Mets hope to be healed by makeup date
Friday’s rainout pushes game against rivals back to May 20.
ATLANTA — Any advantage for the Mets created by the rainout Friday night is likely to be of the time-release quality. After amassing 17 hits and scoring 13 runs on Wednesday night, the Mets didn’t embrace the day off on Thursday, much less the postponement in Atlanta on Friday. The rainout will be played as part of a day-night doubleheader on May 20, and therein lies the advantage, subtle as it may be.
Come May 20, the Mets may be at full strength when they play a four-game series in Atlanta, following three games in the Bronx and a trip to Denver. Indeed, the Mets may have all their broken pieces back together again by then.
Some updates of the wounded follow:
• Manager Willie Randolph said on Saturday that Moises Alou had resumed swinging a bat. The manager wasn’t sure whether Alou was swinging at pitches or balls on tee, but either way, swinging constitutes progress for the disabled left fielder who underwent surgery to repair a hernia early last month.
• The Mets are wont to say velocity is not the end all and be all of all aspects of pitching. And Orlando Hernandez, in what little he does say for public consumption, dismisses velocity as an issue in his on-going effort to return to the big leagues. But the club has concerns that his velocity isn’t increasing, even though his pitch count and stamina have increased in the past three weeks and the precision of his pitches has improved as well. El Duque, assigned to the disabled list, threw 64 pitches in a Class A game on Thursday; most were in the 80-84-mph range.
The Mets believe he will need at least two more starts, no matter what his velocity is.
• As disappointed as Pedro Martinez is by the right hamstring strain that has interrupted his comeback season, he was buoyed by what he was told by the Mets’ medical staff, that the injury was not so severe — the club announced it as a “mild” strain. But the fickle nature of hamstring injuries is a well-recognized variable, particularly for pitchers. Randolph said the prognosis — four to six weeks before Martinez will return to pitching — seemed “conservative.” And knowing how conservative the club is with recovering players, he said he wouldn’t be surprised if Martinez were to miss eight weeks.
• Still assigned to the disabled list, Duaner Sanchez made his first appearance in a Minor League game on Friday night. And it wasn’t a good one. He allowed two home runs and a single in one inning, pitching for the Mets’ Class A St. Lucie affiliate against the Vero Beach Devil Rays. The Mets were pleased by his velocity and how he threw, and they attributed the homers to strong winds and the smallish park at Vero Beach.
Randolph says Sanchez needs to pitch on successive days without after-effects — probably next week — before the reliever will be added to the big league roster.
• Ramon Castro, assigned to the DL because of a strained right hamstring, still hasn’t played in a Minor League game. The club is unsure when he will.
Marty Noble is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
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