Rojas remains high on Cespedes
The good news is Yoenis Cespedes came through his first game action in two years without a setback. The bad news is there wasn’t much to gauge, and the one time he could use his legs, he didn’t go full throttle.
Still, as he has done for most of spring training 2.0, first-year manager Luis Rojas talked up what he has seen from Cespedes, saying he “looks good” and he’s “very comfortable” with how he has run.
In three innings of an exhibition game Sunday against the Yankees, he didn’t get a ball hit to him in the outfield, unless you count Aaron Judge’s home run he tracked to the leftfield fence. The oft-injured outfielder didn’t get a chance to do much running, other than his first atbat Saturday night when he went three-quarters speed on a slow roller and was thrown out by a half-step after the initial call had him beating the throw.
“Yes, we’re comfortable to what he’s giving us out of the box. For me, he’s at a competitive level. He’s getting out of the box,” Rojas said on a Zoom call Monday night. “This is a guy that went through a really tough injury and he’s worked out really hard to get to where he is right now, and I like what I see in him. Right now, I’m very much comfortable with him.”
Rojas did say they would like the 34-year-old slugger, who missed all of last season and most of 2018 due to multiple leg injuries, to get a few chances in the outfield before the season starts Friday, though he did not play in Monday’s intrasquad game and left Citi Field before his scheduled Zoom call with the media. He’s been out there only for a handful of innings so far. Either the Mets and Cespedes are wary of him reinjuring himself or he simply isn’t ready to push it. But it appears as if the Mets are ready to start the season with the slugger in the lineup, even if he didn’t run all out down the line in the two exhibition games against the Yankees.
On July 11, the one and only time he has spoken to the media during camp, Cespedes said he would be ready for Opening Day. He last appeared in a regular-season game on July 20, 2018, exactly two years ago Monday. Since, he has undergone surgery on each of his heels and sustained ankle fractures in an accident on his ranch involving a wild boar. Cespedes has said he sometimes wakes up with tightness in a tendon above his heel, but otherwise he feels fine.
The real tests, however, have yet to arrive.