The Mets’ starting rotation suffered another big blow on Thursday night.
New York is already down regulars as Kodai Senga remains sidelined with a hamstring issue, Tylor Megill is dealing with an elbow injury, and Sean Manaea continues working his way through a rehab assignment.
Now it appears they could be without Griffin Canning for the remainder of the season.
The team is still awaiting MRI results to confirm, but Carlos Mendoza says the right-hander is believed to have suffered an Achilles injury during the third inning of Thursday night’s outing against the Braves.
Canning went down in a heap of pain as he seemingly pushed off the mound wrong on a Nick Allen grounder to Francisco Lindor — he remained there for some time before being helped off by trainers.
He was undergoing testing during Thursday’s contest.
“It sucks, you hate to see it,” Mendoza said. “Especially the way he went down right away, and once you get there and you're asking what's going on and just how everything developed after that, I feel sorry for the guy, especially how big he's been for us this year.”
Canning certainly has been huge during his first year in the organization.
The 29-year-old former first-round pick has been putting together arguably the best stretch of his career — as he’s pitched to a strong 3.77 ERA and the Mets have gone home victorious in all but four of his 17 outings.
But now they’ll have to look elsewhere to make up for that production.
They could look to swing a trade for a starter ahead of the deadline, but it may be some time before any sort of deal comes about, so in the meantime, they have some young talent in-house.
Blade Tidwell will get the first shot as he's set to rejoin the team in Pittsburgh this weekend, but Nolan McLean continues mowing his way through Triple-A, Jonah Tong has been stellar in Binghamton, and even the struggling Brandon Sproat could find himself jumping into the mix.
That's just a few of the young arms dealing down on the farm, no matter who they end up giving the call, Mendoza is confident this team will continue to find a way.
“Guys will step up,” the skipper said. “Our mentality is what do we need to do today. I’m confident in the guys we have in that room. I’m confident that the guys who will come up are going to give us opportunities to win baseball games, and we’ll continue to do so.”
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