Starling Marte hopes to avoid groin surgery, but Mets’ outfielder says it's a possibility

Starling Marte underwent groin surgery last offseason and after a season of nagging injuries and poor results, the Mets’ outfielder said that he couldn’t rule out the possibility of needing another procedure this offseason.

Marte, who has been on the injured list since Aug. 7 with what the club called a right groin strain, said on Sunday that “right now, we’ve completely avoided that,” when asked about the possibility of undergoing surgery now, but the outfielder indicated that this could change over the winter.

“If I hadn’t progressed the way that I was able to progress the way I was able to this past week with this new guy in Philadelphia, that would have been an option,” Marte, speaking through an interpreter, said referencing a specialist he has been seeing in Pennsylvania.

“But since we got a second opinion and we were able to strengthen it and get good results that’s something we’ve been able to avoid,” he added. “But the focus is just to continue to strengthen everything and avoid surgery.”

Manager Buck Showalter said he isn’t going to get “down’ about that possibility, as the club believes that with his current rehab now that Marte “has the potential not to have to have [surgery] be the option.”

When asked if he needed a procedure, what type of producer would he need, Marte said it would be “doing the same surgery that I had last year, just all over again.”

The outfielder added that needing another surgery would be “really frustrating because the goal would be to rehab and strengthen everything all over again and then you kinda have to put playing a little bit further in the horizon.”

Marte indicated that the scar tissue from the surgery has been part of what has been causing him discomfort this year, but they have been attacking it recently to alleviate that pain. Creating more scar tissue with another operation is why Showalter was hopeful about the outfielder avoiding surgery.

“That's not a good option,” Showalter said of surgery, “let’s face it, everybody scars down differently. And then if you go in there to take care of that scaring then there’s another scaring behind that… then you’ve got to go through that process again. Without getting too medical, if you have this way of scarring and you do something again, you’re gonna scar the same way again.

“I think [Marte] knows how important this attempt is to keep that from happening. He’s going about it very diligently, not that he wasn’t before, it’s just we tried some new methodology that seems to be working. We’ll see.”

But both Marte and Showalter said that the outfielder can pursue both goals of avoiding surgery and rehabbing to return to the lineup before the season ends at the same time.

“Well, that’s the goal, honestly,” Marte said, on avoiding surgery, “it’s something you have to think about, but the goal at the end of the day is to go out there and play. No matter what happens, you want to, obviously, avoid surgery, you want to continue to strengthen everything you need to strengthen, but if they feel like surgery is the course to go, that will happen. But the main objective is to be able to go out there comfortable, pain-free and be able to produce for this team.”

The manager added: “I think there’s the potential to do both. We hope. It’s not the same as Edwin [Diaz], this is different…. You may be able to say they both may could play at the end of the year but there’s different benefits and different things where [Marte] is concerned.”

For Marte, the down year – batting .248 with a .62 OPS (down from .292 and .814 a year ago) in just 86 games – the injury isn’t an excuse.

“You could say it bothered me a little bit, but at the end of the day, I’m not here to make excuses,” he said. “I want to go out there each and every day and you have to continue to battle, you can’t really look at that and just continue to play.”

He added: “The goal is to avoid that completely next year just continue working this offseason to be able to go out there healthy next year and continue to play baseball.”