Mets place Marcus Stroman on the injured list with calf injury
Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports
The Mets are going to be without one of their better pitchers for a while.
Hey, some non-COVID injury-related news to report on. It is weird that that is mildly comforting.
The National League East is going to be particularly brutal in 2020. Four of the five teams in it are legitimately above average or better and that combined with a compressed, division-heavy, difficult schedule for all those involved means that we are firmly in ‘survival of the fittest’ territory.
The Mets, while relative longshots to actually win the division, figured to at least make the race interesting in 2020 with Jacob deGrom continuing his stretch of dominance and slugger Pete Alonso having a year under his belt. Now, those hopes did take a bit of a beating with the loss of Zack Wheeler to free agency and Noah Syndergaard to Tommy John surgery, but most agreed that the Mets were still a pretty good team.
They will face another obstacle now
Mets officially place Marcus Stroman on the IL with a muscle tear in his calf. Robert Gsellman will also start the season on the IL with his triceps tightness.
— Tim Britton (@TimBritton) July 22, 2020
For a team that finds itself thin in its rotation already, the loss of Stroman is not a small one. The Mets traded for Stroman in 2019 to solidify one of the better rotations in the National League and hopefully make a run at the playoffs. Well, their 2019 playoff push ended shortly thereafter and now they could be without Stroman’s services for a while in 2020. No official word yet as to the severity of the muscle tear he is suffering from, but given that it was mentioned in the injury report at all is pretty telling.
In 32 appearances in 2019, Stroman posted a 4.3 rWAR season with a 3.22 ERA and 159 strikeouts and 58 walks in 184.1 innings for the Blue Jays and Mets.