Laura Albanese: Mets should be cautious with Juan Soto's injury, even if it means ending his season
Mets’ Juan Soto looks on from the dugout during a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Citi Field on Saturday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
And there you have it – the final indignity.
Throughout this Mets season, you couldn’t help but look over at Juan Soto and think about the wasted potential – the player who suited up every day, and played to an exceptional standard, even when the pieces around him failed to perform. At no point did he seem overtaken by the idea that he had put his Hall of Fame career into the hands of a franchise that, for a year and a half now, has been mired in failure and dysfunction.
He simply controlled what he could control. And by the time he was placed on the injured list Saturday with a Grade 2 left calf strain that will cost him most of the rest of the season (if not all of it), it worked out well. Soto had a .283/.408/.539 slash line, with 21 home runs and 52 RBIs, and led the National League in on-base percentage (.408) and OPS (.947). Though still a subpar fielder, he had improved significantly there, too – going from -13 outs above average in 2025, to -3.
By the time the final embers of this Mets season flicker away, those exploits will be a distant memory – a footnote for a team that will be starting its trade deadline fire sale any minute now.
And that’s a shame. Soto was snubbed for an All-Star selection last year, despite eventually finishing top three in MVP voting. He made the cut this year, but his name doesn’t attract the same automatic reverence of a Shohei Ohtani or an Aaron Judge.
But you can’t change the past. All you can do is ensure the Mets don’t further squander a generational talent. The first step is treating this injury with extreme caution.
Soto had been nursing the calf issue for at least a week, but the Mets declined to put him on the IL – preferring to stash him in the DH role. By Friday afternoon, Andy Green expressed optimism that Soto would be back in the outfield by Saturday. By the sixth inning Friday, he was forced to exit the game, an MRI scheduled.
“Someone like him wants to be on the baseball field.” Green said Saturday. “The desire to be on the field is why he’s so special in what he does. So this last week we gave him at-bats, we gave him rest at times where we felt it appropriate and then yesterday, we couldn’t get over the hump. Is it possible we could have looked back and we could have moved a little bit quicker on this? Given where we’re at today, yes. I don’t know that that ultimately changes the situation we’re in right now.”
Green wasn’t comfortable putting an exact timeline on his return, save for saying it’s more severe than the right calf strain Soto sustained in April, which cost him six weeks. A conservative estimate would be six weeks – similar to the time it took Francisco Lindor to recover from his strain earlier this season – which means there will be only three weeks left in the year when Soto returns, and that’s best-case scenario.
Given that calf strains can sometimes precede Achilles injuries, and how long it takes to recover from a tear (up to a year), the Mets need to – and likely will – exercise extreme caution, lest they waste even more of Soto’s peak years. That conceivably means Soto doesn’t play for the rest of the year, though Green said that isn’t in play “at this point in time.”
It should be in play, though - even if it goes against Soto's wishes. Because sacrificing the future for the now makes absolutely no sense.
Another thing to consider: Soto, typically durable, missed 20 games so far this season after never having played fewer than 150 games a year, save for the COVID season and the rookie year where he got called up in May. Lindor, also something of a baseball iron man, had the same injury – something not lost on Green or the franchise.
This is further underlined by the fact that the Mets did everything they could to shield their injury-prone players – Jorge Polanco and Luis Robert Jr. in particular – and have mostly failed. That alone should trigger a thorough assessment of their medical and training staff.
“It’s a frustrating set of circumstances,” Green said. “Definitely something we’ll reflect on and see if something jumps out. At this present moment, it feels unlucky to a degree, and it hasn’t been the same mechanism for each player…We look at every injury. My experience with our medical and training staff is that they’re reflective and they look at ways to improve in every situation.”
He did note, though, that “baseball has this tendency to experience a rash of elbow injuries for one team in a given year, and then a rash of lower extremity injuries another year and then maybe another year, looking at shoulder injuries. None of these are to excuse our responsibility to limit those as much as humanly possible, but I think when you look across the game, those trends exist.”
When asked if an assessment of the medical staff is on the docket, Green said that it’s a continuous process.
“I can promise you, our group is incredibly reflective and introspective and wants to keep those guys on the field,” he said. “We’ll be looking back throughout this year, just like we would any year, to see if there are any adjustments that need to be made.”
It’s certainly an important part of this, and an important part of this team’s future. Because players – even great ones – aren’t players forever, and right now, the Mets need to do everything in their power to not further squander the talents of one of the very best.
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
