New York Mets

New York Mets starting pitcher Max Scherzer's dog isn't going to be making any fans in Queens.

Per Mike Puma of the New York Post, Scherzer was bitten on his pitching hand by one of his dogs at his house in Florida recently.

The bite isn't expected to impact Scherzer's return timetable as he continues to rehab from a strained left oblique.

Max Scherzer's dogs have different colored eyes

I freaking love this pic.twitter.com/U6huojcxc7

— Blake Harris (@BlakeHHarris) August 5, 2021

In response to the story, Scherzer tweeted that his dog "hurt her leg on a run" and bit his right hand when he tried to calm her down. He took one day off from throwing.

pic.twitter.com/05kX0v94RY

— Max Scherzer (@Max_Scherzer) June 4, 2022

Scherzer removed himself from a May 18 start against the St. Louis Cardinals after feeling discomfort.

"Hopefully I got out of there quick enough to prevent a major injury here because I know oblique, intercostal, those things can be nasty," the three-time Cy Young Award winner told reporters. "Hopefully I avoided a serious injury."

He was subsequently placed on the injured list with a six- to eight-week return timetable.

The 37-year-old ace signed a three-year, $130 million contract with the Mets in December after his 2021 season came to a premature end because of arm soreness during the playoffs.

Scherzer has been mostly durable throughout his MLB career. He made at least 30 starts in 10 consecutive seasons from 2009 through 2018. After 27 outings in 2019 and 12 during the coronavirus pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign, he returned to the 30-start threshold in 2021 with the Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Dodgers.

Injuries have taken a toll on the New York rotation. Two-time Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom has yet to pitch this season because of a scapula injury, while Tylor Megill landed on the IL with biceps inflammation.

The Mets feature an impressive combination of high-end talent and depth when it comes to starting pitchers, which bodes well for the remainder of the regular season, but a deep playoff run will likely be heavily dependent on the availability of Scherzer and deGrom.

New York Mets owner Steve Cohen is pleased with the improvement his team has shown this season compared to his first year as owner in 2021.

Speaking to Tim Britton of The Athletic, Cohen praised the team for making strides but also stressed the importance of continuing to get better:

"We've made significant progress as far as rebuilding the franchise. It's going to take a while because there's so many different parts. Baseball is more complicated than you think. There are a lot of moving parts, and to get it all right takes time.

"We've added a lot, but I will never feel satisfied. That’s not who I am. I'm always trying to figure out where else we can go next. I'm always in a state of constant improvement, and that’s the way I want this organization to work."

The Mets entered this season having missed the playoffs in five straight years, including last season when they went 77-85 despite leading the National League East at the All-Star break.

So far this season, the Mets are 35-19, and they lead the Atlanta Braves by 8.5 games in the NL East, which is the largest divisional lead in Major League Baseball.

Cohen has undoubtedly made his mark on the Mets since purchasing the franchise, especially in terms of approving trades and free-agent signings.

Last year, the groundwork was laid when New York acquired shortstop Francisco Lindor and starting pitcher Carlos Carrasco in a trade with the Cleveland Guardians. The Mets subsequently signed Lindor to a 10-year contract extension.

Entering the 2022 season, the Mets were even busier, signing outfielders Starling Marte and Mark Canha, infielder Eduardo Escobar and starting pitcher Max Scherzer, in addition to acquiring starting pitcher Chris Bassitt in a trade with the Oakland Athletics.

Most of them have been big-time contributors this season and have helped the Mets go from a below-.500 team to a potential World Series contender.

While Cohen seems to like the team that management has assembled, he isn't allowing himself to get too excited after watching the Mets collapse last season, saying: "Forget even the [8.5]-game lead [in the division]. It's how they're playing the game. We had a big lead last year, but it was different. This is different. It's still early. I'm not going to get excited. We know things can change. I'll get excited in August."

Perhaps the most encouraging thing for Cohen and the Mets is the fact that they have enjoyed success despite some key players missing significant time because of injury.

Ace pitcher Jacob deGrom hasn't played at all this season, while Scherzer has been limited to eight starts.

Both deGrom and Scherzer are making progress in their rehab, and the hope is they will be able to return and contribute in the not-too-distant future.

New York is also getting huge production at the plate from first baseman Pete Alonso, Marte, Lindor and others, which has taken some of the sting out of the Mets' two top pitchers missing time.

The Mets have to be wary of the reigning World Series champion Braves breaking out of their early-season slumber, but for now, New York has to be considered a heavy favorite to win the NL East for the first time since 2015.

New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor will be out of the lineup for Thursday's contest against the Los Angeles Dodgers after he hurt his finger in a mishap at the team hotel.

Francisco Lindor accidentally slammed his hotel room door on his finger. Sounds like he will be out of the Mets' lineup today.

— Anthony DiComo (@AnthonyDiComo) June 2, 2022

Francisco Lindor details what happened when he shut the door on his right middle finger

"I ran around the room for 3 minutes, I didn't want to look at it" pic.twitter.com/MfBDEhvTs5

— SNY (@SNYtv) June 2, 2022

The 28-year-old missed time last season with an oblique injury on his way to 125 games, although he has been durable for much of his career.

He played at least 143 games in four straight seasons from 2016 through 2019 and appeared in all 60 contests during the shortened 2020 campaign.

Lindor has been one of the best shortstops in Major League Baseball as a four-time All-Star, two-time Silver Slugger winner and two-time Gold Glove winner.

His first season with the Mets was somewhat inconsistent, though, as he slashed .230/.322/.412 with 20 home runs and 63 RBI.

He has responded with a .261/.345/.442 line, eight home runs and 43 RBI through his first 52 appearances in 2022.

Depending on how much time Lindor misses, Luis Guillorme could see more innings at shortstop.

Dominic Smith is heading to the minors amid a dreadful start to the 2022 season.

The New York Mets announced prior to Tuesday's game against the Washington Nationals that they optioned Smith to Triple-A and recalled Adonis Medina to take his spot on the roster.

Smith has a .186/.287/.256 slash line in 101 plate appearances through 39 games.

Coming into the season, Smith's name popped up in trade rumors involving the San Diego Padres.

Per SNY's Andy Martino, the proposal involved Smith, Eric Hosmer, Chris Paddack, potentially another player and money.

Martino later reported the deal was off because the Mets opted against it.

https://twitter.com/martinonyc/status/1510376263508283393

Addressing the rumor that he wanted to be traded, Smith told reporters he didn't say those words but wanted a chance to play every day.

"Who wouldn't want to play every day? That's common sense in my opinion," he said. "... I can't trade myself, and I can't put myself in the lineup. All I can do is show what I can, and that's what I do out there on the field."

Smith was the No. 11 pick by the Mets in the 2013 MLB draft. The 26-year-old struggled to receive regular at-bats early in his big league tenure after making his debut in 2017.

He suffered a right quadriceps injury during spring training in 2018 and was called up for two games in May 2018 when Jay Bruce was placed on the paternity list. The Mets recalled Smith one month later after releasing Adrian Gonzalez. He appeared in 26 games before being demoted again.

A stress fracture in his left foot kept him out for two months during the 2019 season, but he hit .282/.355/.525 with 11 home runs and 25 RBI in 89 games.

The 2020 campaign was Smith's best. He hit .316/.377/.616 with 10 homers and 42 RBI, playing all but 10 of 60 games in the COVID-19 pandemic-shortened season.

Last season, Smith appeared in a career-high 145 games. The Los Angeles native hit only .244/.304/.363 with 11 homers and 58 RBI in 493 plate appearances.

The Mets entered Tuesday with the second-best record (33-17) in the National League (Los Angeles Dodgers, 33-15). They had a 9.5-game lead over the Atlanta Braves in the NL East.

New York Mets starting pitcher Jacob deGrom told reporters that his right shoulder feels "completely normal" as he works his way back from a stress reaction suffered in his right scapula during spring training.

Jacob deGrom says his shoulder is feeling "completely normal" as his rehabilitation continues: pic.twitter.com/zJdqZ5zSVC

— SNY (@SNYtv) May 28, 2022

"I feel completely normal," he said, per Anthony DiComo of MLB.com.

"So I think that’s where it’s going to be like, do we push it? Do we not? That will be the discussion over the next few days. And when we get on the mound, what is the safest way to go about this?"

Per DiComo, deGrom is currently long-tossing "at distances up to 135 feet." Presumably, a bullpen session is the next step on the road to returning.

DiComo also suggested that if DeGrom continues to progress, then he could reasonably return to the mound in late June or early July. DeGrom noted that he's unaware of any timeline, however.

DeGrom is one of the game's best pitchers when healthy, if not the absolute best. He's a two-time National League Cy Young award winner who has gone 32-21 with a 1.94 ERA, 0.88 WHIP and 774 strikeouts in 581 innings over his past four seasons.

The 33-year-old's entire eight-year career has been with the Mets. He's a four-time All-Star who has finished top 10 in the NL MVP voting twice.

DeGrom was on his way to a legendary season last year before right elbow inflammation shut him down for the year. He was 7-2 with a 1.08 ERA, 0.55 WHIP and 146 strikeouts in 15 starts until then.

The Mets have been snakebit with injuries to key players once again this year. Of note, one of their other star pitchers, Max Scherzer, is currently out with an oblique strain. The Mets announced on May 19 that he's expected out for six-to-eight weeks.

As for DeGrom, some encouraging news emerged Friday when he was seen throwing before the Mets' 8-6 home win over the Philadelphia Phillies.

Look who it is 👀👀 pic.twitter.com/PQ0bn7bzqJ

— SNY (@SNYtv) May 27, 2022

Per David Adler of MLB.com, Mets manager Buck Showalter said that deGrom will travel with the team on its next West Coast trip, which begins Thursday at the Los Angeles Dodgers.

For now, the Mets are cruising in the National League East with a 30-17 record. They entered Saturday 7.5 games ahead of second-place Atlanta.

Jacob deGrom hasn't pitched yet this season because of a shoulder injury, but he could make his debut ahead of the All-Star break.

"Somebody with the Mets told me late June. To me, that seemed optimistic," Jon Heyman of the New York Post said on The Show podcast with Joel Sherman. "I'm looking at July."

DeGrom isn't the only ace sidelined for the Mets, as Max Scherzer is also out six-to-eight weeks with an oblique strain.

That means both could return around the All-Star break, which could set New York up for quite the second-half run. It also means the team needs to tread water in the meantime, but its scorching start gives it plenty of cushion to do so.

The 29-15 Mets are eight games ahead of the Philadelphia Phillies in the National League East.

Even if they play .500 baseball while deGrom and Scherzer are sidelined, they will still be in ideal position to win the division and set their rotation up for a postseason run. Keeping the pair of right-handers healthy in October is far more important than rushing them back in June considering they could immediately put the Mets up 2-0 in any playoff series.

Recent health concerns are nothing new for deGrom, who made just 15 starts last year after starting at least 30 games in four of the previous five full seasons. He also made 12 starts in the shortened 60-game 2020 campaign.

He was a back-to-back NL Cy Young winner in 2018 and 2019 and has a sparkling career ERA of 2.50 to go with a 1.01 WHP.

If he and three-time Cy Young winner Scherzer are atop New York's rotation for the entire second half of the season, the Mets could run away with the division.          

The New York Mets are off to an excellent start at 26-14, but there is reason for concern with star pitchers Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom each sidelined by injuries.

With that as the backdrop, Jon Heyman of the New York Post reported the National League East leaders will be scouting starting pitchers who may be available in the trade market. He specifically mentioned Frankie Montas from the Oakland Athletics and Luis Castillo and Tyler Mahle from the Cincinnati Reds.

That the Reds may be selling multiple pitchers comes as no surprise considering they started the year by not re-signing Nick Castellanos, waiving pitcher Wade Miley, and trading catcher Tucker Barnhart, pitcher Sonny Gray, infielder Eugenio Suarez, pitcher Amir Garrett and outfielder Jesse Winker.

An 11-26 start to the campaign only further suggests they will be in sell mode.

While general manager Nick Krall told reporters before the year that Cincinnati didn't plan on moving Castillo or Mahle, MLB insider Peter Gammons reported earlier this month the team was "willing to talk" at this point.

Castillo would likely require a hefty return since he is under team control through 2024. He was a 2019 All-Star and posted an ERA below 4.00 in four of his first five years for the Reds.

Mahle is coming off back-to-back impressive showings with an ERA of 3.59 in 2020 and 3.75 in 2021, but he has resembled the pitcher who had a 5.14 ERA in 2019 thus far this year. In nine starts, the right-hander has a 5.23 ERA, 1.35 WHIP and 44 strikeouts across 43.0 innings.

Montas may be a better option with a 3.67 ERA, 1.02 WHIP and 53 strikeouts in 49.0 innings, especially since the Athletics are in last place in the American League West and could be looking to reset ahead of the trade deadline.

Ultimately, none of these pitchers are Scherzer or deGrom. But New York also already has a seven-game cushion in the NL East and will have the opportunity to still make the playoffs simply by treading water until the two stars return.

Castillo, Mahle or Montas would help them do just that and ideally set the stage for the one-two punch to return to health and dominate in October.

The New York Mets have a comfortable lead in the National League East, and it wasn't until the first half of this week that they finally lost a series. In these ways, at least, their 2022 season couldn't be going better.

But as if it wasn't bad enough that they were already down two front-line starters, now it's three.

On Wednesday, Max Scherzer was clearly in discomfort when he departed during the sixth inning of his start against the St. Louis Cardinals. On Thursday, the news via MLB.com's Anthony DiComo is that the three-time Cy Young Award winner will be sidelined for as long as two months because of an oblique strain:

UPDATE: Max Scherzer has a "moderate to high-grade" oblique strain. He'll miss 6-8 weeks.

— Anthony DiComo (@AnthonyDiComo) May 19, 2022

Scherzer, who the Mets signed to a record-breaking $130 million contract in December, will join fellow Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom on the injured list. He's been out since spring training with a stress reaction in his shoulder. Though he's made progress in his recovery, there's still no clear timetable for his return.

Also on the injured list is hard-throwing right-hander Tylor Megill, who landed there via biceps inflammation on Sunday. He'll be out through at least May 27.

In all, not the best run of news the Mets have ever had. The only question is how they'll weather the storm.

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Scherzer's Injury Is an Unsurprising Blow

Needless to say, it hurts to lose a pitcher of Scherzer's caliber.

Though he's set to turn 38 years old on July 27, he was still pitching like an ageless wonder until he got injured. Through eight starts spanning 49.2 innings, he had pitched to a 2.54 ERA and 59 strikeouts against only 11 walks.

Basically, what the Mets were getting from Scherzer was precisely what the Detroit Tigers, Washington Nationals and Los Angeles Dodgers got from him from 2013 to 2021. All told, that span saw him rack up a 2.81 ERA and a 5.4 strikeout-to-walk ratio alongside 55.3 rWAR. The next-closest pitcher (Clayton Kershaw) is only at 45.6 rWAR.

Yet even knowing this, the possibility of Scherzer hitting a wall at some point in 2022 was never a long shot.

His signing was risky from the start, and not just because of his age. Even with the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, he still averaged 185 innings per year from his age-30 to -36 campaigns. Of the pitchers who have recently handled similar workloads in that age range, none came through with an ace-caliber season at age 37.

Further, this is not the first time Scherzer's body has broken down on him. He had issues with his back and neck in 2019, and he went on the injured list with groin inflammation last year. Come the playoffs, he also dealt with a dead arm.

It would have been unreasonable to expect a pitcher with these red flags to make it through a season unscathed. Instead, the Mets might merely have hoped that whatever breakdown Scherzer encountered would at least happen at an opportune moment.

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This Is Not an Opportune Moment

Inasmuch as there's ever a good time to put a Cy Young-winning ace on the injured list, that time is definitely not now for the Mets.

Yes, they did begin play Thursday with a six-game lead over the Philadelphia Phillies in the NL East. And yes, neither defending World Series champion Atlanta nor any of the other three teams in the division was even over .500 at the start of the day.

As noted by David Lennon of Newsday, however, the Mets are headed for a brutal stretch in their schedule:

After today, #Mets enter a 31-game stretch vs. opponents with combined .552 winning percentage.

Included in that is 18 games on the road vs. teams with a combined .602 (at Rockies, Giants, Dodgers, Padres, Angels, Astros).

— David Lennon (@DPLennon) May 19, 2022

As they've played the fourth-most difficult slate in the National League and even gone 7-3 against winning teams, the Mets are relatively battle tested. 

And yet, there's no downplaying just how important Scherzer and Megill have been to the Mets' success. In 15 games started by the two of them, the team has gone 11-4.

With those two out of the picture, New York will need more of the same from Chris Bassitt, who's surrendered more than three earned runs in just two of his eight starts. The Mets will otherwise need more consistency from Carlos Carrasco, who's been hit at a .326 clip over his last four starts, and Taijuan Walker, who's been hit or miss in three outings this month.

Bringing up the rear in the rotation until Megill, Scherzer and deGrom get healthy will be Trevor Williams and David Peterson. Though they have a combined 3.43 ERA in their starting assignments, neither is a likely candidate to eat many innings. Between the two of them, Peterson's 90-pitch outing on May 3 is the high-water mark for pitches in a game.

What would really help the Mets in the coming weeks is if their offense got hot and stayed that way. But for that to happen, it'll have to snap out of the slight funk it's been in:

• First 23 G: .732 OPS and 4.7 R/G
• Last 16 G: .686 OPS and 4.3 R/G

Bottom line: If it's going to take a village for the Mets to rally in the face of their injuries over the next few weeks, their village needs to shape up.

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Any Solutions on the Trade Market?

The trade deadline isn't until Aug. 2, so it's perhaps too early to seriously discuss external options for the Mets' sudden rotation woes.

Then again, Buster Olney of ESPN wrote this about the Mets on Wednesday:

It's pretty evident that the Mets' owner is on a mission to win a World Series and will do whatever it takes to win a championship. If [Steve] Cohen's team develops a roster problem, he'll give the OK to fill it -- even if that means taking on a bad contract in order to acquire a player.

Since it's fair to call the recent injuries to Scherzer and Megill a "roster problem," perhaps Cohen indeed won't hesitate to put his $17.4 billion fortune to work in a search for solutions.

At the least, Cohen could ask general manager Billy Eppler to put in a call to the Los Angeles Dodgers about David Price. The 2012 Cy Young Award winner is available to a team willing to give him a starting job, per Peter Gammons. The Mets fit the bill, and they might get him for nothing if they took on the remainder of his $32 million salary. As it is, half of that is already on the Boston Red Sox.

For his part, Olney speculated that the Mets could make a deal with the Cincinnati Reds in which they take on Mike Moustakas and the $50 million he's still owed for the sake of adding a "coveted" player. The Reds did a similar deal when they sent Eugenio Suarez and Jesse Winker to the Seattle Mariners in March. This time, it could involve Moustakas alongside either Luis Castillo or Tyler Mahle.

Speculatively, the Mets could try their luck with Nathan Eovaldi and Zack Greinke, both of whom are on expiring contracts for struggling teams in the Boston Red Sox and Kansas City Royals. Also only signed for this year is Jose Quintana, who's having a nice bounce-back season for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

If the Mets would rather do a more traditional trade—i.e., one in which they swap controllable talent for a reasonably priced player—they could poke around Oakland Athletics right-hander Frankie Montas. Jon Heyman of the New York Post reported there was "nothing hot" with him in April, but it's no secret that he's not long for Oakland.

Of course, any trade the Mets make in the near future could cause a logjam later when Megill, Scherzer and deGrom come off the injured list. But given the circumstances, the Mets might nonetheless determine to act now and to cross that bridge when they get to it.

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Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference and FanGraphs.