☀️ GOOD MORNING:
It’s easy as a fan or newsletter writer or manager to shuffle the cards and believe any combination of face cards will win you a hand.
It turns out it’s a bit tricker when dealing with actual baseball players.
The Mets paid the price of relying on Clay Holmes to continue to stretch himself out over the first months of the season, of switching Paul Blackburn between roles and shuffling Max Kranick between New York and Syracuse.
A fun 5–1 lead turned into a Friday the 13th nightmare.
The Rays plated six runs immediately after Holmes was pulled after the fifth inning. Blackburn recorded only one out, while Kranick didn’t look much better, surrendering a two-run homer that proved to be the difference.
It almost led to a heroic moment by Juan Soto. Everyone in the stadium and watching on TV believed this eighth-inning swing would tie the game, or at least put the tying run on second, but it died in Josh Lowe’s glove.
It ended in only the second time this season the Mets have dropped the opening game of a series at home.
🤞 GOOD NEWS? Kodai Senga was diagnosed with a low-grade hamstring injury (grade 1), which sounds like good news, but with hamstrings, you never know. It suggests he will be out at least four weeks, but perhaps less than a longer 8–12 week timeframe had it been a more severe tear.
How soon can he come back? “It depends on the player,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “So it’s two weeks of very little physical activity. Hopefully, I gotta get with the trainers, we keep the arm going, but he’s gotta be symptom-free before we start ramping him up, so could be four, five, six [weeks], who knows. But, again, it’s a low grade, which is good news.”
Will this be a repeat of last year? “Senga, as a lot of players, but particularly Senga, he wants to be involved in the process,” Mets president David Stearns said in reference to Senga’s rehab process that dragged on and seemed out of sync last season. “And I think it’s important that we get on the same page as him from the jump and that we’re all bought into what this process is going to look like. I think we got there last year, but anytime you’re going through this multiple times, I certainly know Senga a lot better now than I did last year.”
☕️ Grab your coffee for your morning dose of Mets Fix!
🍎 HEADLINE
Clay Holmes was cruising along, at 79 pitches, having allowed one run over five innings in what has become a typical Holmes outing.
The Mets had planned to limit Holmes to around 85 pitches after a tolling appearance in Colorado last week. With a four-run lead entering the sixth, Mendoza decided that was the right time to pull him.
🗣️ MENDOZA: “Coming out of that inning in Colorado where he threw six innings he felt it,” he said. “We know that today was an outing we were going to keep him at that pitch count -- we will continue to watch him and make adjustments as we go, but that’s part of his development.”
Unfortunately, it didn’t work out.
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