Frustrated Trevor May will have MRI to evaluate his arm issue
Mets relief pitcher Trevor May reacts after Atlanta scores two runs during the eighth inning of an MLB game at Citi Field on Monday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Trevor May is headed back into the MRI tube.
After the Mets’ 5-2 loss to Atlanta, May revealed late Monday night that his right triceps strain from last month — “very, very low-grade,” he said at the time — still is bothering him, enough that he will get it checked out again Tuesday.
He allowed two runs in the eighth inning, upping his ERA to 8.64 in eight appearances.
“I will try literally anything to get back to feeling like me,” May said. “It’s hard to compete when you’re just worried about if something is going to hurt when you throw or not. It’s to the point where I’m very comfortable throwing my best pitches and taking too much time between pitches to reset and try to get a little bit of energy to throw another one. By the end of tonight, I was just hoping that the ball was hit at somebody. That’s no way to throw at a major-league game.
“I don’t deserve it, but my teammates definitely don’t deserve that. You gotta keep your team in the game. It got away from us there. It's as frustrating as anything in my life right now.”
May added that he had not explained the extent of his feelings or discomfort to team officials so he wasn’t sure if he will go on the injured list — a decision he characterized as “above my pay grade.”
The Mets usually are comfortable officially sidelining a player for the sake of getting him fully healthy, particularly if he is not performing as expected. A rule change in effect as of Monday requires pitchers to stay on the IL for at least 15 days.
May wasn’t sure if his arm was physically worse Monday night or if it was a mental issue.
“I need to know what to do to feel good again. Whether or not it's worse or not, honestly, I couldn’t tell you definitively if it is,” he said. “I can tell you definitively that 80% of my feelings at the moment, this look on my face, is frustration, not being able to compete. I don’t know how much of it is being played up in my head because I’m extremely frustrated with not being able to throw the ball over the plate and be confident it’s not going to be hit.
“It’s to the point now where I hope we either find something or find nothing. Like, not the ‘well, this might be something,’ because that’s a cycle that in this game just turns into long, long periods of time searching. And I just want to know."
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
