Dillon Gee’s injured groin and departure to the disabled list yesterday got lost in the hoopla of the team deciding to replace him in the rotation with Noah Syndergaard.
Gee was pitching well before he hit this snag – he had a 1.83 ERA over his last three starts with six walks and 11 strikeouts in 19 2/3 innings.
The timing of this injury is eerily similar to the one he incurred last year with his lat muscle. He was pitching very well leading up to the injury in early May, and became derailed for two months. But that experience is why Gee fully supports the decision to go to the sideline and let his ground heal, rather than push the issue and have it escalate into something major.
“I tried to force something early and missed two months last year,” Gee said. “This year we’re playing it safe.”
The Mets can backdate his stint on the disabled list to May 4, meaning he can return as soon as May 19. And he expects to be ready to go when he’s eligible to come off the disabled list.
“I think this is the safest route to go, the most prudent way to attack this,” Gee explained on Friday. “As of right now, I guess I’ve got about 10 days before I can come off. I expect to be good to go by then.”
The question is what will happen with Gee when he is eligible to come off the disabled list, now that Syndergaard is here and in the rotation?
These things have a way of working themselves out, so time will tell. But if Syndergaard is pitching well in ten days, the Mets will be hard pressed to bury him back at Triple-A, where he was dominating.
Then there’s Steven Matz, who is also dominating at Triple-A and is inching closer to a promotion himself.
The Mets could conceivably shift Gee back into the bullpen as a long reliever. They don’t really have that at the moment with Carlos Torres in a short-relief role right now. But, he had trouble adapting to such a role during Spring Training, so that might not be a fit for him in the long-term.
They could always jettison Gee or Jon Niese from the roster as well, but that would require a market to develop pretty quickly at a time trades are rarely made.
Time will tell…
Just Mets 