Mets Notebook: Pete Alonso’s wrist injury progressing ahead of schedule
Pete Alonso is progressing ahead of schedule.
The Mets’ first baseman was taking ground balls at Citi Field on Tuesday ahead of the team’s first game of the Subway Series. Alonso was hit on the left wrist with a pitch last week in Atlanta and went on the 10-day injured list with a contusion and a sprain. The league’s home run leader with 22 long balls is expected to be out for three to four weeks, but it sounds like he might be ahead of schedule.
“He’s progressing well. He’s starting to do some things,” manager Buck Showalter said Tuesday at Citi Field before the Mets hosted the Yankees. “We all know when he’s eligible [to come off the injured list]. We’ll see if we get there.”
Showalter said he doesn’t want to “handicap” it when it comes to looking at a date for his return. But it goes without saying that getting the team’s best hitter back would be a boon for a struggling club. The Mets rank toward the bottom half of the league in OPS (.715), slugging percentage (.369) and average with runners in scoring position (.244).
“I think we’re too far off from that,” Showalter said. “You’ve got a lot of bridges to cross to say going to happen. Not there yet. I think we’ll take this week and see how he feels as we go forward. But I talked to him a couple of days ago, talked to him again early this morning after he went to the doctor. So I knew he was going out and doing some things, but little by little, hopefully, we’ll get there sooner rather than later.”
As much as the Mets need Alonso back, they need quality starting pitching. Left-handed starter Jose Quintana is nearing a return from spring bone graft surgery and went out on a rehab assignment Tuesday with Low-A St. Lucie. Quintana will pitch two innings to start, with the aim being to pitch five before the Mets put him in the rotation.
The Mets want to exercise caution given the freak nature of his injury (lesion on left rib), but the club is encouraged by his progress.
The situation with right-hander Tylor Megill and left-hander David Peterson has become untenable. Peterson was demoted to Triple-A last month and still hasn’t found his stride. Megill has gone 1-2 with a 7.15 ERA over his last five starts. The team had considered shuffling the rotation to skip Megill this weekend when the Mets host the St. Louis Cardinals for three games, but Showalter refuted those plans and said he expects Megill to start to Friday.
“We’re still hoping that McGill and Pete kind of graduate to another level,” Showalter said.
Keeping Megill in that Friday spot would allow the Mets to give Saturday starter, right-hander Kodai Senga, an extra day off his next turn through the rotation. The Mets have favored extra rest for the Japanese rookie.
The Mets also received positive news about Triple-A shortstop Ronny Mauricio, who was thought to have a sprained ankle. An MRI showed only a bone bruise and he’s considered day-to-day. In this case, the Mets might have avoided the worst.
RED STORM STRIKE
St. John’s basketball coach Rick Pitino caught the first pitch Tuesday. Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell, a four-time NBA All-Star guard and the son of Mets director of player relations Donovan Mitchell Sr., caught the throw from his former college coach. Mitchel played for the former Knicks coach at Louisville.
