline was approaching last year, the Phillies sent sent catching prospect Logan O’Hoppe to the Angels in order to acquire center fielder Brandon Marsh. The latter was one of the top prospects in the league a few years ago but was relatively overshadowed on an Angels team that had stars like Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani. Marsh was perhaps best known for trying to make his head suit his surname, as he didn’t do too much to stand out with the bat.
Making his debut in 2021, he got into 70 games and took 260 trips to the plate. He struck out in 35% of those, walked in 7.7% of them and hit just a pair of home runs. He finished that year with a .254/.317/.356 batting line and an 85 wRC+, indicating he was 15% below league average. Up until the trade last year, it was more of the same. In 323 plate appearances for the Halos prior to the deal, he struck out 36.2% of the time, walked at a 6.8% clip and slashed .226/.284/.353 for a 79 wRC+.
The move to the Phillies seems to have been a turning point, however. His walk rate actually dropped to 4.3% after coming to Philadelphia last year, but his strikeout also dipped to 29.7%. That was still much higher than league average but a noticeable improvement from his own track record. That led to a .288/.319/.455 batting line and 114 wRC+. Here in 2023, he’s off to a tremendous .314/.402/.578 start and a 164 wRC+.
There’s one big caveat to throw out here, as Marsh currently has a .444 batting average on balls in play that no hitter could sustain. Last year’s league leader, for instance, was Paul Goldschmidt and his .368 mark. Once Marsh sees his BABIP figure regress, his overall numbers won’t be quite so gaudy. But digging under the hood reveals there’s still plenty of things to be encouraged by. He’s striking out at a 29.9% clip that is definitely still high but more manageable than the roughly 35% clip he was at previously. He’s also walking at an amazing 12% clip, well above this year’s 8.8% league average. Considering how rarely he took free passes before, that’s an excellent sign.
The batted ball metrics also shed some positive light on the better results, as basically everything has improved relative to last year. His barrel rate is up from 7.4% to 10.4%. His average exit velocity was 89.2 mph last year but is at 92 mph in 2023. His hard hit rate has gone from 38.2% to 47.8%. It’s still a fairly small sample of 117 plate appearances but he’s striking out less, walking more, hitting the ball harder and doing so more often. And it doesn’t seem to have come out of nowhere.
Back in October, when the Phillies were in the World Series, Marsh and hitting coach Kevin Long spoke to Sam Blum of The Athletic about the changes that had been made to his swing. “I devised a game plan on what I was going to do with his swing,” Long said. “And the mechanics of his swing. I always start by getting guys closer to the hitting position than further away. So we spread him out. We got him into his legs. It worked.”
All of these offensive improvements are a great coup since Marsh was already a valuable contributor as a glove-first center fielder. Defensive Runs Saved doesn’t seem to like him in center much, putting him slightly below average in each of his three seasons thus far. Ultimate Zone Rating has him in the positive range, though, and Outs Above Average has him at +5 through 1,251 innings. Marsh is also ranked in the 88th percentile in terms of sprint speed and has 17 stolen bases in his career thus far.
With all of those traits, FanGraphs calculated him as having produced 2.4 wins above replacement in 204 games over 2021 and 2022, even while hitting at a subpar rate. Now with much better offense this year, he’s already at 1.3 fWAR in just 33 games, more than halfway to his previous total in a fraction of the time. As mentioned earlier, he’s due for a bit of regression, but there are reasons to suspect he’ll eventually settle somewhere that’s much better than his previous work.
The 25-year-old came into this year with one year and 78 days of service time, meaning he won’t qualify for arbitration until after 2024 and isn’t slated for free agency until after 2027. For a Phillies team that has spent big on players including Bryce Harper, Trea Turner and Nick Castellanos, and would also like to get Aaron Nola signed to an extension, getting big value out of an overlooked player like Marsh is an important victory.
Evan White To Undergo Hip Surgery
Mariners first baseman Evan White will undergo another procedure on his left hip, the team informed reporters (including Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times). The recovery estimate is three months.
White is already on the 60-day injured list. He suffered an adductor strain two games into his Triple-A season and was initially expected to miss two months. That won’t come to be, as White unfortunately is headed under the knife yet again. His 2021 campaign was cut short by the first surgery he underwent on his left hip. The former first round draftee then missed the bulk of last season due to a sports hernia surgery.
For a third consecutive year, White is now going to be sidelined by a notable procedure. The initial estimate suggests he could return sometime in August, though the organization would surely be cautious with his ramp-up based on his extensive injury history. Even in the best case scenario, he’s now set to miss the majority of the year.
White hasn’t played a big league game since 2021. A well-regarded prospect during his time climbing the minor league ranks, he stumbled to a .165/.235/.308 line in 306 MLB plate appearances between 2020-21. He’s spent the bulk of the past couple years on the injured list and has only gotten Triple-A reps when healthy enough to take the field.
The Mariners signed White to a $24MM extension before he made his big league debut. He’s making $3MM this season and due successive salaries of $7MM and $8MM over the next two years. The Mariners have a pair of club options thereafter but they’re certainly trending towards declining those given White’s various health issues.
Seattle also got unfortunate news on star reliever Andrés Muñoz. The hard-throwing righty has been out since April 8 with a deltoid strain. He’d been nearing a rehab assignment but suffered a minor setback. Divish tweets that he experienced some shoulder soreness during a recent bullpen session. The M’s sent Muñoz for an MRI, which revealed some inflammation. He received a platelet-rich plasma injection and isn’t expected to begin a minor league stint until the end of the month.
Muñoz was one of the game’s best relievers in 2022. He worked to a 2.49 ERA through 65 innings, striking out an incredible 38.7% of batters faced while keeping his walks to a solid 6% rate. That understandably earned him plenty of high-leverage looks as the season wore on, as he saved four games and held 22 more leads.
Angels Designate César Valdez, Select Chris Okey
The Angels announced a series of roster moves, recalling right-hander Jimmy Herget and selecting catcher Chris Okey. In corresponding moves, righty César Valdez was designated for assignment while catcher Chad Wallach was placed on the 7-day concussion injured list . Sam Blum of The Athletic reported on the moves prior to the official announcement (Twitter links).
Valdez, 38, was just selected to the club’s roster yesterday. At that time, it seemed like he was there in case the club needed someone to eat multiple innings of long relief. José Suarez only last 2 2/3 innings on Sunday and Chase Silseth had to throw 3 1/3 innings of relief to get the club through that game. With Suarez then placed on the IL and Silseth seemingly ticketed to replace him in the rotation, the bullpen was a bit vulnerable going into Monday’s night game. But Patrick Sandoval was able to toss 6 1/3 frames last night and the Halos finished out the contest using only two relievers, Matt Moore and Carlos Estévez.
With the bullpen a bit more refreshed and an off-day coming up on Thursday, it seems they decided they could get by without Valdez and have designated him for assignment just about 24 hours after he was added to the roster. The veteran has been in and out of the majors over the years, having recently leaned hard into being a changeup specialist. He’s thrown the pitch 76.7% of the time over his 49 appearances dating back to the start of the 2020 season, posting a 4.84 ERA in that stretch.
The Halos will now have a week to trade Valdez or pass him through waivers. In the event that he clears, he would have the right to reject an outright assignment and elect free agency by virtue of having a previous career outright.
As for Herget, he will get a chance to get his season back on track after a rough start. He registered a 6.23 ERA through his first eight appearances and got optioned down to Triple-A Salt Lake. That was a disappointing dip from the encouraging breakout he had last year when he had a 2.48 ERA, eventually earning nine saves and six holds. Since being optioned, he has a 5.40 ERA in five appearances despite strong strikeout and ground ball rates of 28% and 50%, respectively. A .462 batting average on balls in play and 83.3% strand rate likely inflated his ERA but his 16% walk rate surely played a part as well.
Turning to the backstops, the Halos have been doing a bit of scrambling behind the plate this year. Max Stassi has been on the injured list all year with a hip injury and personal issue while Logan O’Hoppe had his hot start ended by a torn labrum that’s going to cost him four to six months. Chad Wallach was added to the roster over two weeks ago to join Matt Thaiss as the club’s catching tandem but will now join Stassi and O’Hoppe on the injured list.
All of that has created an opening for Okey, who made his major league debut with the Reds last year, though he got just 13 plate appearances in seven games. He was outrighted off the club’s roster in July and reached free agency at season’s end, signing a minor league deal with the Angels. He’s made 45 trips to the plate for the Bees so far this year but has hit just .125/.205/.225 in that time. His overall Triple-A batting line is a bit better, coming in at .208/.283/.333 in 401 plate appearances dating back to 2019.
In one other note relating to the Angels, Suarez won’t require but will be shut down from throwing for four weeks, per Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com. He’ll have to ramp back up at that point, meaning he likely won’t be available for a couple of months. He seems likely to be replaced by Silseth, who will join Sandoval, Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Anderson, Reid Detmers and Griffin Canning in the club’s six-man rotation.
Meibrys Viloria Elects Free Agency
Catcher Meibrys Viloria has elected free agency, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. That suggests he cleared waivers after being designated for assignment by the club last week. He had the right to elect free agency by virtue of having previously been outrighted in his career.
The Guardians somewhat surprisingly opted to carry three backstops on their active roster to start the season, with Mike Zunino backed up by Cam Gallagher and Viloria, none of whom could be optioned to the minors. Viloria was seemingly third on the depth chart, as he was put into 10 games during his time on the roster but mostly as a late-game replacement, only garnering four plate appearances in roughly a month on the roster.
He had spent most of his previous career with the Royals, jumping to the Rangers in 2022 before coming to the Guards this year. He’s mustered just a .198/.270/.279 batting line in 280 plate appearances, dating back to the start of the 2018 season. However, he’s been roughly a league-average pitch framer over the past few years and is considered above-average in controlling the running game when looking at Statcast‘s new caught stealing above average metric. He’s also hit much better in Triple-A, currently sporting a line of .280/.422/.440 in 430 plate appearances at that level.
He will now head out to the open market and look for his next opportunity. There are several teams around the league dealing with injuries to their catching depth, but given that Viloria just cleared waivers, he’s probably going to be limited to minor league deals.
Mets Notes: Scherzer, Peterson, Yacabonis, Carrasco
The Mets announced that today’s scheduled starter, Max Scherzer, was scratched due to neck spasms. Left-hander David Peterson was recalled to start tonight instead. Right-hander Jimmy Yacabonis was placed on the 15-day injured list with a left quad strain, which opened a roster spot for Peterson and allowed the lefty to return less than 15 days after being optioned.
The issue with Scherzer appears to be minor, as he was not placed on the injured list, but it is at least somewhat concerning that he’s not at full health. The 38-year-old hasn’t quite seemed himself so far this season, seemingly unable to get into a good groove. He allowed eight earned runs in his first two outings but came back with five scoreless frames in his third. It was in his fourth start that he was ejected for excessive stickiness on his hands, which also led to a 10-game suspension. He showed a bit of rust after serving that sentence, allowing six earned runs against the Tigers last week.
All told, he has an ERA of 5.56 thus far, a significant difference from last year’s 2.29 mark. The severity of this neck issue will likely become more clear in the coming days but it appears to be yet another speed bump for a rotation that has seen many. Justin Verlander started the year on the injured list due to a teres major strain and just returned last week while José Quintana has been there all year due to rib surgery and isn’t expected to return until July. Carlos Carrasco began the year healthy but landed on the IL after just three starts due to a bone spur in his elbow. All of those hurdles are part of the reason the club has limped out to a 17-18 start and is seven games back of Atlanta in the NL East.
It remains to be seen whether Scherzer will just need a few days of extra rest or a significant stretch of time off. Peterson will likely be quickly optioned in the former scenario but could also stick around in the latter, joining Verlander, Kodai Senga, Tylor Megill and Joey Lucchesi in the improvised rotation. Scherzer seems to be on the optimistic side of things, telling Tim Healey of Newsday that he’s expecting to miss just a couple of days and take the ball against the Nationals this weekend.
In a bit of good news, Carrasco seems to be working his way back as well. The Double-A Binghamton Rumble Ponies announced that the veteran will be making a rehab start for them tonight as he tries to get back to the major league team. He was initially planned to start his rehab on the weekend but those plans were pushed back when he fell ill. It seems he’s recovered and the train is back on the tracks. He had a 3.97 ERA for the Mets last year but struggled to an 8.56 mark this year before the bone spur put him on the shelf.
If the Mets get a bit of luck, both Scherzer and Carrasco will be healthy and pitching well soon, which will likely nudge out Peterson and then one of Lucchesi or Megill. The former has a 4.43 ERA through four starts while the latter is at 4.33 in seven outings. Peterson hasn’t been able to fare well in his time this year, currently sporting a 7.34 ERA in his six starts.