OPEN & CLOSE
Flores and Murphy hopeful of return; Parnell eyes May
PORT ST. LUCIE − While Terry Collins and a few of his regulars played in front of thousands at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, three important Mets moved forward at their home ballpark.
In the morning, Daniel Murphy (hamstring) and Wilmer Flores (foot) participated in varying degrees of baseball activity. Later in the day, Bobby Parnell continued to work toward his return from Tommy John surgery by pitching a scoreless inning in a Triple-A game.
Murphy and Flores remain hopeful of healing in time for Opening Day, while Parnell is targeting “sometime in May.”
The onetime closer, looking to resume his career after having surgery last April, threw 17 pitches (12 for strikes) against the Marlins, in his second minor-league outing. He struck out one, allowed a double and induced a pair of groundouts. Known for a high-90s fastball, Parnell was at 88-91 miles per hour on Wednesday.
One evaluator in attendance said that he was not concerned with the velocity, because Parnell is still building arm strength, and the righty looked free and easy with his delivery. Parnell offered the additional explanation that he was working on mostly twoseam fastballs, which are always slower than four-seamers.
“I went into this outing trying not to overthrow,” Parnell said. “So I knew the gun wasn’t going to be anything outstanding. I backed off, and I wanted to work on my twoseamer, because it wasn’t there last game, and make sure I stayed back on the rubber. It was more a ‘go out there and knock the rust off’ kind of thing, rather than overthrow.”
Parnell declined to set a timetable for his return to the major leagues, but made clear that April was not a realistic goal.
“Sometime in May, I’m hoping, but I don’t put that in stone or anything like that,” he said.
“I want my body to tell me when to go. I don’t want to look at the calendar, and (have that) tell me where to go.”
The team’s middle infield is much closer to returning. Both Murphy and Flores appear to have dodged more serious injuries. The latter fouled a ball off his foot on Sunday, and left the ballpark in a walking boot, complaining of intense pain.
But three days later, diagnosed only with a bruise, Flores took ground balls and batting practice on the main field at the Mets’ complex.
Murphy, in his second day of baseball activities since injuring his hamstring, was more limited. He hit in the cage, and took throws from Flores at first and second base.
“I feel good,” he said. “It feels good. I mean, I feel better than I did a couple of days ago, when it happened. So each day I’ll hopefully progress, and we’ll see how it feels tomorrow. I don’t want to come out and say I’ll be ready, and then not be ready.”
The Mets might keep Murphy from Grapefruit League games, in order to keep alive the possibility of backdating a disabled list stint, and having him miss less time in the regular season. If that happens, he will finish spring training with just 17 at-bats.