The Mets' Plague Doctors Are At It Again

The latest string of updates about the quad injury that’s hounding Mets second baseman Robinson Cano are so familiar that it’s hard to absorb them without feeling intense déjà vu. Let me assure you that this is not news you have read before, or a memory from some past life bubbling to the surface of your conscience. This is just the Mets, as always, being the Mets.

Cano suffered an injury to his left quad on May 22, and was put on the 10-day IL as a result. He missed 12 games, and then returned to the lineup on June 5 despite never having gone on a rehab assignment. In his first game back, Cano came up lame while trying to run out a ground ball. He spent the next few days in limbo, and nobody in the organization could provide much clarity on whether Cano had re-injured his quad, or if he would need to go back on the IL. After the game on June 5, Cano told reporters that he had only limped to first because he didn’t want to “push it.” Before Friday’s game against the Rockies, he claimed that he felt totally fine and capable of playing that night:

Cano didn’t play on Friday or Saturday, and today the team announced that, actually, his quad was re-injured on Wednesday and that he will be going back on the 10-day IL.

It’s obvious that Cano wasn’t ready to return to game action when the Mets reinserted him into the lineup on Wednesday, and the big question is why they didn’t first send him on a minor-league rehab assignment in order to fully suss out his fitness. In response to that question, Mets manager Mickey Callaway offered this absolutely braindead quote:

“He didn’t feel in-game speed like he wanted to. That’s something that you really can’t replicate even on a rehab assignment, because the game is so different,” Callaway said. “Once you put him in a Major League game, there’s always that risk, and we understand that.”

It’s honestly getting hard to remember the last time the Mets had a star player whose injury situation they didn’t completely bungle at every opportunity. It’s going to be a shame when the team doctors eventually get their hands on Pete Alonso and decide to treat some minor soreness by repeatedly hitting him with a tire iron.