The New York Mets have become notorious over the last decade for not handling injuries to their players properly and not disclosing enough information about their injuries.
Well, look no further than the debacle that ensued before Tuesday night’s game to see that.
Brandon Nimmo, who was nearing a return to the MLB club less than a week ago, now finds himself set to sit out for the next 30 days as he tries to recover from a bulging disk in his neck.
That injury was initially much less severe to the public’s eye, as the team labeled it simply as “neck inflammation” publicly. However, that injury took a turn for the worst after playing in rehab games as it has now resulted in him getting an epidural in his neck and the team finally labeling the injury for what it is: a bulging disk.
Jacob Resnick of our very own site, MMO, details the full timeline of the injury process for Nimmo, which was extremely lengthy.
Moving on, Jeurys Familia has been struggling mightily in 2019, which is the first year 0f a three-year, $30 million contract signed this past offseason. The Mets decided they were going to make some changes prior to that night’s game, but one bit of news came as a surprise to everyone.
Prior to Tuesday’s game, Mickey Callaway was asked about his struggling reliever and intimated a strong belief that Familia was healthy.
“It seems like his stuff is in the right place. We’ll have conversations with him daily. We’ll see how he bounced back today from last night, and continue to do our daily due diligence on everybody on their health.”
Less than 30 minutes later, though, it was reported by Anthony Dicomo of MLB.com that Familia was going on the 10-day IL with a Bennett lesion in his right shoulder.
That is an injury that could potentially require surgery and the Mets didn’t discuss the injury any further that day, outside of saying that he would not receive an MRI, which Callaway defended.
“We know the root cause of it, the Bennett lesion, which is usually what ails him. When he came to the park today he was pretty sore.”
So, why, after discovering that a player has an injury, would a team not investigate the injury further? There is so much that an MRI could be useful for such as confirming the injury and potentially address how severe the injury is so the proper amount of resting time for the right-hander could be determined.
If the injury is severe enough, as noted before, it could require surgery, which if it truly does, it appears the Mets might be oblivious to it if they are not investigating it themselves.
That sequence of events also suggests that the manager is not being informed properly of decisions being made, which is concerning, to say the least, and speaks to a serious level of communication issues throughout the organization.
Bottom line is that the Mets have not been great at disclosing injury issues and have a history of rushing players back into game shape before they are ready to go, possibly due to a lack of investigative work in regards to the injuries they are dealing with.
This is a problem that really needs to be addressed because, if it isn’t, much of the same is going to continue.
Players are going to continue to “get close” to returning, just to find out they are still dealing with the same injury they had, except the injury will have become more severe due to the fact that it was aggravated further by the player trying to play through it.
