James McCann Placed on 10-Day IL with Fractured Wrist

The Mets announced Friday ahead of their series with the Mariners that catcher James McCann was placed on the 10-day injured list with a fractured hamate bone. The team said he will undergo surgery and his recovery time is six weeks, which will likely put him out until around the All-Star break.

Patrick Mazeika was called up from Triple-A in his place.

McCann had sat out Wednesday’s and Thursday’s games this week against the Nationals due to what was called a “sore wrist,” but X-rays revealed the fracture. While McCann was still generally struggling at the plate to start this season, he has been striking out less and making harder contact in the air–better recipes for success than the 2021 season when he struck out more than 26% of the time and had the highest ground-ball rate of his career.

The 31-year-old’s defensive metrics improved from last season, too, locking down a 94th-percentile framing rate (per Statcast) and throwing out 50% of the eight attempted stolen bases against him thus far.

McCann is the third Met to hit the injured list over the last week-plus, joining Trevor May and Sean Reid-Foley.

In McCann’s place will be 2021 folk hero Patrick Mazeika. Mazeika entered Mets lore when he had two game-winning fielders choice hits within the span of a week when a rash of Mets–McCann included–went down in May 2021. After that, though, Mazeika largely proved to be overmatched in his first run in the big leagues. He totaled 87 plate appearances with just a .519 OPS and 46 wRC+.

In Triple-A Syrcause so far this year, Mazeika has a .626 OPS over 77 plate appearances, though he has a very respectable 10.1% walk rate. He will likely play backup to Tomás Nido for most of the time McCann is out, including tonight with Max Scherzer on the mound.