Mets Injury Updates: Tejada Pushed Back, Thole and Young Progress

Some new injury news came about for three of the Mets rehabbing players yesterday; first, it was Ruben Tejada, and the news was not as good as Terry Collins was hoping. The Mets skipper was hoping that Tejada would be able to recover a little faster from his strained quad so he could put him back into the lineup by now, but it’s looking like the young shortstop may be out about another week.

If all went well during and after his base running session on Friday in Port St. Lucie, Tejada was scheduled to participate in an extended Spring Training game today, but the session didn’t go as well as the organization had hoped. So, instead of playing in a game, Tejada will continue to

rehab his quad by fielding groundballs and taking some swings in the cage, with the hope of getting some game action later in the week. The original hope was that the 22-year-old would be able to rejoin the team over this past weekend, but Collins said that even though Tejada is rehabbing longer than they had hoped, the base running session from Friday was not a setback; there are times when strained muscles take a little longer to heal than other times.

However, even though Tejada won’t be playing in a game tomorrow, Josh Thole will be particpating in his first live game action since he suffered a concussion on May 7th. Collins noted that Thole will most likely not be playing the entire game, but the amount of innings he will catch will ultimately be up to the staff that is currently residing in Port St. Lucie. If all goes well this week, there is a possibility the Mets’ on base machine will be able to rejoin the team within the next week or two.

Chris Young continues his rehab process as he we promoted to Triple-A Buffalo after another encouraging start with Port St. Lucie. The righty went 6.1 innings while allowing five hits on no walks, yielding three runs. Now that he has another start under his belt, the plan was for the Mets to move him up to the higher levels of minor league play, in hopes that he could be ready to join the New York rotation by the middle to the end of June. If Hefner can’t bounce back from his poor start against the Padres, Young’s rehab performances may become more and more important.