Photo by Ed Delany of Metsmerized

Saturday, March 18, 2023 • 7:05 PM
The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches • West Palm Beach, Florida
RHP Max Scherzer (0-1, 1.93) vs. LHP Framber Valdez (1-0, 2.00)
WCBS 880

Friday was another tough day in Mets world as Brandon Nimmo got injured sliding into second base during Friday night’s spring training game against the Marlins.

General manager Billy Eppler announced on Saturday that Nimmo has low grade sprains in both his right knee and right ankle. He’s considered week-to-week. All things considered with how this week has gone on the injury front for the Mets, this could have been a lot worse.

We will try again to distract ourselves from injury news with baseball and we got a good matchup to do that with on Saturday! Max Scherzer will take on Framber Valdez. Valdez is coming off of his first All-Star season where he tossed a league leading 201 1/3 innings, including three complete games. He had a 2.82 ERA and 137 ERA+ and looks to be the ace of the Astros staff this year.

Mets Lineup

Astros Lineup

Game Notes

The Mets announced on Saturday that outfielder Brandon Nimmo will be week-to-week with low grade strains in both his right knee and in his right ankle.

The Mets announced that they have optioned INF Ronny Mauricio and LHP Joey Lucchesi to Triple-A. The Mets also reassigned OF Abraham Almonte and OF Jaylin Davis to minor league camp.

The Mets’ scheduled pitchers on Saturday are: RHP Max Scherzer, RHP Tommy Hunter, RHP Drew Smith, RHP William Woods.

Following Puerto Rico’s defeat to Mexico in the World Baseball Classic on Friday, shortstop Francisco Lindor will be on his way back to re-join the Mets for the remainder of spring training.

Three Things To Watch For

  1. Can the Mets take Valdez yard? Valdez’s success last season came from his ability to keep the ball in the park. He led the league with a 0.5 HR/9 and over his first five years has a 0.7 career mark. His highest mark by far was in 2019 at 1.1 HR/9 and that was the season his ERA was almost six. It would be pretty impressive if anyone can hit a homer off of him on Saturday.
  2. Max Scherzer returns to the majors. Max Scherzer’s last start fell on the same day as Tylor Megill. The Mets wanted to give Megill an opportunity to stretch out his arm a bit against major league players (made even more important by the José Quintana injury news) so Max agreed to pitch in a minor league game in the back fields. He allowed five runs, three earned, over five innings throwing around 70 pitches. After the game he talked about how it’s a different challenge pitching in low-key environments, and that the game against the minor leaguers is a good mental challenge. There was an additional advantage too – Scherzer will be the Opening Day starter against the Marlins, so playing in the Triple-A game meant batters got to see him one less time this spring.
  3. Tommy Pham gets more attention: Tommy Pham is one of the internal options for Nimmo depending on how much time it takes him to heal from his injuries. Curiously, Pham is starting in left field instead of center on Saturday. Pham has not had a tremendous spring, hitting .129/.250/.161 in 36 plate appearances over 12 games. He also had a fairly terrible 2022 for fielding with seven outfield errors.

Let’s go Mets!