Darling rips Mets trainers
Not even halfway into the Mets season, Ron Darling has seen enough destruction.
The former Met and current SNY analyst tore into the team’s approach to training its players after watching Robert Gsellman become the latest casualty in an injury-plagued season. The Mets have been playing catch-up all season with each star player that hits the disabled list, and Darling suggested on Tusday night’s broadcast he’s found the reason why the injuries keep piling up.
“[These] trainers, get them in a room with some of the old trainers and people that took care of baseball players and how to keep them healthy,” Darling said in the SNY booth with Gary Cohen during the Mets’ 6-3 loss to the Marlins in Miami. “And get them in a room and try to tap into their knowledge on how you train baseball players — not weight lifters, not six-pack wearers — baseball players.
“They’re doing a disservice to their million-dollar athletes that they’re paying. It’s a joke to watch this happen each and every night.”
Gsellman’s early exit — and a likely looming disabled-list stint — adds another layer to what has become the running joke of the Mets in 2017. Ambitious preseason rhetoric, that included World Series expectations, has descended into a a 34-41 record and talk of a fire sale at the trade deadline.
Darling’s shots appear to be directed at the Mets’ three-year-old training regimen led by strength and conditioning coach Mike Barwis. The organization hired Barwis after the 2014 season and paved the way for his high-intensity, musclebuilding workouts.
Entering the season, many of the Mets high-profile players raved about their newfound strength, as detailed in a May ESPN report. A Men’s Fitness cover story in February featured a bulked-up Noah Syndergaard and boasted how the flamethrower had added 17 pounds of muscle in the offseason. ESPN offered a glimpse into Yoenis Cespedes’ weight-room routine in March, showing him lifting 990 pounds with a band while Barwis shouted encouragements.
Now, Syndergaard is on the disabled list with a partially torn lat muscle and still a month away from picking up a baseball. Cespedes spent time of his own on the disabled list with a strained left hamstring that still seems to flare up on occasion.