The Mets' injury situation

Wednesday, December 30, 2009 | | 0 comments

Finally, the New York Mets have acquired the power hitter they coveted so much in Jason Bay. Provided the injured stars of the Mets' lineup return to their past production and the mets find a first baseman who provides power, such as Adam Laroche, their offense should be pretty good. Still, while it is extremely unlikely that the Mets will again suffer the amount of injuries they did in 09, there is a serious red flag to be taken into account regarding the health of one of their key players. They should be very aware and careful about this issue, as their negligence regarding injuries has seriously affected them in past seasons. That player is Carlos Beltran. And the issue is his knee.

Although he has been getting injured every season for a few years now, he always manages to play 140 or more games, 2009 notwithstanding, and that has led a lot of people to think that his health next season is as likely to be good as, say, Jose Reyes' is.

That is a real misconception, as he had a bone bruise last season, one that required microfracture surgery and 12 months rest after the procedure. Instead of having the surgery, Beltran decided to come back and play. When he came back, he did well, but the danger of the injury reappearing is there.

The Mets have gotten themselves in trouble more than once for ignoring situations like this.

When the Mets acquired J.J. Putz from the Mariners, it was known he had some elbow issues. They let him pitch, and early in the season he started showing signs of not being completely healthy. A few weeks into the season he was diagnosed with a bone spur. They let him pitch through the injury, downplaying it and atributting his very uncharacteristic ineffectiveness to random “factors” such as “lack of confidence”. Jerry Manuel even changed his role from setup man to 7th inning guy, claiming that Putz needed to get his confidence back. After such a senseless experiment failed, Putz had to have the surgery anyway, at a time when he wouldnt be able to come back until next season. If they had been more proactive in the diagnosing and trating of the injury, they might have been able to get him back, at least for the end of the season.

Making things worse is that they went through the same situation with John Maine in 2008, with the same kind of injury. Maine showed discomfort, but they let him pitch through it. He was later diagnosed with a bone spur, but they still tried to let him pitch trough it. When he proved he couldn't be neither comfortable nor effective pitching in that condition, they had to stop him. To remove the bone spur surgery was needed, but they chose to have him rehab to see if he could come back. He tried to rehab, and was activated near the end of the season, still being unable to pitch pain-free. He never pitched in a Major League game for the rest of the season, and had the surgery after the season anyway. He came back in 2009, but had pain in the same shoulder where the surgery was performed and ended up missing significant time, and I think that, given Maine's willingness to pitch no matter what condition he's in (he always wanted the Mets to let him pitch in spite of his bone spur) there's a possibility of that being caused by Maine trying to rush things to be ready for spring training. If they had shut maine down as soon as the bone spur was diagnosed, and strongly recommended him to have the surgery, he would have had much more time to rehab after the surgery and a better chance of being 100% for 2009.

Another example is When the Mets were trying to get Jose Reyes back on the field in spite of having no realistic chance of reaching the playoffs with all the injured players they had, instead of getting him to have the surgery and start getting ready for 2010, having plenty of time to rehab.

While there was no way for the Mets to go to the playoffs with so many injuries, they could have been quite a bit better had they handled them better and more cautiously.

Alex Gonzalez, Marlon Byrd, and Brian Giles have all had microfracture surgeries and have come back succesfully, so while that surgery is a bit rare among baseball players, it's not a complete uncertainity either. Still, it is possible that the best choice, in this case, is to avoid the surgery, but if Beltran's bone bruise reappears next season, it might dramatically reduce the Mets' chances of going to the postseason.