Please, State the Nature of the Met-Dical Emergency

The Mets lost 12 games in a row earlier this month. You might’ve heard something about this. You also might be aware that the Mets were without their best player, Juan Soto, for that entire 12-game skid. Soto, who’d be the best player on most teams, was on the shelf with a strained calf.

Soto came back on April 22, and as if by literary contrivance, the Mets’ skid stopped immediately. One 3-2 win at home against the Twins, and the Mets were all set to try to dig themselves out of that hole.

Or so you’d think.

The very night the Mets broke their losing streak, Francisco Lindor suffered a calf injury of his own. Last time a group of people had this much calf trouble, the story ended with Moses destroying the original copy of the Ten Commandments. (If you’ve ever had to make a panicked late-night Kinko’s run, know it can always get worse.) With starting first baseman Jorge Polanco already on the IL with wrist and Achilles injuries, Lindor’s injury left the Mets without half their starting infield.

But wait, there’s more! On Tuesday, the Mets placed Kodai Senga on the IL with lumbar spine inflammation. On Thursday morning, they did the same with center fielder Luis Robert Jr., who also has a lumbar spine injury.

There’s no timetable for Senga’s return, though the good news is that Robert’s injury is slightly different. The outfielder is receiving treatment for spinal disc herniation, better known as what, Steve Levy?

Robert is getting an epidural to take the edge off, and is not expected to miss much more than the 10-game minimum. That’s not too big a concern; over 162 games, just about every player is going to herniate or strain or subluxate something and need a week off his feet.

Lindor, however, faces a much longer spell on the sidelines. And the Mets started the season without starting pitcher Tylor Megill and high-leverage relievers A.J. Minter and Reed Garrett, who are all carrying injuries from 2025.

This list doesn’t include every potential contributor. Mike Tauchman has a torn meniscus, but even the most ardent Mets fan would concede that any season that hinged on Tauchman’s knee had already been lost. I wasn’t even going to include Young, but he went 7-for-20 with two doubles before his own meniscus tear. (Why are all these injuries coming in pairs? Are the Mets getting a BOGO deal at the urgent care?)

That makes Young the Mets’ fourth-most valuable position player by WAR so far this season, behind Soto (oops), Lindor (double oops), and Francisco Alvarez, who despite being outrageously injury-prone throughout his career, has yet to come to grief this season.

Knock on wood.

The Mets have had a tough go of it on the injury front, but that’s not a unique problem. Let he who is without injury throw the first stone. (Actually, he who is without injury is probably more capable of throwing a stone than he who is recovering from shoulder surgery.)

But the Mets have had their two best players in the lineup at the same time for a total of four and a half innings since April 2. And because a bunch of other stuff has gone wrong (Robert’s injury, slow starts for returners Mark Vientos and Brett Baty, slow starts for newcomers Bo Bichette and Marcus Semien, Carson Benge taking a while to adjust to the majors), the Mets have had to do some weird stuff to compensate.

Specifically, we’re looking at no. 3 hitter MJ Melendez. Suffice it to say, that’s not a position any team wants to be in this early in the season. Melendez is in his fifth major league season, and across his first four trips through the big leagues, he only got above replacement level once, and that time by less than half a win. He’s one of those players you can’t describe accurately without sounding like you have it in for the guy.

Melendez has good bat speed and is a decent athlete, and yet last year, the Royals left him in Omaha for most of the season. The same Royals who needed pop so badly they let Jac Caglianone hit .157 in 62 games. I was going to make a snide comment about how big the downgrade is from Lindor to Ronny Mauricio at shortstop, and yet… Mauricio has a career wRC+ of 78. Melendez, who is a corner outfielder, and not a good one, has a career wRC+ of 90.

Just having Melendez on the roster, let alone in the middle of the lineup, is the equivalent of sending up distress flares. And yet, Melendez has been by far the best thing about the Mets so far this season.

Sure, it’s only 11 games, and he’s struck out 12 times in his first 33 plate appearances, but the Mets aren’t exactly short on reasons to worry about the future. Let’s enjoy this one. On Thursday afternoon, Melendez went 2-for-2 with a home run and a sacrifice fly, bringing his total batting line to .346/.406/.655 — exactly the same batting average as Soto’s. Melendez drove in three of the Mets’ four runs before he left the game in the eighth inning.

Not to worry: Melendez is in perfect health. Carlos Mendoza pinch-hit Austin Slater for Melendez with the left-handed Richard Lovelady on the mound for Washington. Slater grounded out, and yanking the team’s new folk hero didn’t exactly go over well with Mets fans, but that’s probably the right move from a dispassionate tactical standpoint.

The Slater-for-Melendez incident does relate to the bigger issue: There’s not really a whole lot the Mets can do about this injury bug. I mean, stretch, stay hydrated, and try to only get hurt one at a time if possible. But I’d blame their awful April less on injuries and more on the fact that Soto and Melendez are the only ones who are holding the right end of the bat at the moment.

The Lindor injury is a major blow, especially because he’s been so durable throughout his career, and double-especially if this calf injury sidelines him for a long time. But apart from that: Robert is going to be back soon. Minter, because of when he started his rehab assignment, has to be back in the majors within the next nine days. Megill is not a load-bearing part of the rotation, and while Senga arguably is, the Mets have made do without him before.

They need their remaining players — Baty, Benge, Bichette, and various other non-alliterative individuals — to start putting runs on the board. If not, there’ll be no hope left for Lindor to come back to.

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