Sandy Alderson spoke to reporters at Nationals Park on Tuesday and said the Mets first baseman Lucas Duda is still rehabbing at the team’s complex in Port St. Lucie.
Alderson added that Duda is still at least two weeks away from resuming baseball activities, as he looks to return from a stress fracture in his back.
Duda has now missed the last five weeks of the season and has been slow to heal. Once he does resume baseball activities it’s not clear how many more additional weeks he will require to play simulated games and begin a rehab assignment before rejoining the team.
Previous Report – June 22
For Lucas Duda, the most difficult part of his stint on the disabled list is waiting for his stress fracture in his lower back to heal.
Duda, who was placed on the DL on May 23, has begun to ride a bike as he makes his way back to the Mets roster. However, he remains weeks away from resuming baseball activities.
“Probably the hardest part is just taking it easy,” Duda said last Sunday. “The activity is pretty slight. It’s just riding a bike. That’s essentially it until the next step in the process comes. I think it’s just something you have to deal with. It is what it is. I’m trying to work as hard as I can to get back as soon as I can.”
“I’m pretty optimistic, so I’m looking at the four- to five- week – maybe six- week- range,” Duda said. ” But who knows? It could be shorter. It could be longer. It just kind of depends.”
Duda, 30, also said that he spoke with David Wright, who suffered a similar injury in 2011- which caused him to miss two months.
“He said it’s just kind of a process,” Duda said. “You’ve just got to deal with it. There are no real shortcuts. There is no easy way about it. It’s just time.”
It’s encouraging to see that he has begun some activity. However, he does not seem very confident that he will be playing games any time soon. Hopefully, if James Loney continues to play as well as he has, the Mets won’t miss Duda too much.
