BE CAREFUL WITH
PHILADELPHIA — There was no real conversation. By the time Jacob deGrom had gotten out of a bases-loaded jam in the first inning of Sunday’s loss to the Phillies — and before he walked back to the dugout — Mickey Callaway and pitching coach Dave Eiland had decided it was not worth the risk to send him back out there.
“The decision was pretty much already made,” said deGrom, who missed his last start while on the disabled list with a hyperextended right elbow. “It’s my first start back after missing one. To go out there and throw 45 (pitches) in the first inning, this isn’t smart. Why go out there and risk something? I felt great honestly. That’s the most frustrating part about it.
“Warming up, I feel like my stuff feels pretty good and then to go out there and pitch one,” deGrom added, “nobody wants that.”
But more importantly to the Mets, nobody wants to see deGrom miss anymore time this year. They saw he was laboring Sunday and made the immediate decision to pull him, nobody can argue with that.
That is why it was so hard to watch Yoenis Cespedes Sunday and understand why the Mets are not being more cautious with their $110 million slugger. Cespedes has been playing with a nagging right quad issue, which they admit has him playing at about 85%.
Obviously, it’s hard to sit Cespedes, particularly now with the Mets struggling to score runs. In the first month of play, 26 games, the Mets averaged 4.8 runs per game, but since then, in a freefall, the Mets are getting just 2.4 per game.
Cespedes can change a game with a single swing. Watching him crush an Aaron Nola curveball Sunday in the top of the sixth inning, you easily see how it is so tempting to keep him in the lineup.
But then, in the bottom of that same inning, the risk the Mets are taking having him play through this is so visible.
Coming in on Maikel Franco’s shallow fly ball, with Carlos Santana on second base, Cespedes ran as fast as he could and made a shoestring catch. The 32-year-old outfielder made a great play, but then it was hard to watch as he could barely stop himself, because of the discomfort in the quad as he decelerated.
Yes, it’s admirable that he wants to play through the issue to help the team.
“He did a good job. When he had to run, he ran hard. When he went to get the ball in the corner, he ran hard. He hit it hard,” said Callaway. “He’s gutting it out for the team.”
But, this isn’t the first time we’ve had to hold our collective breath when he has had a quad issue.
This seems similar to an injury that has cost Cespedes and the Mets games in the past. In 2016 the Mets hemmed and hawed as they hoped Cespedes’ nagging right quad issue would go away without a stint on the disabled list. He initially injured it in early July, so they thought the All Star break would be enough, but Cespedes eventually had to go on the DL in early August.
It flared up again last year when Cespedes was rehabbing the first of his two hamstring strains.
Callaway wasn’t here for that and he is relying on Cespedes and the Mets newly revamped medical staff to make sure the Mets slugger doesn’t further injure himself. His hands were tied in terms of outfielders with Jay Bruce out on paternity leave over the weekend. His options were limited to playing Cespedes or the light-hitting Juan Lagares as the Mets have no more outfielders on their 40-man roster.
But the Mets front office and fans have seen this before and remember the painful ending. Still, Friday night, assistant GM John Ricco said the Mets were “not throwing caution to the wind,” with Cespedes and are confident in the medical staff they revamped this winter — in part a response to Cespedes missing 81 games last season — to prevent disasters.
“We’re examining that and talking through it. We feel we have confidence in that performance staff that we are going to make rational decisions,” Ricco said. “Are we going to be right 100% of the time? No. “But we have to make decisions on the information we have and that’s what we did.”
Maybe the Mets’ information looks better than the eye test of watching Cespedes labor to run. It would be impossible to always be 100% right on every player and every nagging issue over a 162-game season, but they have been smart on deGrom’s hyperextended elbow. They can’t afford to be wrong on Cespedes.
ON DECK
(2-1, 3.09) vs. (2-2, 5.40) (2-2, 5.03) vs. (4-3, 4.80)