Mets' Sean Manaea shut down for 2-3 days after experiencing elbow pain
Mets pitcher Sean Manaea during a spring training workout on Feb. 13. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca
The Sean Manaea news could have been worse, but as the Mets continue to navigate a pitching staff that has been snarled by injury, short starts, and bullpen overuse, even a potential minor setback can have a major impact.
Manaea, who tentatively was set to return from his oblique injury next week, instead has loose bodies in his left elbow and will be shut down from throwing for 48-72 hours, manager Carlos Mendoza said Tuesday.
The lefty complained of elbow soreness after his last rehab start Friday and received an MRI and cortisone shot Monday. Manaea felt discomfort toward the end of a start where he allowed one run over 5 1/3 innings, with seven strikeouts, and didn't recover the next day as he expected.
If all goes well, he’ll resume throwing after the inflammation subsides, and he'll have another rehab start next week before rejoining the rotation. Manaea said it was unclear if he’ll be pitching through occasional discomfort when he returns. Neither he, nor president of baseball operations David Stearns, knew whether the approximately 7-milimeter fragment will require offseason surgery but “it’s not on the table right now,” Manaea said.
The doctor presiding over his care told Manaea it’s not in danger of harming the ligament.
“I don’t think it slows us down too much,” Stearns said Tuesday. “I think the goal is that he’s pitching in a rehab game a week from today…and if he’s able to do that and that goes well, that would be the last one, probably, and then we get him back. This sets us back a couple of days but, at least right now, we don’t anticipate this necessarily resetting anything.”
The hope is that the one cortisone shot will be enough, “but I don’t know for sure,” Manaea said. “I’ve heard some different views on it, so I’m just hoping…I can’t express how excited I am [to get back]. I feel like I’m so close and having hiccups like this is very unfortunate.”
That’s especially true given the state of the Mets' pitching staff. Two weeks ago, Kodai Senga went down with a hamstring strain, and then, last week, Tylor Megill and Max Kranick both hit the 15-day IL, Megill with an elbow sprain and Kranick with a flexor strain. Going into Tuesday’s game against Atlanta, starters had pitched to a 6.31 ERA since the beginning of their swoon on June 13; the bullpen, meanwhile, has pitched 41 innings in that 10-game span to a 5.71 ERA.
Manaea, who signed a three-year, $75 million contract in the offseason, suffered an oblique strain in spring training and has yet to pitch in a major-league game. Last year, playing on a one-year contract, he emerged as the stabilizing force at the top of the rotation, going 12-6 with a 3.47 ERA.
“It’s not fun,” he said. "It’s not exactly how I wanted to start this contract out. It’s very frustrating…I wish to be out there very badly. At the end of the day, I can’t think too much on it other than just doing all the things I can to get back out there and help this team win.”
Despite the heavy onus put on the bullpen during this stretch, Stearns believes things aren’t as dire as they seem. The Mets have suffered a number of blowouts in this span – nine losses in 10 games heading into Tuesday – but that’s largely saved their high-leverage arms.
"We’ve asked a lot of our pen, but it has largely been players who are here, who are going back to Triple-A, who we’re not necessarily always counting on in those late and close games,” Stearns said. “So, I actually think this stretch has allowed us to give some of those guys a blow and that should help them.”
The June Swoon is a product of: short starts, injury, good opponents, shaky relievers, a cold offense and lack of production from the bottom of the lineup. Still, “I’ve [had] some semblance of these two weeks in every year of my career with every team, including a lot that were really good teams,” Stearns said.
“When you take a little bit of a step back in each area of the game and you play good teams and you have some injuries, you run into a stretch like this and now it’s our job to keep moving forward and get out of this as quickly as we can,” he said. “We have some players that are getting healthy who I think will help there. I also think the players who have struggled in our lineup over the last month largely are better offensive players than we’ve seen thus far.”
Winker, Vientos progressing. Jesse Winker (oblique) is participating in full workouts and could DH in a rehab assignment as soon as this weekend, Mendoza said. The Mets will take their time, given the nature of the injury, which first sidelined Winker in May. He’ll first play every other day before moving to back-to-backs. “When we’re talking about that area, we have to watch him closely,” Mendoza said…Mark Vientos (hamstring) played in a rehab game with Triple-A Syracuse Tuesday and will play another Wednesday “and then we’ll see how we feels after that and then we have a decision,” Mendoza said.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
